Natural Substances Reducing Stress and Anxiety

Ashgawanda is an adaptogen, a substance that improves physiological balance in the body without disrupting normal biological functions. Native to India, this medicinal herb helps to reduce cortisol, ultimately decreasing stress and anxiety. Other benefits include anti inflammatory, pain reduction, and decreased blood sugar levels.

Rhodiola Rosea is another adaptogen that decreases stress, anxiety and depression. A specific extract called Rhodax works to reduce anxiety. Look for products that are similar to those studied in clinical trials containing 2-3% rosavin and 0.8-1% salidroside. Start with 100 mg once a day for a week and then increase the dosage by 100 mg every week, up to 400 mg a day, if needed.

Check out the article below for more information.

https://draxe.com/natural-remedies-anxiety/

What is EMDR?

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and is used in therapy to help individuals reprocess and assimilate traumatic memories into a more contextual story. Often traumatic memories are not stored like normal memories. Because of changes in the brain during trauma, memories are stored as glimpses of sensory images, smells, sounds, physical touch, etc... as opposed to a full story with a beginning, middle and end as in regular memories. EMDR helps individuals reflect on the pieces of their traumatic memory while re-assimilating their story in a less threatening way. The client will be guided with questions to reflect on certain aspects of the memory, feelings, beliefs, etc... During the activity, the client can choose to share their thoughts or keep silent while listening to the therapists questions. This activity is thought to be reflective of REM sleep, which is when we assimilate and make sense of memories as they are woven into our concept of self and the world. By actively reliving traumatic memories while simultaneously utilizing rapid eye movement, individuals are able to assimilate the full story of a traumatic memory, distinguish that the memory was in their past and reassign meaning to their trauma. Research has shown that EMDR is more effective than medication.

What happens in the brain and body when experiencing Anxiety?

As humans we are hardwired for survival. This is a blessing and serves a necessary purpose when we encounter danger or threatening situations in our environment. However, this hard wiring can become problematic if we begin to perceive everyday interactions as threatening. We call it the flight or fight syndrome. We perceive something in our environment to be a threat, which triggers the release of adrenaline, norepinephrine and cortisol to be released into the body, triggering a visceral response involving the heart, gut and lungs. This may be experienced as increased heart rate, difficulty catching our breath, lump in the throat, muscle tension, and flushing or feeling hot.

We can think of our brain as existing in 3 layers. The bottom being the brain stem, responsible for automatic bodily activities such as breathing, heart rate, digestion and perspiration; the middle, limbic brain, being where we perceive our environment and register emotion, and the top, the neocortex as being where our thinking and planning occurs. When our middle layer perceives a threat in our environment, it immediately sends signaling to the brain stem below and the cortex above. However, the signaling reaches the lower brain stem slightly faster than it reaches our thinking and planning region. This is why our reaction feels so automatic, because our automatic bodily processes are being triggered before we have had the chance to think through and plan. So how can we train ourselves to delay automatically reacting when feeling fearful of giving a speech, meeting a new person, or trying to learn a new skill, which are clearly not life threatening situations? We can practice top down or bottom up approaches on a daily basis to train our brain how to react to these perceived threatening situations. Top down approaches would be cognitive behavioral training, where we engage our thinking/planing brain to learn to reframe how we perceive our environment so we don't perceive normal daily interactions to be a threat. Bottom up approaches include addressing our senses first allowing the results to filter up towards or thinking/planning region by practicing mindfulness. Examples include, positive visualization, connecting socially with family and friends, physical touch, deep breathing, exercise, and meditation. The key is being mindful/presently focused in the moment and observing the world around us as we percieve it through our 5 senses.