Hi, I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist
and I make mental health education videos.
Today I'm talking about four tools that help anxiety
that you may not have known impact anxiety
the way they do.
Number one is cleaning up your diet
by eliminating processed foods.
We've all heard that eating healthy is good for you
but we usually think of eating healthy
in terms of weight control
and having a healthy heart and body and not anxiety.
There are lots of diets out there, keto, paleo,
vegan, Mediterranean, and others.
Regardless of which diet you choose to follow,
a common theme in all of them
is reducing or eliminating processed foods
because processed foods cause inflammation
which worsens anxiety.
An easy way to target highly processed food
is to stop eating anything that comes in a bag or a box.
Crackers, chips, granola bars, and other health bars
are examples of these kinds of packaged goods.
And if you need to eat gluten free,
you can really end up eating a lot
of these packaged goods that are free of gluten
but they're loaded with preservatives
and other inflammation producing agents in them.
Once you get past the packaged goods,
the next step is eliminating added sugar.
It seems like everything that tastes good
has high fructose corn syrup in it,
and that's probably my bias
because I have a strong sweet tooth.
But we're talking ketchup, barbecue sauce,
cold cuts, salad dressing, it's everywhere
and your taste buds get trained to expect this taste.
But once you get that sweet taste out of your mouth,
you'll be surprised at how sweet and fake
these things taste.
There are several other things that you could do
to modify your diet, but start there.
Stop eating packaged goods and reduce
or eliminate foods that have high fructose corn syrup.
The second tip takes the diet intervention up a level
and that is to narrow your eating window
to six to eight hours.
I talk about this in my video on intermittent fasting.
I used to think of intermittent fasting
as starving yourself intermittently,
but that's not what this is.
Intermittent fasting is about extending the time
that your body has to regenerate itself.
It's a lot of work for the body to digest food
and when it's working hard like that,
it doesn't have time to do the necessary
maintenance functions like ridding your body of toxins.
Extending your fasting state increases
brain derived neurotropic factor
which is a chemical involved
in nerve cell growth called neurogenesis,
and we want growth and pruning of damaged nerves.
The way to extend the time that your brain
and body have to do this is to narrow the time
that you eat anything that contains calories.
If you drink a glass of orange juice at 9:00 PM,
your body sees that drink as food.
If you like drinking things in the evenings,
sip some herbal tea with no added sugar.
Camomile is a good one for relaxation.
Number three underutilized tool for anxiety
is engaging in mindfulness.
Getting into a mindful state is simply focusing
on the present moment with all of your senses
without judgment.
When you're mindful, you separate yourself
from the future worries and the pressures around you.
An easy way to do that is to spend just five minutes
focusing on how you're breathing
without trying to change your breathing pattern
and this is called breath awareness.
Notice how deeply you're breathing.
Notice what part of your body moves.
When your mind wanders, and it will,
don't judge yourself, just bring your thoughts
back to your breathing.
You may have to refocus several times, and that's okay.
The more you do it, the more you'll be able to stay focused.
Redirecting your thoughts has the added benefit
of training you to have more control over your thoughts
and better control over your thoughts
is extremely helpful when you experience racing thoughts
or when you can't seem to focus your thoughts
because they just feel like they're all over the place.
Thought control is a skill that you can develop
just like training any other muscle in your body.
Being mindful in your everyday activities
is another way to work in mindfulness
without needing to designate a specific time for it.
When you're getting dressed in the morning,
instead of planning your day or thinking
about something unpleasant that you have to do later,
which will probably make you feel tense,
use all of your senses to appreciate what you're doing.
Notice the texture of your clothes, the temperature,
the colors, the sound of zipping or buttoning, et cetera.
Taking time to appreciate all these details of life
makes your experiences richer
and is calming to the mind.
The fourth and last tip is using deep pressure touch
to soothe yourself.
Touch is very therapeutic and we see
deep pressure touch at play
when we swaddle babies to calm them.
When they can't seem to settle down,
you can wrap them tightly so that they can't move.
And it would seem like being held tightly like that
would be even more unsettling, but it's not.
It's like being back in the confined space of the womb.
You can't get back in the womb
and you can't walk around being unable
to use your arms and legs,
but you can get the same benefit of deep pressure touch
by using a weighted blanket.
The blanket should be 10% of your body weight
and you can sleep under it or cuddle under it
while you're watching television or reading.
And there's a lap version that you can use discreetly
while sitting at your desk.
They even make a vest version for dogs called ThunderShirts
for them to wear during a thunderstorm.
Compression vests are also used to manage sensory overload
in autism spectrum disorder.
So try some of these things, reducing processed food,
limiting your eating window
to a six to eight hour window
like 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM just as an example,
five minutes of mindfulness
and or being mindful in your everyday activities,
and using a weighted blanket.
Watch this video for more on the benefits
of intermittent fasting.
Thanks for watching.
See you next time.