dr. tracey marks – Effects of Anxiety

Alternative Medicine for Anxiety

Alternative medicine for anxiety. That’s what I talk about in this video.Here are 5 drugs that are known to be used for anxiety. 1. Chamomile 2. Kava 3. L-theonine 4. Valerian 5. GABAI upload every Wednesday at 9am, and sometimes have extra videos in between. Subscribe to my channel so you don’t miss a video https://goo.gl/DFfT33

Anxiety vs Mania – How To Tell The Difference

Anxiety disorders can occur along with bipolar disorder and there is some overlap in the way anxiety and mania look that it’s not always clear which it is. Why does this matter? Because one of the ways people can remain stable with bipolar disorder is to recognize early signs of either depression or mania so that you can intervene early to prevent the episode from blossoming. If a manic episode is coming, that intervention is most likely adjusting your mood stabilizer. But you don’t want to do that if it’s anxiety.Here’s are the symptoms that look similar with anxiety and mania. Racing thoughts Concentration problems Mood irritability Inability to sleep Restlessness or agitationAnxiety is a feeling of uneasiness, fear or dread. It can have physical manifestations, but it starts with a feeling. Mania is state of hyperarousal, like having an internal motor where the dial has been turned up.So in some ways, anxiety and mania can be thought of as behaving in opposite directions. Even though they share some characteristics, with anxiety the feelings converge upon you and affect you physically and with mania your physical state explodes your feelings.References Perugi G, Akiskal HS, Toni C, Simonini E, Gemignani A. The temporal relationship between anxiety disorders and (hypo)mania: a retrospective examination of 63 panic, social phobic and obsessive-compulsive patients with comorbid bipolar disorder. J Affect Disord. 2001 Dec;67(1-3):199-206.Keller MB. The long-term clinical course of generalized anxiety disorder. Journal Clin Psychiatry. 2002;63 Suppl 8:11-6Want to know more about mental health and self-improvement? On this channel I discuss topics such as bipolar disorder, major depression, anxiety disorders, attention deficit disorder (ADHD), relationships and personal development/self-improvement. I upload weekly. If you don’t want to miss a video, click here to subscribe. https://goo.gl/DFfT33Disclaimer: All of the information on this channel is for educational purposes and not intended to be specific/personal medical advice from me to you. Watching the videos or getting answers to comments/question, does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. If you have your own doctor, perhaps these videos can help prepare you for your discussion with your doctor.

Social Anxiety Disorder vs Shyness – How to Fix It

Are you Socially Anxious? What’s the difference between social anxiety disorder and being shy? That’s what I’m discuss in this video. I also discuss how we treat social anxiety disorder. I discuss the medications we use in social anxiety disorder.Exposure therapy is a very effective technique used to treat social anxiety disorder. In this video, I walk you through the technique of using a fear ladder to help you social anxiety.Recommended Self Help Resources (Includes amazon affiliate links. Clicking these links will not cost you any additional money. Any proceeds go to support the channel. Thank you).Managing Social Anxiety: A Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Approach (Treatments That Work) https://amzn.to/2HHdwXzShyness and Social Anxiety Workbook: Proven Techniques for Overcoming Your Fears. https://amzn.to/2UizoPa References Weeks JW, Spokas ME, Heimberg RG. Psychometric evaluation of the mini-social phobia inventory (Mini-SPIN) in a treatment-seeking sample. Depress Anxiety. 2007; 24(6):382-91.Vincent J. Fogliati, Matthew D. Terides, Milena Gandy, Lauren G. Staples, Luke Johnston, Eyal Karin, Ronald M. Rapee, Nickolai Titov & Blake F. Dear (2016) Psychometric properties of the mini-social phobia inventory (Mini-SPIN) in a large online treatment-seeking sample, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, 45:3, 236-257,Disclaimer: All of the information on this channel is for educational purposes and not intended to be specific/personal medical advice from me to you. Watching the videos or getting answers to comments/question, does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. If you have your own doctor, perhaps these videos can help prepare you for your discussion with your doctor.I upload every Wednesday at 9am, and sometimes have extra videos in between. Subscribe to my channel so you don’t miss a video https://goo.gl/DFfT33

How Brain Games Can Reduce Your Anxiety and Depression

Did you know that uncontrollable worry is an anxiety disorder that typically starts in childhood? It’s a disorder that is usually life long and comes and goes over the course of your life.Uncontrolled worry is one of the hallmarks of Generalized anxiety disorder. This is different from obsessive compulsive disorder where you have obsessional thoughts and or rituals you have to perform. It’s also different from panic disorder where you have sudden attacks of anxiety with a lot of physical symptoms.A sign that your anxiety is causing functional impairment or interfering with your daily activities is when it races out of control at night and keeps you awake. So there’s a loss of control of your ability to tune out these thoughts or distract yourself from them.If you’re one who has worked hard at meditating and using exercise to reduce your anxiety, you may be able to turn down the volume on these thoughts, but it’s like a script running in the background that you can’t completely quiet. That negative commentary that you can’t make go away, can start to make you feel depressed and hopeless.A current theory for why you can’t control your anxious thoughts is that uncontrolled worry comes from deficits in attentional control and it’s effect on your working memory. Attentional control is a higher level brain function called an executive function.If you have good attentional control, you can sustain focus on a task and filter out things that don’t relate to the task at hand. You are also able to cleanly move your attention from one task to another without the previous task distracting you from doing the new task. The ability to do this is based on the strength of your neural pathways that make these actions possible.So with anxiety and depression, these nerve pathways are disrupted or not functioning properly. This makes you unable to filter information and let go of the thoughts that cause you distress.Something that shows real promise for helping you get more control over your thoughts is brain training games or cognitive training. These specialized exercises, boost attentional control and improve your working memory. That improvement in your executive function has positive effects on your emotional functioning.The brain training exercises are not just something used by researchers. There are commercially available options that can be used on a self-help basis. One such company is called Cognifit. They have a version available for clinicians and educators, but they also have a version for personal use. You’re able to take a cognitive assessment to see what your weaknesses are, then choose the games that can help you build up your skills.On this issues of brain training, take a look at this video I did talking about learning to play a musical instrument to improve your mental capacity and brain plasticity https://youtu.be/AHgjZJKfGhs. It’s just another tool in your arsenal to improve your mental health.References Stefanopoulou E, Hirsch CR, Hayes S, Adlam A, Coker S. Are attentional control resources reduced by worry in generalized anxiety disorder?. J Abnorm Psychol. 2014;123(2):330-335.Luo X, Zhang L, Wang J. The Benefits of Working Memory Capacity on Attentional Control under Pressure. Front Psychol. 2017;8:1105. Published 2017 Jul 10.Scholten H, Malmberg M, Lobel A, Engels RC, Granic I. A Randomized Controlled Trial to Test the Effectiveness of an Immersive 3D Video Game for Anxiety Prevention among Adolescents. PLoS One. 2016;11(1):e0147763. Published 2016 Jan 27.Beloe, Patricia & Derakshan, Nazanin. (2019). Adaptive working memory training can reduce anxiety and depression vulnerability in adolescents. Developmental Science. 23. e12831. 10.1111/desc.12831.Want to know more about mental health and self-improvement? On this channel I discuss topics such as bipolar disorder, major depression, anxiety disorders, attention deficit disorder (ADHD), relationships and personal development/self-improvement. I upload weekly. If you don’t want to miss a video, click here to subscribe. https://goo.gl/DFfT33Disclaimer: All of the information on this channel is for educational purposes and not intended to be specific/personal medical advice from me to you. Watching the videos or getting answers to comments/question, does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. If you have your own doctor, perhaps these videos can help prepare you for your discussion with your doctor.

How To Deal With Health Anxiety and Hypochondria

This video is long, but it’s packed full of information. Here is a breakdown. I answer the following questions: What does hypochondria/health anxiety look like? What’s the difference between hypochondria and generalized anxiety disorder? How do you get hypochondria? Why don’t pills work for hypochondria? What does CBT for hypochondria-health anxiety look like? What is a self-help version of CBT for hypochondria?With hypochondriasis, you misinterpret body sensations and assume you have a serious disease, even after you’ve been told you don’t. You may believe that the doctor missed something. You may even believe the anxiety you have will turn into something more serious like dying in your sleep or having a heart attack.In 2013, the new edition of the diagnostic and statistical manual 5th edition changed the name from hypochondriasis to somatic symptom disorder. Somatic means body. Therefore, it’s a disorder of being over focused on body symptoms and having an illness. People who have this problem, know they have it because they are in a lot of distress.Self-talk script to use when you are triggered by a body sensation. I have been checked out by my doctor, my new body symptoms does not mean I really have a medical illness. I have anxiety and this is what I tend to think,. Anxiety makes me believe I have something I don’t. I am not more of a medical expert than the people who have seen and examined lots of sick people. I don’t know what sick people look like, I only know what I look like. I don’t have a point of comparison to know what the illness I’m concerned about really looks like. The internet will not give me a complete picture of what it really looks like to have [fill in the blank with the illness you’re worried about.Disclaimer: All of the information on this channel is for educational purposes and not intended to be specific/personal medical advice from me to you. Watching the videos or getting answers to comments/question, does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. If you have your own doctor, perhaps these videos can help prepare you for your discussion with your doctor.I upload every Wednesday at 9am, and sometimes have extra videos in between. Subscribe to my channel so you don’t miss a video https://goo.gl/DFfT33

The Connection Between Anxiety and Stomach Problems

There’s a bidirectional relationship between gastrointestinal disorders and anxiety. This relationship is thought to be controlled by a gut-brain connection. Research studies have concluded that there is signaling between the gut and the brain that affects the way we think and behave.So what does this mean? It means that having a disorder like GERD or Irritable Bowel Syndrome and perhaps even colitis can cause anxiety as well as depression.Why does this matter? It matters with how you handle the anxiety. The usual medication treatment for anxiety is serotonin enhancing antidepressants like Prozac or Zoloft. But one of the main side effects of those drugs is gastrointestinal distress like nausea, diarrhea or constipation. So they can make your gastrointestinal illness worse. It may not, some people with GERD who take acid reducing medication can do okay with one of these antidepressants. But not all do.So knowing that the anxiety medication can worsen your symptoms, an alternative approach may be to focus on getting the optimal treatment for your gastrointestinal symptoms first and then using cognitive behavioral strategies to address your anxiety.The microbiome is the trillions of microorganisms, called microbes that inhabit your body. The microbes include bacteria, fungi, parasites and viruses and most of them live in your small and large intestines.There are some preliminary studies suggesting that probiotics that contain certain bacteria like lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium could help treat mental disorders. But the research into this intervention is still in the early stages and we are not able to say take this much probiotic to treat this disorder.Healthy food produces good microbes. A good place to start with building a healthy microbiome is eliminating sugar and processed food and eating a clean diet. This would be food that reduces inflammation.Download the guide https://Markspsychiatry.com/stomach-and-anxietyThe take home – if you have gastrointestinal problems like GERD or Irritable Bowel Syndrome – these illness can cause anxiety. So make sure you prioritize having the gastrointestinal problem treated – don’t ignore it thinking it’s probably just stress. Because ignoring it could then trigger a bigger problem of anxiety for you. Also, you want to take a serious look at your diet. It could make it big difference with how you feel without the need for taking another medication to get rid of your anxiety.Want to know more about mental health and self-improvement? On this channel I discuss topics such as bipolar disorder, major depression, anxiety disorders, attention deficit disorder (ADHD), relationships and personal development/self-improvement. I upload weekly. If you don’t want to miss a video, click here to subscribe. https://goo.gl/DFfT33Disclaimer: All of the information on this channel is for educational purposes and not intended to be specific/personal medical advice from me to you. Watching the videos or getting answers to comments/question, does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. If you have your own doctor, perhaps these videos can help prepare you for your discussion with your doctor.

Two Tips for Health Anxiety

The clinical term for health anxiety used to be hypochondriasis, but now it’s been split into two disorders, somatic symptom disorder and illness anxiety disorder.With health anxiety you are oversensitive to body sensations and fear you have a serious illness. The fear of having that illness overwhelms you and leads to you engaging in behaviors that keep the anxiety going. Many people realize their fears are irrational to some degree, but it’s like you can’t break out of the cycle of fear about it.The key to getting past the health anxiety is being able to focus on the problems as being anxiety out of control rather than on getting proof or reassurance that you don’t have an illness. That reassurance is always short-lived. It’s like taking short cuts to avoid work. You may feel better in the short-term when you hear you don’t have the illness, but your distress eventually comes back because the real problem is your anxiety, not whether or not you have an illness.Some researchers out of Sweden did a clinical trial testing CBT delivered by the internet. The results were that the internet therapy was equally effective as therapy delivered by face to face with a therapist. With the internet therapy, the participants worked with a therapist through brief email communications. But the bulk of the work was done by doing exercises.Two strategies that are included in the CBT program are1. Practice mindfulness for 10 minutes a day. 2. Practice response prevention Two sources of mindfulness meditations are the UCLA Mindfulness podcast and my website were you can download a Body Scan meditation here http://markspsychiatry.com/two-tips-for-health-anxietyWith response prevention, you want to restrict how much you engage in the behavior that reinforce your anxiety. So an example may be that you will only check your pulse three times a day instead of the usual 20. Or you when you start to feel worried, you will wait at least 1 hour before you talk to your partner about your concerns. By waiting, you may find that you don’t have as strong of a need to talk to them.Practice this each day. You can set aside a certain time of day to review your list of behaviors and track your progress. If you’ve spent the day holding back on your behaviors, you may be tense. And this may be when you do a mindfulness exercise.Other parts of the therapy involved gradually exposing yourself to anxiety provoking situations while you resist engaging in your usual behaviors. This is really where you make the progress in reducing your anxiety and breaking the connection between physical sensations and anxiety. The exercises expose you to actual situations as well as imagined situations to purposely trigger your anxiety while you suppress your response.Through these gradual exposure’s you become desensitized to the trigger. We call it habituation. The exposure exercises are best done under the supervision of the therapist but even with this Internet model the therapist intervention is minimal compared to what would be required if you were seeing a therapist in person for a full psychotherapy session. So it’s good to know that the cognitive behavior therapy can be modified to be a hybrid of self-help with some therapist intervention.Reference Axelsson E, Andersson E, Ljótsson B, Björkander D, Hedman-Lagerlöf M, Hedman-Lagerlöf E. Effect of Internet vs Face-to-Face Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Health Anxiety: A Randomized Noninferiority Clinical Trial. JAMA Psychiatry. Published online May 13, 2020.Want to know more about mental health and self-improvement? On this channel I discuss topics such as bipolar disorder, major depression, anxiety disorders, attention deficit disorder (ADHD), relationships and personal development/self-improvement. I upload weekly. If you don’t want to miss a video, click here to subscribe. https://goo.gl/DFfT33Disclaimer: All of the information on this channel is for educational purposes and not intended to be specific/personal medical advice from me to you. Watching the videos or getting answers to comments/question, does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. If you have your own doctor, perhaps these videos can help prepare you for your discussion with your doctor.

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