10 Warning Signs You Have Anxiety

hello health champions. Anxiety is one of the  top health concerns in the world today in my  

experience it's almost as common as people having  problems with belly fat and being overweight  

today I'm going to talk about the top 10 signs and  symptoms of anxiety but the key to understand is  

the mechanism by which those signs and symptoms  come about because then you understand where they  

come from and then you can do something about it  coming right up hey I'm dr Ekberg I'm a holistic  

doctor and a former Olympic decathlete and if you  want to truly master health by understanding how  

the body really works make sure you subscribe  hit that bell and turn on all the notifications  

so you never miss a life-saving video 40 million  Americans at any given time have anxiety to the  

degree they call it a disorder that's 18 percent  of the population and out of those people 28  

percent more than one in four will have it their  entire lives and it's not just adults kids have it  

to almost the same degree one in eight children  have anxiety and the primary thing they do for  

this is medication it's one of the most commonly  prescribed medications is for anxiety and think  

about why we're here what are your hopes and  dreams for life what's the purpose of life  

isn't it just to feel good don't you do  everything that you do in the hope of feeling  

better as a result you get your education you do  things and think about kids how they especially  

have hopes and dreams and want to feel good and  yet they live their lives with anxiety so that's  

40 million people who never really come close  to the purpose of life and 11 million people  

their entire lives will never reach that potential  now one of the biggest problems is the way that we  

look at this because when we call it an anxiety  disorder when we put a label of disorder when  

we give a person this diagnosis we say this  is what you have this is who you are and the  

main treatment is a medication a chemical  now at best we can alleviate some symptoms  

but this person won't understand where this  came from and they're not really going to  

be able to change it and resolve it long term so  instead of a disorder let's call it an imbalance  

and an imbalance is simply when something isn't  working right if everything was working right  

you wouldn't have anxiety you wouldn't have high  blood pressure etc imbalance are caused basically  

by four things deficiency toxicity degeneration  and stress deficiency means your body needs  

something that it's not getting enough of it has  to have certain substrates to produce energy and  

signals and tissue but if it's not getting enough  it can't do that toxicity means there's something  

interfering to a greater degree than the body  can handle it degeneration is that something is  

supposed to work at a certain level but because  of disuse and because of all the other factors  

now this tissue is functioning at a lower  level lower capacity and stress is something  

that changes the priorities of the body it shifts  from healing to defending basically so if we have  

all four of these in any one of them or all  four now over time we will create imbalances  

and the key to understand here is that these  are variables that we can learn how to change  

as long as you have some functional viable cells  in your body you can make them work better if you  

understand this but instead when we look things  up we typically find things like this your gender  

may be causing your worries okay so if you're  a woman that's the cause you're doomed that's  

it next time you're feeling anxious don't be too  hard on yourself now that I agree with you should  

never be hard on yourself don't beat yourself up  no matter what's going on understand what's going  

on and do something about it the primary cause  could be your gender when we hear things like this  

how are we supposed to change how are we supposed  to influence our health if all of our problems  

are caused by things we can't change this is  horrendous advice and we need to get past this  

we need to start thinking differently first let's  look at some of the traditional explanations so  

that we can learn what is a cause and what is not  a cause so webmd says the causes are things like  

work and school stress relationship stress  financial stress global or political issues such  

as pandemics a recent one of course being covid19  death of a loved one stress of a medical diagnosis  

so obviously these are no fun but are they  causes no these are triggers if they were causes  

then they would cause anxiety in one hundred  percent of the people who were exposed to this but  

there's only a percentage which means these are  triggers in susceptible people the list of causes  

continues and side effects of medication whether  it's legal or an illegal drug such as cocaine  

are those causes yes absolutely because a foreign  chemical will alter brain chemistry they will  

make even if not everyone gets anxiety  they will alter the brain chemistry away  

from normal and balanced into abnormal they will  bypass the body's normal regulatory mechanisms  

they will interfere they would suffocate the  brain's ability to normalize things then we have  

symptoms of medical illness there's some diseases  like a heart attack hypoglycemia lack of oxygen  

from high altitude sickness from emphysema or  a pulmonary embolism so are these causes yes  

because what they all have in common is that they  indicate a lack of fuel they result in a lack of  

fuel because the brain needs glucose ketones and  oxygen to make energy your brain regulates anxiety  

and if we don't provide enough fuel how is the  brain supposed to do its job if you have a heart  

attack you're not pumping enough blood if you have  hypoglycemia there's not enough glucose for fuel  

if you don't get enough oxygen then the oxygen  isn't there to burn the fuel so high altitude  

might have less oxygen emphysema is a lung disease  where you have reduced surface area and pulmonary  

embolism is a clot in the lungs where you also  have less area and this is important to understand  

that the brain is what regulates  this so if we don't give the brain  

the resources it needs now it can't manage  anxiety properly either I'm going to list  

out the signs and symptoms real quick but realize  that the list itself is absolutely useless unless  

you take the time to understand the mechanisms  and where these things come from because then  

you can do something about it  otherwise you just have a list  

first we have excessive worrying not just a little  bit here and there but when it starts dominating  

your life feeling agitated panic attacks  restlessness fatigue poor focus irritability  

tense muscles poor sleep and irrational fears  and then your nervous system has something called  

momentum that's a mechanism of momentum we have  habitual thoughts that the more you tend to think  

a certain kind of thought the more likely you  are to think that thought again and this works  

through a mechanism called neuroplasticity this  is one of the most powerful principles that we  

could possibly understand this is something  that works for you and it works against you  

so if you have negative thoughts a lot then every  time you have a negative thought you tend to wire  

your brain a certain way you create synapses you  hook up these pathways with certain connections  

so that it makes it easier for you and why would  the body do why would your nervous system do a  

stupid thing like that because your nervous  system doesn't judge your behavior it adapts  

to your environment and if your environment is to  think a lot of negative thoughts then your brain  

sets you up to get better at doing that so you  hardwire your brain into thinking more of those  

thoughts that habitual thought and then you create  a certain momentum so you kind of get on a roll  

and it becomes harder and harder to break out of  that well the good news is it works the other way  

too so when you have positive thoughts now you're  wiring up your network to get better at thinking  

those positive thoughts so when we're in a loop  when we have a negative momentum at that time  

it's very difficult to break out of it because you  have momentum however there are times when you're  

feeling a little better and if you understand  this mechanism when you're feeling better then  

you can build on it you can milk those positive  moments you can set yourself up for success by  

building on these positive moments and now you  rewire your brain so you become more resistant  

to those negative thoughts so understand that  these are physical changes you lay down physical  

pathways according to that neuroplasticity now  we're getting to the good stuff this is where you  

really start understanding that there's a  mechanism that makes this happen or not happen  

so your frontal lobe mechanism your frontal lobe  is what makes you human humans have a bigger  

more intricate larger surface area more convoluted  frontal lobe than any other animal on the planet  

and this is where the better the frontal lobe  works the better our motivation is the better  

our planning is we can self-monitor we can have  abstract thought we can think about things we  

have awareness this is all a result of how well  that frontal lobe is working and the key to  

understanding the frontal lobe is to understand  that 80 to 90 percent of what it does is to  

turn things off it's inhibitory it creates  stability by dampening things it receives  

all of this stimulus that would drive you crazy  but the better your frontal lobe is working the  

calmer and more controlled you can be by turning  off the things that are not important right now  

so some of the things it turns off is stress  stress is necessary stress is happening around  

you that's the stimulus your body's response to it  is a stress response that's necessary for survival  

but it's short term and the better your brain  is working the better it can dampen and get you  

back to balance after that stress is taken care  of flex or muscles when you're stressed you tend  

to tense up muscles you pull your shoulders up you  clench your jaw that is why there is so much tmj  

associated with stress but also neck pain shoulder  pain and all these tight upper traps for example  

it also turns off distractions so in order for  you to focus on something your brain has to turn  

off everything else because otherwise you  would equally pay attention to everything  

and that's called add attention deficit disorder  anything that happens gets your attention you want  

to focus here but then something happens over here  and and you're off and running and the fourth key  

thing your frontal lobe turns off are unwanted  thoughts and those are things like anxiety  

and depression now think of your frontal  lobe as a light bulb and think of this  

as 100 watts of power 100 watt light bulb so if  you have a good energy output of your frontal lobe  

it has a good capacity to inhibit to stabilize  you to turn all of the unwanted things off but  

if your frontal lobe suffers from deficiency  toxicity degeneration or stress now it's not going  

to burn as bright and if it only burns at 70 watts  now you just lost 30 percent of your capacity to  

control all these unwanted things and if it drops  even further then you lose that capacity even  

more and this is why there's such a huge overlap  between all these different conditions there's  

about a 50 overlap between anxiety and depression  even though they label them and categorize them  

differently they have the common mechanism the  common denominators and you also find that people  

have like I said the stress and the TMJ and the  tight muscles and all of these different things  

tend to go together now let's look at the signs  and symptoms again with our new understanding  

of what the brain does and see how that fits we  know the frontal lobe is involved with motivation  

self-monitoring that it turns off stress flexor  muscles and distractions and unwanted thoughts  

so the first few symptoms are tense muscles  feeling agitated panic attacks and restlessness  

now what these have in common is that they are  part of a stress response of a sympathetic or a  

fight flight activation and what happens then  is your heart rate increases your blood pressure  

increases you tighten up muscles you get ready  for the fight flight and of course we can see  

that this all fits together with what the brain  is supposed to turn off now why restless why  

would you feel restless this goes together with  the attention deficit because in kids especially  

attention deficit often goes with ADHD which  is hyperactivity disorder which is kind of  

like they're restless and agitated that's because  movement is the primary stimulator of the frontal  

lobe so if you move now you stimulate you fire  up the light bulb of the frontal lobe so you get  

better at turning these things on so these kids  are smart they want to move because that helps  

them manage these things the next few signs and  symptoms are excessive worry poor sleep poor focus  

and irritability and what these have in common  is that they're all a result of unwanted  

thought excessive worry you can't turn off those  thoughts poor sleep almost all of poor sleep  

has to do with the fact that those thoughts  just keep going you can't find that peaceful  

place where you fall asleep poor focus we talked  about the inability to turn off distractions  

and same thing with irritability we just can't  control the thoughts the better the frontal lobe  

is working we can fire up that light bulb we have  more capacity to control this and then we have  

fatigue and irrational fears also known as phobias  and they included a few more subtitles here like  

animals hurricanes and floods and blood injections  or injuries now fatigue one of the biggest killers  

of fatigue is lack of motivation and the frontal  lobe of course is responsible for motivation and  

drive so if your frontal lobe starts to lose  capacity you lose some motivation and energy  

there irrational fears and phobias are when we  have a fear or a panic that's out of proportion  

when it's not related to the risk at hand and  there's certainly some things that can get out  

of proportion that's not a good thing to always  be afraid of things however the things they listed  

were kind of hilarious to me when they start  listing animals hurricanes and floods blood  

injections or injuries to me those sound like good  things to be afraid of to some degree i think we  

should have a healthy respect for a lot of those  things and it was especially the last items here  

on the list the blood injections or injuries  that i had to laugh about because blood is a  

good thing inside the body but if it's visible  that indicates a problem you should be concerned  

and then we have injections which of course is  a modern thing when they start giving us shots  

and if you have a phobia then they can't care for  your health properly so now they can prescribe  

an anti-anxiety they can prescribe a medication  so you're not afraid of getting injected  

but again your your skin is your body armor  you're not supposed to want to have that  

pierced and to be invaded by foreign substances so  there's a balance in all things but i think a lot  

of the things they list you actually want to have  a healthy respect for and now that you understand  

how the brain mechanism and all the things we  talked about produces the signs and symptoms the  

obvious solution is to build a better brain that's  how you solve the problem long term and what does  

that mean it means you eat better move better  feel better you understand what real food is you  

eat that and very little else you move better you  understand that movement is what drives the brain  

movement produces signals that is the primary  stimulator and builder of your brain and then  

you learn to think and feel better you practice  appreciation you practice meditation you read  

uplifting things and you do it on a consistent  basis not when you're feeling bad don't wait  

till you have anxiety or a panic attack because  then you're not in any shape to do something  

about it that's the wrong time you understand  the mechanisms and you work it on a consistent  

basis if you enjoyed this video and you'd like  to learn more about how the body really works  

you really ought to click on that one next thank  you so much for watching I'll see you next time