MTHFR and anxiety are intimately linked, mostly, we presume, because your body needs folate to make serotonin, dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. Those are most of the major neurotransmitters that affect mood and mood disorders including anxiety and depression.
More specifically, a folate molecule is needed to convert BH2 to BH4, and BH4 is needed to convert the amino acid precursor tryptophan into serotonin and tyrosine into dopamine, norepinephrine, or epinephrine. We did a post about it here.
Because of this link, working on optimizing your methylation can have a huge impact on anxiety and depression, but it isn't the only thing you can do. Of course there are pharmaceuticals for anxiety and I'm not really going to cover those because those will probably be your doctor's first go-to solution. And that's fine, but there are other things as well. We've already talked about anxiety as a mental bad habit, and also about breaking mental bad habits. So today, let's talk about steps you can take in your own real life to reduce anxiety.
Eat Regular Meals
This kind of sounds like a soft-ball. Like it couldn't possibly make a difference to anybody's anxiety level because it's just too simple. In reality, keeping your blood sugars balanced and stable can cause a huge drop in anxiety levels, and here is why.
When your blood sugars drop, either from a skipped meal or after a sugar rush and the inevitable sugar crash that follows, your body has a low-sugar stress reaction. Sugar is absolutely vital to the functioning of your brain and so your blood has a tightly regulated amount. If that amount drops, your body literally goes into panic mode, activates your HPA, which is your hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, and pumps out stress hormones to bring your sugar levels back up.
Skipping meals is incredibly stressful for your body - and that translates to actual stress hormones that affect your level of anxiety. Keeping your blood sugars balanced through the day is far more important than you realize, and if anxiety is an issue for you, then it's important to back some of the sugar out of your diet and make sure you eat regularly.
I know plenty of people who run on adrenalin and skip meals regularly because they're too busy, there's no time when the kids are running around, etc... but making time for this simple self-care can have a huge impact on how stressed you feel and also on the long-term effects of stress like sleep quality, weight gain, belly weight, and fatigue. Interestingly, blood sugar fluctuations and their corresponding changes in insulin levels are also highly linked to brain fog.
Clean Out Your Medicine Cabinet
Oddly a number of medications are known to increase anxiety. Some of those are because they have a negative effect on folate status, like birth control pills or methotrexate. Some are because they cause a caffeine-like reaction (or actually contain caffeine). These include cough and congestion formulas, many pain pills, and cold and flu medications. Also, medications for weight loss are well known for causing anxiety. Also if your dose of thyroid medication is either too low or too high it can lead to anxiety.
Decrease Your Caffeine
First, a disclaimer. I am a *huge* fan of coffee and will never, ever, ask you to stop drinking it. Having said that, different people have different levels of sensitivity to caffeine and also, women at different points in their cycle have different sensitivities to caffeine. It can help to experiment with your caffeine intake to see what works best for you, but keep a symptom tracker for a few months and try different caffeine levels - you might be surprised. In truth, any human with more caffeine than their body can easily process, is going to experience more anxiety, more edginess, and more irritability. That is just biology, so it can be a good idea to check in with your body every now and then and see if the amount you're getting is ok for you.
Exercise, Yoga, and Meditation
These are all well-known moderators of anxiety, so I won't belabor the point, but there are a few tips.
According to a study published in Psychiatry Research, higher intensity exercise like jogging or fast walking shows better results for reducing anxiety than gentle stretching.
Yoga shows better effects for anxiety than stretching or resistance training in Parkinson's disease, but that effect may translate out to the general population as well.
Mindfulness meditation (as opposed to other forms) has been well documented to reduce anxiety symptoms.
There are, also, a number of supplements that are helpful for anxiety as well, but we'll cover that in a separate post.
Thank you so much for listening today and please sign up for the mailing list at tohealthwiththat.com - we've got some great things coming this year and I want you to be the first to know.
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