Holistic Therapy Tips: What To Eat To Reduce Anxiety Symptoms
There’s a lot of conversation going on about how what “you are what you eat”; we’ve all heard that saying before. So yeah, we can understand; what we eat will play a role in how we feel on some level but what does this really mean?
If we eat healthy nutritious foods then we should feel healthy with more energy, have more strength, feel more stamina, and an overall sense of wellness. The other part of the story that doesn’t get as much conversation is the benefits of healthy nutrition implementation for your mental emotional health. It’s so important to consider what you eat as a potential tool to support mood management and emotional wellness as well.
In today’s article were going to look at how holistic nutrition can apply to mental emotional health and wellness in 3 key ways. First we’ll look at your basic rules for increasing general mental emotional health and wellness, then we’ll look more closely at supplements that support and help manage anxiety, then we’ll look at the behavioral support options that are also useful for creating a well-rounded holistic approach to anxiety management and anxiety reduction.
Eat Your Plants, Sprouts, Fruit, Fats, And Seeds
There’s definitely a standard blueprint or set of actions to take to reduce mood overwhelm or symptoms for depression, anxiety, and other mental health diagnosis and mood disorders. Let’s look at the basic rules of food and mood management.
Eat More Veggies: Aim to eat leafy green veggies daily. 4-5 cups is a great start. You can add spinach to smoothies, make sure to eat one salad per day or make soups with veggies as well.
Eat Less Fruit: Consider eating fruit daily as well with moderation of 1-2 servings (or pieces). Consider eating fruit with lower natural sugar content like pears, apples, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, lemon, lime, and avocado.
Eat Healthy Fats: Try coconut oil, olive oil, avocado oil, and fish oils. Try to eliminate use of vegetable oil and also eating foods with vegetable oil (canola oil, vegetable oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil, sesame oil, safflower oil, linseed oil, and rice bran oil) in the ingredient list.
Eat Sprouted Grains: Look for sprouted grains in the form of cereal, English muffins, bread, and tortillas. There’s also plenty of options for almond, oat, and coconut flour options. Avoid traditional bread and grain options as most have higher levels of sugars, gluten, carbs that ultimately cause higher patterns of glucose spiking, general sugar/ carb addiction.
Eat Spices: Adding spices to your foods have great medicinal value for your mood and emotional health. Eating spices like cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, onion powder, garlic powder, sea salt, black pepper, rosemary, oregano, and the list goes on all play a role in providing nutritional value for your health where your body also gains increased antioxidants.
Eat Nuts And Seeds: Reach for your nut butters over peanut butter to access lower sugar content. You’ll also feel increased satiation via having access to nut butters and seeds like hemp seed, sunflower seeds, chia seeds, sprouted seeds, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, and sesame seeds.
What to Avoid Eating
Please reduce your simple carbohydrates (like white bread, white potatoes, chips etc.) and sugar intake (sweet foods made with high amounts of sugar over 5 grams per serving) because both sugars and carbohydrates cause a glucose spike in your body, which equates to your body feeling increased deregulation. This bodily deregulation also occurs for our mental emotional wellness.
Supplements That Help Reduce Anxiety
All right let’s look at anxiety supplements more specifically. Although anxiety is a disorder that has a great response to behavioral efforts for increased mindfulness, there are supplements that can help as well. All of the listed suggestions below are natural herbs or Adaptogens that have proven to be beneficial for anxiety maintenance.
Holy Basil Tea
CBD Oil
Lemon Balm Herb
Kava Kava
It’s Your Mindfulness That Matters
I know this answer is not a favorite for clients experiencing anxiety but mindfulness and stimulus reduction does matter when it comes to anxiety. I want to encourage you to reduce screen time before bed and first thing in the morning. Carve out time for self-care and meditation if you want to see reduction of your anxiety symptoms. There are tons of free guided-meditations that are available if you feel like independent meditation is difficult or distractible.
Ultimately all of the suggestions combined will work best with implemented together but even starting with just one small effort can be just as useful for your holistic therapy approach to anxiety management through your nutrition practice.
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