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Anxiety Symptoms

Anxiety: Symptoms, Diagnosis and Treatment Options

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Anxiety is loosely defined as an emotion that is characterized by feelings of tension and worried thoughts. Family, finances, health or relationships are all things that we experience anxiety over. This is normal. However, anxiety that starts to overwhelm an individual or affects how they live their day to day life can be harmful.

At the Kaplan Center, we think about anxiety a little bit differently. A growing body of research suggests that it might not be a mental disorder in and of itself, but rather a symptom of physical inflammation stemming from the brain. Celiac disease, an unhealthy diet or thyroid disease are just a few conditions that may be related to anxiety. By recognizing these connections, we are able to take a broader approach to diagnosing and treating anxiety.

Symptoms of anxiety

It is important to separate the normal anxiety that we all experience from a more serious anxiety disorder. Some of the following are things to look for:

  • Worry and fear that are constant and overwhelming.
  • Responding to certain events or situations with extreme fear or dread. This may be accompanied by physical signs of anxiety such as a pounding heart, trembling and sweating.
  • Anxiety that interferes with your day-to-day activities or stops you from carrying out routine tasks.
  • Edginess and restlessness.
  • Difficulty falling or staying asleep.

Diagnosis of anxiety

The diagnosis of anxiety is one that should be made by a healthcare professional. At the Kaplan Center, we recognize that the causes of anxiety revolve around an individual’s thoughts, emotions, and feelings. In almost all instances, diagnosing anxiety does not require any invasive medical tests.

Our doctors take the time to speak to patients about these issues and allow them to discuss their anxiety as they experience it. To help diagnose anxiety we’ll ask you a few questions about:

  • Past medical history
  • Family history
  • Medication history
  • Social history

Treating anxiety

The under-recognition and under-treatment of anxiety is a widespread problem. Because anxiety can have physical symptoms, it makes the treatment somewhat challenging for traditional medicine to deal with.

At the Kaplan Center, after diagnosing anxiety our goal is to offer treatments that help address the root causes of the condition. Therefore, we offer a wide range of treatment options tailored to each individual. This may include:

We work with patients to create a personalized treatment plan that’s suited to their needs.

In many cases, anxiety is not a single-treatment condition. A holistic approach, such as the one we favor at the Kaplan Center allows us to look at the whole patient. We may suggest one or more of the treatments listed above or include other elements that fit your lifestyle.

We are here for you, and we want to help.

Our goal is to return you to optimal health as soon as possible. To schedule an appointment please call: 703-532-4892 x2

References:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4610617/
https://www.apa.org/topics/anxiety/

 

 

PODCAST: “Stress, Sleep And Total Recovery With Dr. Gary Kaplan”

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Dr. Gary Kaplan, Director of the Kaplan Center for Integrative Medicine and author of Total Recovery, A Revolutionary New Approach to Breaking the Cycle of Pain and Depression joined Cate Stillman, founder of the YogaHealer Podcast to chat about the various impacts of stress and sleep deprivation on the brain and overall health. Topics he covered included:

  • What is Mast Cell Activation Syndrome
  • What causes brain inflammation and how it impacts our quality of life
  • Why sleep is so crucial for long-term health and tips on how to optimize your sleep
  • How Yoga treats pain
  • Why meditation is so effective for sleep and pain disorders
  • Why sleep apnea is so dangerous for your overall health
  • What really causes Lyme disease
  • What is EDS and how does it impact the body on a deeper level

Listen now –>>

 

Timestamps:

  • 4:00 – 9:00 Stress and inflammation in the brain
  • 9:00 – 17:00 Optimal sleep and sleep disorders
  • 17:00 – 24:20 Sleep Apnea
  • 25:30 – 29:30 Disease in adolescents and belief systems
  • 29:30 – 36:00 Meditation, processing emotions and gratitude
  • 36:00 – 40:30 The benefits of habits on overall health
  • 40:30 – 46:00 Lyme disease and EDS

More helpful links:

Provider Spotlight: Sraddha Laura Elizabeth Dorsett

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“Provider Spotlight” is a series that highlights the wonderful team of healthcare providers and specialists here at the Kaplan Center for Integrative Medicine.
Sraddha Laura Elizabeth Dorsett
Laura Elizabeth Dorsett has always been fascinated by the relationship between spiritual life and physical health. She leads a free drop-in meditation class for all levels every Wednesday from 7:30 – 8:30 pm.

Why did you choose your specialty?

After experiencing the competitiveness of the ballet world for much of my life, Yoga gave me a way to experience my body in a room without mirrors. I was able to begin a new relationship with my body that was based on what my body felt like, rather than what it looked like to others in a performance environment. Little did I know that it was really a way of connecting more deeply to my inner life.
Around that time, I was also grieving the loss of my father, with whom I was very close, and who transitioned from this life when I was 23. I had no understanding of how to relate to grief and I lived in denial for several years, experiencing anxiety attacks, pain in my body at the same location as his tumor, and general emotional paralysis. It was Yoga that broke open the dam; in reconnecting to my body in a loving and conscious way, I was able to experience the feelings that had been locked up inside me. As I faced these feelings, the most astonishing thing happened: a tremendous peace would come over me right in the midst of the most emotional intensity. It was here that my spiritual life was born. For me, Yoga became the means of a profound spiritual awakening. And yet this awakening of spirit occurred within the context of the physical body, of listening to it, accepting it, and letting its intelligence guide me toward greater awareness and acceptance.
Just as Yoga changed my life, my dharma (Sanskrit for “calling” or “duty”) in this life is to awaken others to its profound possibilities.

What is the biggest challenge in your practice and how do you overcome it?

When self-judgment arises, I usually recognize it relatively quickly – “Ah, here we go… Hello, self-judgement.” I breathe into it, acknowledge it by placing a hand on my heart, and I reassure myself as if I am reassuring a small child. If I am really stuck in it, I sometimes do some gazing with my husband. We simply look in each other’s eyes and focus on our breathing for about a minute. It is an excellent way of bringing myself back home to presence and to feeling unconditionally accepted. I encourage people to try this with their partner, friend, or even – and perhaps more effectively – their pet! Having the unconditional presence of another being with you, especially while experiencing a harsh and unkind inner environment, is extraordinarily healing.

What’s the one piece of advice that you give to all of your patients?

You are exactly where you are supposed to be. Feel Life’s perfection working through you and as you, letting go of your ideas of how things are supposed to be and opening to how they are… a great surprise awaits you when you do this.

What are some of your interests and/or pastimes outside of work?

I love singing kirtan (devotional yoga music and mantras), spending time in nature with my family, curling up with a book, cranking up some music and having spontaneous dance parties around the house… lately we’ve been putting on the song “Afreen” from the “100 Foot Journey” soundtrack (highly recommended stress release!)

If you could choose another career, what would it be?

There is nothing else I would be doing other than what I am doing!

Yoga Rooms Offer Respite at Busy Airports

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Attention yogis! You may think that the airport is the last place you could find a moment of tranquility, but in an effort to make airline traveling a less stressful experience for its customers, a handful of airports are trying to change that perception.

In 2012, San Francisco International Airport made history by being the first to create a dedicated space for the practice of yoga and self-reflection. Since then, a growing number of other airports have caught on to this trend, and we really hope to see it continue!

Air travel today has become more stressful than ever before. 9-11 changed everything, making long lines and multiple security checkpoints the new norm. If you add in the exhaustive media coverage of each air tragedy, canceled flights, long layovers, and the constant and inescapable background noise at every airport, you may find yourself in the midst of a perfect storm of stress and anxiety which can take a toll on your mental and physical well-being. With minimal overhead, airport yoga rooms offer an opportunity for passengers to focus on their health & well-being, a welcome change from the customary options of restaurants, bars, and shopping venues that bombard travelers as soon as they walk through the doors.

3 Great Reasons to Visit an Airport Yoga Room:

  1. You’ll feel happier. A yoga room provides a brief respite from the hustle and bustle of traveling, keeping the mind calm, and helping to reduce stress and anxiety levels.
  2. You’ll feel healthier. Being able to stretch your body before, after, or in-between flights will help you stay limber and increase circulation. (Circulation tends to slow down during air travel, and can cause lower leg swelling, general discomfort, and even more serious issues like blood clotting.)
  3. You’ll feel wiser. Having the option to practice your regular yoga routine will keep you focused on your health and well-being, instead of the less healthy pastimes like the airport bar or convenience restaurant.

Here is a list of airports that currently have a yoga and/or meditation room available to their ticketed passengers:

Burlington International Airport
Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport
Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport
Helsinki Airport
San Francisco International Airport
Raleigh-Durham International Airport
Heathrow Airport
Chicago Midway International Airport
San Diego International Airport

man sitting outside meditating

Meditation: Can It Help Reduce Your Pain?

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Meditation, which can be practiced in many different forms, has been used for thousands of years to benefit the mind, body, and soul. Medical research proves that meditation not only modifies brain function but can also actually change the way we experience physical pain.

A study reported in the Journal of Neuroscience showed that patients who had received only a little more than 60 minutes of meditation training were able to dramatically reduce their experience of pain. Patients experienced a reduction in “pain intensity” of about 40 percent and a reduction in “pain unpleasantness” of 57 percent. According to the lead author of the study, Fadel Zeidan, “Meditation produced a greater reduction in pain than even morphine or other pain-relieving drugs, which typically reduce pain ratings by about 25 percent.”

The results confirm what we have seen clinically in our own patients at the Kaplan Center for Integrative Medicine. In fact, in the mid-1990s, I had the opportunity to serve on an NIH Consensus Panel that confirmed the effectiveness of relaxation and behavioral approaches in the treatment of chronic pain and insomnia. Meditation training has been part of the Clinic’s comprehensive treatment program for close to 30 years.

Questions? Give Us a Call!

703-532-4892 x2

In the meantime, medical research has demonstrated that many difficult to treat chronic pain conditions, such as fibromyalgia syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, celiac disease, and irritable bowel syndrome, are mediated by central nervous system sensitization. It is only logical that meditation, which improves nervous system functioning, would help to alleviate chronic pain.

This is not to say that meditation is the entire answer; but can be a powerful part of an individual’s comprehensive treatment, along with physical exercise, dietary changes, nutritional supplementation, physical therapy, and appropriate medications.

The following are some practical resources on meditation and working with physical pain, offered by experienced meditators:

My hope is that these tools and the encouraging research results listed below will inspire you to commit to your own meditation practice.

  • A study conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital found that mindfulness meditation, over the short period of only 8 weeks, increased the amount of gray matter in regions of the brain involved in learning and memory, regulation of one’s emotions, and self-awareness. This new study is very exciting because it suggests that meditation may be able to help heal the brains of people who suffer from chronic pain, depression, and anxiety disorders.
  • Other studies have shown that regular meditation helps improve immune function and reduces individuals’ feelings of anxiety and fear and enhances their natural creativity and problem-solving abilities.
  • Practicing mindfulness meditation has been shown to increase our empathy for others allowing for improved communication and relations with colleagues, family, and friends.
  • Research indicates that a regular practice of meditation, by facilitating relaxation of the body and mind, also can help improve sleep, lessen the sensation of pain, and lower blood pressure.
  • There is also clinical evidence that meditating can help improve depression and increase one’s overall sense of well-being by providing a method of letting go of fearful thoughts and decreasing emotional reactivity.

We are here for you, and we want to help.

Our goal is to return you to optimal health as soon as possible. To schedule an appointment please call: 703-532-4892 x2