VMware: Virtual Eating Machine - Causes of Anxiety Disorders

 

It is understood that there are definite elements which add to one having panick attacks, and a poor diet is most certainly one of them. It is also acknowledged that by taking out the main cause of the illness, you can as a matter of fact avoid it's development, which in my own experience I have attested to myself that this is most absolutely correct.

Can Certain Food Trigger Panic Attacks?

 

Over the 13 years that I was a sufferer of anxiety disorders, one of the few things which kept me going was my fitness regime.

I was a fairly competent marathon runner and also trained regularly in the gym to try and build up my strength. It also did a lot for my self-esteem, something which is usually very low amongst anxiety disorder sufferers.

I was, as a consequence, a virtual eating machine. Whatever my wife cooked for me I just ate it, as I was burning up so many calories during exercise, particularly my running.

Most runners keep diaries: distances run, time taken, weather conditions, that sort of thing. Not only did I do that, but I also started to record how I felt each day, both before and after training, and also recorded at what time of day I had trained.

As my anxiety disorder worsened, I noticed that there appeared to be a tailing off of my performances when I had run after certain meal times. I then started keeping a diary of what foodstuffs I was eating and did this for about 3 months.

What I noticed was that I seemed to feel better and train better when I ran during the day, and was at my peak of "feeling good" if I ran before breakfast. The thing which really made me sit up was that I both felt worse, and trained badly, when I had eaten any sort of cooked meal, and trained worse at weekends when we ate more cooked meals than during the week.

I also found that my own anxiety issues would be heightened after eating certain meals.

Over time my knowledge of how nutrition affects training increased, and I asked my wife to only give me natural food, as against processed food, wherever possible and as long as it kept within our household budget. As a result of this I now started to eat more fruit, more vegetables, fish, chicken etc and have to say that I did feel better as a result. My overall anxiety issues remained, but the heightened anxiety I had experienced after certain meals had certainly gone away and my running benefited massively as a result.

My lifestyle and work schedule legislated against us being able to eat out too much, but on one occasion when I was taken out by some friends to a local chinese restaurant, a very good one I should add, I suffered badly as a result. I had a really bad anxiety attack a few hours after the meal, with some horrendous symptoms which I will not go into here. Now remember I had been eating relatively unprocessed foods for a while, and then suddenly I had asked my body to ingest this obviously highly processed food with the result stated.

What I discovered as a result of this was that I had a form of what is called MSG Sensitivity.

MSG is shorthand for monosodium glutamate. It is a manufactured flavor enhancer that is commonly added to many of the foodstuffs we eat every day, such as packaged and tinned soups, processed meats, Asian cuisine, frozen dinners and a lot of frozen foods.

Now we are all different, and I am no chemist, but my experiences, recorded experiences remember, had proved to me unequivocally that the MSG in the food I had eaten had not only affected my training in the way I have outlined, it also heightened my anxiety disorder.

I then had a check on what foods contain this MSG and to tell you the truth I gave up, as it is everywhere. Here is just a small list I discovered whilst with my wife at the supermarket, and when I say small this took just about 15 minutes to unearth, so goodness knows what I would have discovered had I been more thorough.

The following is is what I unearthed in those few minutes.
-- Soup
-- Broth
-- Baby Food
-- Packaged stuffing
-- Seasoning
-- Packaged dinners
-- Salad dressing
-- Soya sauce
-- Frozen dinners
-- Shampoo
-- Cosmetics
-- Canned vegetables
-- Processed meat

I am not going to go on in this vein for the very simple reason that we ARE all different, our biological makeup is unique, and we all react differently to different foodstuffs, and I am neither a food expert nor a chemist. However, this has given me further proof that you literally are what you eat and that there are most definitely, in my opinion, foodstuffs which do trigger anxiety attacks in certain people.

This next point, which is a summary of what has already been covered, is irrefutable. I found that MSG was present in most of the foods that triggered my symptoms. I also noticed that my body could handle a small amount of foods containing MSG without symptoms, yet if I ate more than a small amount, my body apparently had reached a trigger point and symptoms occurred.

It is accepted that there are certain factors which contribute to one having anxiety disorders, and a bad diet is most definitely one of them. It is also accepted that by removing the root cause of the disorder, you can actually prevent it's occurrence, and in my own case I have proven to myself that this is most definitely true.

One of the things which I worked on, and still do, was to ensure that I ate as "cleanly" as I could. By "cleanly" I mean eating, at all times, foods which are not processed, and by substituting fruit in place of the usual processed snacks which are everywhere these days. Just stop and think for a moment how difficult that is to incorporate into a busy home and work schedule in this day and age.


I have touched on how by unearthing the root cause of one's disorder, and then by eradicating that, one can also eradicate the disorder itself. You can find more information on that subject here http://www.forgetanxietytherapy.com

There are techniques which can be learned and incorporated into one's everyday lifestyle. These are very simply techniques and applied over time have had proven results as you will see for yourself http://www.forgetanxietytherapy.com