What Really Causes Anxiety?
© PeterSmithUK
Brain scans are revealing that in the anxious brain there is overactivity in the amygdala and default mode network [ref] this results in the cortex in the front of the brain where we have conscious thoughts being excessively or continuously bombarded with and worrying and anxious information. The anxious thoughts and feelings feel completely real but our you are scious perception of reality is being distorted by other regions of the brain misfiring.
Anxiety isn’t just deficient GABA
Building up GABA (the brains primary inhibitory neurotransmitter) and serotonin levels with natural remedies or drug can be a help but it’s not a permanent solution. To learn more click:
Beyond just boosting GABA and serotonin you must address why you have neurotransmitter imbalances in the first place. To learn more click:
- What Causes GABA Deficiency
Benzos desensitise the brain to GABA
Another thing that can cause desensitisation of the brain to GABA are benzodiazepine drugs (benzos). I believe contrary to a lot of what is written elsewhere on the Internet that you can speed up the re-sensitisation of the brain to GABA following benzo withdrawal hi significantly boosting neuro plasticity.
See my Neuroplasticity Boosting Protocol (coming soon sign up to my newsletter for updates)
Benzo Withdrawal (coming soon sign up to my newsletter for updates)
Stress can desensitise the amygdala to GABA causing anxiety
Prolonged excessive stress responses can change the amygdala making it less sensitive or responsive to GABA[i]; the result is we are less able to inhibit or control the panic alarm signals produced by the amygdala.
Having a hyperactive amygdala is like having a car or burglar alarm that is far too sensitive and easily triggered inside your head, repeatedly firing off distress signals inappropriately.
Unfortunately once the amygdala has become desensitised to GABA it can take a long time to recover even after the source of the stress is over and of course all too often life stresses don’t subside. It may be that the process of stress inducing anxiety becomes self-perpetuating, because Monty developed anxiety you live with constant elevated stress.
The increased stress caused by anxiety can also over activate a hormonal stress pathway (the HPA axis) that causes inflammation in the brain and this can cause depression by breaking down synapses more quickly than they can be replaced in areas of the brain that control mood; this is why depression often accompanies anxiety.
The involvement of overactivity in the HPA axis in mental health problems as well researched, it’s a key feature observable in many mental health problems including bipolar disorder which I have myself. The Pharma industry has attempted not yet succeeded in developing drugs to control overactivity in the HPA and over the last 30 years I’ve been in practice I’ve continually sought ways of controlling overactivity in the HPA with natural remedies but the results were of limited success and short-term.
To permanently change the way your brain processes stress responses and counteract an overactive HPA axis you have to do course of relaxation response brain training to grow the circuits and entrain your brain to switch off stress responses quickly and efficiently. It takes 50 hours of training which is 30 minutes a day for about 3 months or 20 minutes a day for about 6 months to grow the ‘off-stress switch’ to therapeutically developed state. Please don’t dismiss or overlook importance of this (like many of my patients do!) and limit your thinking to just rebalancing neurotransmitters with drugs or natural remedies.
This technique will not cure your anxiety on its own but if you don’t train your brain to switch off overactive stress responses you going to be continuously desensitising your amygdala to GABA and over producing inflammation in the brain attacking key areas that control mood. This technique and the critical an essential component of your recovery.
To receive instructions and a free MP3 recording of how to train your brain to switch off stress responses sign up for my Mental Health Newsletter.
To learn more click: The Stress Solution
Do you have an overdeveloped amygdala?
Prolonged stress and trauma early in life overgrows the amygdala [ref], if you’re early experiences of the world were that it is a stressful threatening place then your amygdala will grow accordingly make you more aware threats and danger, hyper vigilant and unfortunately vulnerable to developing anxiety and depression later on in life.
This may be depressing to hear if this is your situation but armed this information you can take measures to counteract your increased vulnerability to depression and anxiety. With the right type of meditation brain training you can literally thin out the density of connections in the amygdala and shrink it or calm it down, you can also change how selectable the cortex is to being overwhelmed and hijacked by an overactive amygdala, there are dietary changes, exercises, natural remedies and even specific species of bacteria that can improve our resilience to stress. To learn more click:
How to Improve Your Resilience to Stress
Anxiety and the Default Mode Network
Another feature in the anxious brain is hyperactivity in a circuit court the default mode network (DMN). The DMN joins together the amygdala which is typically overactive in the anxious brain with the hippocampus where we store memories including depressing and anxious moments and then sends this depressing and worrying information to the thinking frontal cortex. An overactive DMN ends up bombarding your conscious mind with distressing thoughts and feelings of danger.
In a healthy brain the DMN switches on for a while so we have a think about potential problems and then it switches off again, that in the anxious and depressed brain the DMN stays switched on too much of the time. If you have an overgrown hyperactive DMN the solution is to grow, overgrow you want the opposing TPN circuit that switches the DMN off. Yes I know this is all gone a bit technical but all you have to do is practice 50 hours of directed-focus (not open-focus) mindfulness meditation.
I do not recommend the classic open-focus mindfulness as a technique for people with anxiety at least not to start with; I teach meditation techniques specifically designed to direct neuro plastic changes in the brain to combat anxiety. Directed-focus mindfulness quickly switches off the DMN and reduces feelings of anxiety and making it easier for people with anxiety to learn.
Click here to start training your brain to combat anxiety.
In just the last few years it has been shown that with the right type of meditation brain training we can switch off overactivity in the DMN and combat anxiety [ref].
To learn more click:
- Best Meditation for Anxiety
- As an Overactive Default Mode Network Causing Your Anxiety and Depression?
Does meditation treat anxiety?
We now know that the physical structure of the brain is far more malleable and changeable or neuro-plastic than we previously thought it was; brains can be fairly rapidly trained and retrained. A prolonged period of stress, anxiety and/or depression will change and rewire the brain, developing and overgrowing stress and anxiety neuro circuits; if you’re interested in the information on this page this has already happened in your brain. The good news is the wiring in your brain is not fixed or set and a neuro plastic ability of your brain can be used to grow a nonanxious brain.
On its own meditation is not enough to fully overcome anxiety but it does correct a key root functional cause of anxiety furthermore there are no drugs or natural remedies that can do this.
As I’ve said elsewhere I believe it’s absolutely possible to fully overcome anxiety but to do so you have to combat the problem with a multi-therapy approach, over many months boosting GABA and/or serotonin our also not a cure on their own.
Click here to see a treatment plan:
- How to Overcome Anxiety with Natural Therapies
[i] Mol Brain. 2014; 7: 32. Published online 2014 Apr 24. doi: [10.1186/1756-6606-7-32] PMCID: PMC4012764 PMID: 24758222 Chronic stress impairs GABAergic control of amygdala through suppressing the tonic GABAA receptor currents Zhi-Peng Liu et al