A better life with Steem | Learn with Steem | What are the features of Anxiety?
Assalamu Alikum
Hope that everybody is fine and having an anxiety-free life. This is my post intending to take part in the contest arranged by brother @toufiq777 on the topics of “A Better Life with Steem”. As I am a doctor, I am sharing a few medical-related topics, with the hope that the readers will be beneficial. My today’s topic is Anxiety disorders.
Anxiety is a normal psychological and physical response to any dangers or threats. Within a certain limit, anxiety is actually good for us because it prepares ourselves to respond to a particular danger or threat. For example, if you see a snake coming towards you, at first you have to be anxious about the snake. The anxiousness will guide you to respond, either flee from the place or fight with the snake and kill it. If someone doesn’t care ( doesn’t feel any anxiousness at all) about the imminent danger, there is a high probability that the snake may bite him. However, when the level of anxiety crosses a certain limit or level, it causes stress on our body and mind. If that continues, a person may experience a variety of problems. Today, we will learn about a few symptoms or features of such anxiety disorders.
Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.
Arthur Somers Roche
For better understanding we can divide the symptoms into two:
- Psychological symptoms, and
- Physical (bodily or somatic) symptoms
At first, we will learn about a few psychological (mental) symptoms.
Psychological symptoms
Excessive worriedness: It is a feature of anxiety disorder. Some sort of worry is normal in our every day to day life. However, if the worriedness hampers our daily performances, it is beyond normal.
Poor concentration, and irritability: If the anxiety is severe, a person will lose his concentration for a particular task. He will lose his mental easiness and become irritable easily.
Apprehension, and fear of an impending disaster: A person suffering from anxiety disorders may feel the fear of some disastrous incidents. This feeling prevents him from living his daily life.
If the anxiety disorder is not treated timely and goes unchecked, a person may start acting in such a way which seems unrealistic and turn him into someone else, completely different from his old self. This is called depersonalization.
Physical symptoms
Initially or if not in an excessive manner, actually anxiety may increase the alertness of a person. Look at the example I mentioned above about the snake. Seeing a snake makes a man anxious, hence alert. It leads to any of the two responses; fight or flight.
One of the most important features of anxiety disorder is lack of sleep (Insomnia). I think there is hardly any person who doesn't suffer from insomnia every now and then. Excessive worriedness is one of many reasons for this lack of sleep.
Palpitation or compounding heart or racing heart is another immediate feature of anxiety. Again, most of us have experienced this feature in some points of our life. This palpitation is proportionately related to the severity of anxiety.
Fast breathing (or hyperventilation) is another commonly seen symptom of an anxiety disorder. It sometimes leads to other physical symptoms like tetany (muscle spasms) of the limbs.
High blood sugar and high blood pressure, both are found associated with an anxiety disorder. The high blood sugar found during an anxiety spell is called stress hyperglycemia, which usually returns back to normal when the stress subsides. A similar thing happens in the case of blood pressure.
A few people who are having anxiety may feel the urge of passing urine or stool more frequently. Diarrhoea is one of the features of an anxiety disorder.
Long-standing anxiety disorders may reduce the sexual performance of a person. Anxiety often coexists with depression. Both conditions have a negative impact on sexual activities.
This is all about today’s learning. Hope that this post will be beneficial for us. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me in the comment section.
The information about this post is acquired during my study in the medical school, during my post-graduation training and from well-known textbooks notably Davidson's principle and practice of medicine 23rd Edition and John Murtagh’s General Practice-6th Edition
Have a nice good day
Until Next Time
Dr Hafiz
Useful and beneficial blog link. Have a look if interested.
To have normal health, we need optimum sleep. How can we get optimum sleep? If we can follow the steps of Sleep Hygiene, we can get a night of proper sleep. Read about Sleep Hygiene here
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