Nutrition for Anxiety
Anxiety can feel overwhelming, but what you eat, and when you eat it, can have a significant impact on how you feel day to day. The right foods can nourish your brain, balance your mood, and support a calmer nervous system, while the wrong ones may heighten stress and trigger unwanted symptoms. By understanding the connection between nutrition, gut health, and anxiety, you can take meaningful steps toward regaining control.
In this blog, we’ll explore which foods may be exacerbating your anxiety, the nutrients and ingredients that can help you feel more grounded, and simple lifestyle strategies to support long-term emotional balance. You’ll also discover how a personalised nutrition plan can help you create your practical anxiety-reduction toolkit, one that works with your body, not against it.
What Foods Trigger Anxiety?
When struggling with anxiety, food can often become a coping mechanism. You can turn to food for comfort or avoid it, so your relationship with food can become unbalanced. Any foods that stimulate your fight-or-flight response are best avoided. Furthermore, avoid processed foods as they are high in sugar and contain harmful gut bacteria. Poor gut health has been linked to anxiety, so having a plan to proliferate good bacteria is all-important.
How Can I Kill Anxiety Naturally?
Avoid caffeine, as it is a stimulant that provides a quick burst of energy, but then can cause anxiety and disrupt your sleep. Avoid alcohol and smoking, as these will deplete your vitamin B levels, which are essential for brain function. Avoid fruit juice and all energy or fizzy drinks, as they contain aspartame and sugars, which can disrupt blood sugar levels and contribute to diabetes. Nutritionist and how to reduce stress naturally.
Nutrition for Anxiety
A naturopathic Nutritionist will assess your lifestyle, gut health, thyroid function, and current eating habits to determine how we can help reduce your anxiety levels. A nutritionist will develop a personalised nutritional plan that includes minor changes, which, over time, will make a significant difference to your symptoms. You can proceed with booking your initial consultation, which will be held either face-to-face at our London Nutrition Centre or online. We also offer a complimentary 15-minute online nutritionist to answer any questions and explain the nutrition process.
Can Proper Nutrition Reduce Anxiety?
The top nutrition tip is to eat regularly to maintain stable blood sugar levels. Blood sugar drops will make you feel tired, irritable and anxious. Eating regularly and choosing slow-release energy foods will help to keep your sugar levels steady. Instead of larger lunch and dinner portions, try to eat smaller portions more frequently throughout the day. Consume seven portions of vegetables and two fruits per day, as they contain minerals, vitamins, and fibre that we need to stay mentally alert. Expose your skin to sunlight for 20 minutes per day to increase Vitamin D levels, which can decrease anxious behaviour.
Foods that Help with Anxiety
Eat more dark, leafy greens like spinach, watercress, dandelion, bok choy, and Swiss chard, as they are rich in magnesium, which helps with brain function. Consume sunflower seeds, fish and eggs, beans and walnuts, asparagus, almonds, whole grains, and liver, as they all contain B vitamins that are beneficial for brain function and help calm anxiety levels. Furthermore, poultry, meat, dark chocolate and buckwheat contain tryptophan, which is a precursor to serotonin (happy hormone), which can help improve your mood and sleep. Oily fish is an excellent source of omega-3 fatty acids, as are walnuts, chia and flaxseeds, which are all beneficial for brain health.
Beneficial Foods for Anxiety
Eat plenty of gut-friendly foods, such as fermented foods, which are rich in probiotics and help moderate the connection between the gut and the brain. Increase protein (animal or plant-based) as this enables you to feel fuller for longer, which in turn helps avoid the temptation of unhealthy snacking. Moreover, eat healthy fats such as oily fish, poultry, nuts, seeds and avocados as your brain needs fatty acids for healthy functioning. Increase water consumption to 8 glasses per day (2 litres), little and often. If you are dehydrated, this can cause headaches or constipation, which won’t help with your mood.
Lifestyle Changes to Reduce Anxiety Levels
Whilst it is essential to look at nutrition, it is also worth addressing lifestyle factors to reduce your anxiety. Increasing exercise and encouraging healthy sleep patterns. Moreover, listening to relaxing music and relaxation techniques are all useful factors to consider. Having good social support, intellectual stimulation, and sleeping patterns will be beneficial. In addition, many patients also experience physical symptoms related to anxiety so considering cranial osteopathy as part of a total anxiety reduction programme would be worthwhile.
Physical activity has also proven to help reduce anxiety. We hold Reformer Pilates in Marylebone, which would be of benefit and reduce anxiety tendencies.
What Causes Anxiety?
Anxiety is the feeling we have when we are worried, tense or afraid, especially about things which are about to happen. Anxiety is a normal response to stress that helps to avoid situations that threaten our sense of security. The perception of threat will engage our fight-or-flight response (sympathetic nervous system) and enable us to react quickly to life-threatening situations. It will cause physiological and hormonal changes to help fight or flight to safety. While this is a normal response, modern lifestyles involve constant stress, which causes overactivation of our sympathetic nervous system. This can lead to an inappropriate response to our daily stressors, causing anxiety syndrome instead. Other factors which can cause anxiety are impaired physiological reactions and hormonal imbalances.
Risk Factors
Women are twice as likely to develop an anxiety disorder as men. The greatest age of onset is between 10 and 25. Not having social connections to share problems and issues. Moreover, experiencing a traumatic event can contribute towards anxiety. People with anxiety disorders are at an increased risk of developing medical conditions such as high blood pressure, cardiac ischemia and obesity.
What Anxiety can do to your Body?
Anxiety can cause difficulty concentrating, irritability and tense muscles. It can disrupt your sleeping patterns and cause difficulty overcoming worries. In more severe cases, it can cause heart palpitations, chest pain or accelerated heart rate. Moreover, sweating, trembling and shaking. Furthermore, shortness of breath and dizziness. You could experience nausea, Can a Nutritionist Help with IBS? and Best Weight Loss Nutritionist in London, abdominal distress and fainting: panic attacks, compulsive behaviour and dread of social interactions.
Nutrition Q&A
What drinks calm anxiety? Drinks containing ginger, maca, green tea and matcha have a calming effect on anxiety.
What fruits are good for anxiety? Fruits such as blueberries, bananas, peaches, plums, and nectarines are good for calming anxiety.
Does yoghurt help to reduce stress and anxiety? Yes, yoghurt can help reduce stress because it contains healthful bacteria, Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria. There is emerging evidence that these bacteria and fermented products have positive effects on brain health.
Conditions That Nutrition Can Also Help
Nutrition plans and Consultations Explained
References
MIND (2020) Anxiety and panic attacks
CBT for Anxiety.
Eleonora Sansoni
Eleonora Sansoni is a Nutritional Therapist who graduated from the College of Naturopathic Medicine. She is also an Osteopath, Cranial Osteopath & Pilates Instructor and is passionate about helping people with anxiety.