Stress and anxiety can have a big impact on your physical and mental health. Here, we look at what stress and anxiety are and how you can improve your symptoms with the help of supplements and vitamins. Learn more about the science behind the best supplements for stress and anxiety, including what they do and how they work.
Exploring what vitamins are good for stress and anxiety can present new treatment options like GcMAF, so let’s get started.
What Is Stress?
Stress is the physical and emotional reaction we have when we are faced by challenges or disruptions. In work, school, and in our busy family and home life, we’ll all face plenty of stressful situations. You may experience stress as feeling worried or tense.
Did you know that stress can help us? In certain situations, it can help us concentrate, motivate us, or even escape danger. That’s because when we feel stressed, our bodies release hormones, including adrenaline which gives us a physical or mental boost.
However, too much or prolonged stress is not good for our health or happiness.
How Can Stress Affect Us?
Excess or long-term stress can cause problems, such as:
- Disturbed sleep
- Irritability and low mood
- Concentration problems
- Exhaustion and burnout
- Headaches
- Stomach aches
- Poor skin health
- Negative changes in behavior, like overeating or becoming sedentary or reclusive
- Anxiety.
If you are feeling the effects of excessive or prolonged stress, it is important to take steps to help manage it and improve your health.
What Is Anxiety?
Anxiety is a constant, near-constant, or too-frequent feeling of fear, dread or unease. Physically, anxiety can make you restless, sweaty, mentally tense, or make your heart beat faster.
Other symptoms can include:
- Loss of appetite
- Dizzy spells
- Chest pain
- Feeling upset and tearful frequently
- Sleep issues
- Obsessive thoughts or intrusive memories
Feeling worried is normal when you are faced with a stressful challenge like a job interview or exam. However, anxiety is usually baseless or disproportionate. You may feel anxious a lot or even all the time, even when there is nothing obvious to worry about. This problem is often referred to as Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD).
Other forms of anxiety include Social Anxiety, when you have excessive unease about social situations, or Panic Disorder, when you have sudden periods of intense fear despite no serious danger present.
What Causes Anxiety?
There are various factors that may increase your chances of developing an anxiety disorder. These include:
- Genetic disposition and heritability: Anxiety can run in families.
- Environmental factors: Exposure to trauma or stress can cause anxiety.
- Comorbidity with other mental and physical health conditions, such as depression, autism spectrum disorders and chronic health conditions like IBD.
- Chronic inflammation. Anxiety is linked with chronic inflation because of its effects on the brain.
What’s the Difference Between Stress and Anxiety?
Stress and anxiety have similar symptoms yet are different problems. Stress has a trigger. When you overcome or get past whatever situation was making you feel stressed, your symptoms will improve.
Anxiety feels similar to stress but doesn’t always have a specific trigger. It’s often more of a general feeling. However, anxiety can sometimes start with stressful situations. For example, you feel stressed about exams, but even when they are over and you know you have passed, those feelings of worry don’t go away.
Using Supplements to Help with Anxiety and Stress
Both stress and anxiety have a negative effect on your quality of life and on your physical health. Health professionals can offer you a variety of treatments for stress and anxiety that may help alleviate your symptoms.
You may also respond well to supplements and vitamins for stress and anxiety relief. There are three science-backed options to consider.
Best Supplements to Reduce Stress and Anxiety
In this section, we’ll cover the best anxiety and stress relief supplements.
GcMAF
Globulin component macrophage-activating factor (GcMAF) is a naturally occurring protein that can help with both stress and anxiety. Researchers are currently considering its potential as a natural supplement for stress and anxiety.
GcMAF research shows that macrophages, a type of white blood cell, can impact mental health because they play a role in inflammatory responses. When macrophages are not working as well as they should be, they may not be effectively clearing out anything that could be contributing to inflammation. Cytokines, for example, are pro-inflammatory and can affect the amygdala, a brain region involved in processing fear and anxiety.
A MAF supplement has anti-inflammatory properties and helps normalise and regulate immunological conditions. GcMAF can instruct the body’s macrophages to assist in removing harmful substances like cytokines and begin repairing the brain and central nervous system.
MAF supplements can also help with conditions that are frequently comorbid with anxiety. MAF supplements can be used in the treatment of diseases where there is immune dysfunction and where the immune system is compromised. These include:
- Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)
- Arthritis
- Insomnia
- Depression
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
- Fybrolmyalgia
- And several more.
Probiotics
Probiotics are widely used to promote better gut health. Research has shown, however, that probiotics are also useful in improving the symptoms of stress and anxiety.
Scientists believe that probiotics' usefulness in treating psychological issues is because of the ‘brain-gut axis’. The brain and gut are closely linked physiologically, which is why upset stomachs and nausea are symptoms of nerves. On the flip side, poor gut health can affect brain health and trigger anxiety.
Probiotics are dietary supplements that boost the amount of friendly bacteria in your gut. They help restore the equilibrium of good vs. bad bacteria, boosting immunity and digestive health. Probiotics are naturally found in live yogurt and fermented foods, can be added to dairy products, or taken as capsules.
Magnesium
Magnesium is a popular supplement taken to help with stress and anxiety. It can aid symptom control by regulating serotonin, a hormone that has a role in controlling various bodily functions including sleep and mood.
Magnesium is an essential mineral and people with a healthy diet may get enough of it by eating plenty of magnesium-rich foods like legumes, nuts, wholegrains, fruits and soy-based foods. A typical Western-style diet may not provide enough magnesium, in which case a supplement is recommended.
Various studies have suggested a link between increasing magnesium and positive outcomes for anxiety. One of the reasons for this is that magnesium modulates activity in the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis (HPAA) which is a central substrate of the stress response system.
If you wish to boost your magnesium levels, then you can take a dietary supplement or use topical magnesium creams, or add more magnesium-rich foods to your diet.
Boost Your Mental Well-being
Both stress and anxiety can be overwhelming and affect your quality of life. Knowing what vitamins help with anxiety and stress can help your wellbeing. Supplements like GcMAF are available to help you manage symptoms.
Ready to explore anti stress and anxiety supplements? Look further into potential treatments like GcMAF capsules and discuss them with your doctor.
Author
Dr Toshio Inui
Doctor, expert in internal medicine and worldwide authority on GcMAF treatments, Dr. Inui is the visiting professor at Kagoshima University. He has dedicated his career to developing innovative treatments using MAF, and has 22 research works and 266 citations into macrophage activating factors.