It's Not Just In Your Head — Anxiety Affects Your Heart, Too

Dealing with anxiety causes a massive amount of strain on somebody's life. Not only will it cause someone to feel nervous and on edge at all times, it can have a profound impact on mental health. Anxiety, which is mainly characterized by having uncontrollable thoughts or excessive worries, is not easy to deal with.

For many people throughout the world, anxiety is something that they are dealing with daily. While the toll of it comes at a cost to mental health, it also can cause physical health symptoms as well. Additionally, anxiety can impact your heart.

It's Not Just In Your Head — Anxiety Affects Your Heart, Too

Dealing with the mental health side effects of anxiety is challenging on its own. But when you add in the physical symptoms of anxiety, it can feel like your entire body and mind are at war with one another.

Anxiety can manifest itself in many ways when it comes to your physical health. You may experience signs such as:

• Sweating

• Shallow or rapid breathing

• Stomach aches

• Headaches

• Muscle tension

• Nausea or GI issues

• Insomnia, or sleep deprivation

Anxiety and the Heart

Here, we quite literally mean your heart. Your metaphorical heart, of course, is impacted as well. It might not be surprising to hear, but there are direct ties to when anxiety spikes and what it does to your heart.

Anxiety causes a very real physical reaction. When your mind or body perceives something as a threat, it activates your nervous system. Your nervous system, in turn, sends even more signals to your brain that something isn't right. Even if that danger has no evidence of happening, your body still goes into a state of high alert.

This is why you will experience symptoms such as sweating, muscle tension, or a headache. Your body is in a state of overdrive, struggling to alert and protect you.

Your heart experiences a direct impact. Do you ever notice that when you are anxious, your heart beats wildly in your chest? Or maybe you feel like your chest is being squeezed tightly?

These are signs that your heart is beginning to react to the high levels of anxiety within you. Of course, feeling anything different with your heart is enough to make you panic even more, right? Because then, your brain is going into overdrive as you think you might need medical intervention. Like all things with anxiety, this leads to a cycle of feeling even more anxious.

While these are all just short-term and temporary sensations, they can cause a long-term impact. When the heart is placed under a lot of stress, even metaphorically, it can cause long-term effects, such as:

• Weakened heart muscles

• Heart disease

• Higher risk for cardiac arrest

What Can You Do?

Gaining control back of your anxiety is important for your whole body and mind. While finding ways to cope with anxiety will help your heart, it will also help you to improve other physical symptoms as well. Of course, the mind will also find benefits from this as well.

First, know you aren't alone in this struggle. Anxiety disorders are one of the most common mental health conditions in the world. The good news, however, is that it is also one of the most treatable disorders.

While implementing techniques such as deep breathing, meditation, or journaling will be important, you should also look at the bigger picture. If you want true relief so that anxiety doesn't impact you as deeply, you need to get to the root cause of why this is happening.

The best way to do this is through anxiety therapy. Reach out to us to learn more so that your heart, metaphorically and literally, can feel better.