What is normal Anxiety?

  General presentation Anxiety disorders

   What causes Anxiety disorders?

  Homeopathic Treatment To Anxiety disorders

What is normal Anxiety?

Anxiety can be described as a feeling of alarm or "worry". It may be about something specific or it may be non-specific in nature. A certain amount of anxiety is normal and helps improve our performance and allows people to avoid dangerous situations. This normally lasts for a short period causing no impairment in social or occupational functioning. When this anxiety is prolonged and affects social or occupational functioning, it's abnormal and accounts for anxiety "disorder".

General presentation Anxiety disorders

Patients often experience a state of intense apprehensions, uncertainty, and fear resulting from the anticipation of a threatening event or situation, often to a degree that normal physical and psychological functioning is disrupted. This may be precipitated due to several reasons which are generally easily identified by the patient himself. The anxiety is of a greater degree than just everyday worries and patients do mention that they are not able to control these worries. They are frequently accompanied with physical symptoms as well. These symptoms have to present for most days at least for several weeks at a time.

Anxiety disorders also manifest as physical symptoms along with psychological symptoms. Some of the common things that patients experience are as follows:

• Feeling that something undesirable or harmful is about to happen (edginess and apprehension)
• Dry mouth; swallowing difficulty; hoarseness
• Rapid breathing and heartbeat, palpitations
• Twitching or trembling
• Muscle tension; headaches; backache
• Sweating
• Difficulty in concentrating
• Dizziness or faintness
• Nausea; diarrhoea; weight loss
• Sleeplessness
• Irritability
• Fatigue
• Nightmares
• Memory problems
• Sexual impotence

The onset is generally around childhood or adolescence but cases with late- onset anxiety symptoms are also seen. Generalized anxiety disorder is characterized by excessive anxiety and worry. This occurs for most of the days for at least 6 months, about a number of events or activities. Generally the anxiety is about work, daily events or performances. The patient finds it difficult to control the anxiety about various things and this is often associated with few or most of the following features:

• Restlessness
• Irritability
• Difficulty in concentrating
• Sleep disturbances (difficulty in falling asleep, frequent waking in the middle)
• Easy fatigue

The anxiety causes significant distress and impairment in various areas of functioning. The course of generalized anxiety disorders is chronic and usually gets worse during periods of stress. The intensity, duration, or frequency of the anxiety and worry is far out of proportion to the actual likelihood or impact of the feared event. The person finds it difficult to keep worrisome thoughts from interfering with his daily activities and has difficulty stopping the worry. During the course of the disorder, the focus of worry may shift from one concern to another. In children suffering from Generalized Anxiety Disorder, there is a tendency to worry excessively about their competence with their friends or the quality of their performance.

What causes Anxiety disorders?

Researchers and scientists are trying to find out more about the biological, psychological, and social factors which influence the development of anxiety disorders as there is still a lot more to learn about the role of these. The following are all believed to play a role in the occurrence of anxiety disorders:

• Genetics and heredity
• Chemical imbalances in the brain
• Personality types
• Social factors
• Medical conditions
• Drugs and other substances

Homeopathic Treatment To Anxiety disorders

Homoeopathic treatment of Anxiety disorders:

Considering the genetic tendencies and the stress in the background as a cause of this disorder, it can be clearly perceived that treatment must be directed towards both of them. On this front, homoeopathy has a great role to play in the management of anxiety neurosis. Homoeopathy medicines working at the root level, can counter the genetic proneness to the condition. Homoeopathy has effective medicines to deal with the emotional and physical symptoms associated with disorder.

Over a period of time, the patients gain a better control of their symptoms and are able to manage things better than before. In case the anxiety is related to certain medical conditions or to the use of certain drugs, the management of these cases differs slightly. In these patients, we have to address the primary disease and treat that in order to relieve the patient of the symptoms of anxiety. In case of substance induced anxiety, the identified drug has to be stopped or an alternative medication (which does not induce anxiety) has to be used.

The point that should be emphasized is that the benefits of homoeopathy are devoid of any side-effects in contrast to conventional anxiolytics and anti-depressants prescribed for the condition. Homoeopathy is very strongly recommended for anxiety neurosis.

The homeopathic approach to treat Anxiety Neurosis:

Homeopathy is a scientific medical alternative for treating a wide range of physical and psychological ailments, one amongst them being Anxiety neurosis. It should be emphasized that homoeopathy treats the patient who is diseased and not just the disease. The basic approach in homeopathy is to evaluate the case of anxiety neurosis in its whole extent, whereby a lot of emphasis is given to the patient as a whole besides minutely studying various aspects of the mind. Every patient of anxiety neurosis is evaluated as an individual case and treated as such. The treatment of Anxiety neurosis has to be planned strategically on a long-term basis.