Lynn Capehart Wellness Project

DISCOVER HOW TO MELT WORRY AWAY

CATEGORY: 1: Simple Malnutrition

RECOMMENDED SUPPLEMENT: Sea Kelp

Worry comes in all sizes, shapes, and forms. No matter the subject, there is someone somewhere anxious about it right now.

A lot of performers experience performance anxiety, what used to be called stage fright. It can also happen to doctors, teachers, lawyers, homemakers, office professionals, chefs, and others who never step onto a stage. Simple staff meetings can turn into the stuff of palm sweat.

HIGH ANXIETY

It typically starts with a feeling of panic overlaid with dread. Usually, way out of proportion to the actual danger. Then suddenly your heart is pounding out of your chest. Your breathing may become shallow, because your chest muscles are so tight you cannot take a deep breath.

Maybe you can’t concentrate, can’t remember what you’re supposed to say. Your hands may shake, and your knees too. Sometimes your voice is thin and trembling. Sometimes you cannot speak at all, because your voice box is temporarily paralyzed.

You may be nauseated and may throw up before an event. Or you may not be able to eat for days prior to it. Perhaps you don’t sleep well for days at a time, because anxiety is the number one cause of insomnia. Your vision may be reduced to a tunnel, while tiny spots appear before your eyes. And you are profoundly afraid.

CONTINUOUS LOW-KEY ANXIETY

Perhaps your anxiety is not associated with a special event. You may experience a continuous low-grade anxiety not severe enough for you to seek help. It can be mild to moderate, and you try to ignore it and soldier on, but it seems to never go away.

It is the constant knot in your stomach or clench in your chest, partnered with an overall feeling of apprehension and unease. You might be a bit jumpy and startle easily. You feel tense whether you go out or stay at home. It is subtle but relentless.

MILLIONS SUFFER WITH ANXIETY

If any of this is familiar, you’re not alone. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, over 40 million adults between the ages of 18-54 suffer from anxiety. And this number only represents people who seek help. Many others suffer in silence.

When you worry you create free radicals that can lead to inflammatory disorders such as cancer and faster aging. It doesn’t matter how precious something is to you, worrying doesn’t help any situation, and it lends you harm.

Unfortunately, there are few professions that don’t require public speaking in some manner, if you want to move up the ranks and be successful.

There are two things you can try in order to curb anxiety: Sea Kelp and a thought control exercise. The exercise probably won’t be effective unless you are using Sea Kelp, but together the combo can be very effective in tamping down anxiety.

Remember, you may not be able to control the stress in your life, but you can control your response to it.

KELP FROM THE SEA IS A STRONG RELAXANT

Plain dried kelp from the sea in tablet form is a natural source of iodine and has incredible calming and sleep-aid powers. For that reason, it also helps to still restless legs and quell childhood hyperactivity.

(Childhood hyperactivity is covered briefly below in this blog. Restless legs will be discussed in another blog, but you can use the anxiety dosages in the Quick Glance Chart below to get relief.)

Don’t be fooled by fancy marketing into buying expensive, exotic kelp mixtures. They don’t work any better than the plain stuff. And if not made authentically from sea kelp, may not work nearly as well, if at all.

Puritan’s Pride sells Sea Kelp for what it’s worth: $6.99 for 500-750 tablets, through its buy one bottle, and get one or two free sales. You won’t run out for a long time.

ADULT DOSAGES 

Recommending Kelp dosages is difficult because of the varying, individualized nature of anxiety in each person. The Quick Glance Chart below shows an average dosage schedule, but it may not be right for everyone. You will have to experiment. 

• The ½ tablet at breakfast is designed to help slow you down at the start of your day, so you can face things with a quality of calm confidence instead of fretful panic.

(I prefer only ¼ tablet in the morning, because I need to be revved up early on, as I am not a morning person. I take a second ¼ tablet at dinner, and ½ tablet at bedtime. I have a hyperactive lawyer friend who takes two whole tablets with breakfast, none at dinner, and a whole tablet at bedtime.) Everyone is different. You will have to experiment.

• The ½ tablet at dinner is designed to relax your stomach so you can be comforted by a good meal. You won’t have to face choking down food you can’t taste, because stress has stolen your appetite. Sea Kelp will help you have a truly enjoyable meal despite a stress filled day. It is recommended that you take Sea Kelp 20-30 minutes before you eat.

• The optional ¼ tablet taken 30 minutes before bedtime is meant to help you get to sleep and stay asleep. When you get the dosage right falling asleep is easy. You get comfortable, drift off, and don’t want to move, because it feels like your muscles are melting. Glorious.

Note: You may not need the ¼ tablet at bedtime, if you are relaxed enough from the prior two doses to fall asleep. Or you may need more. If you don’t need this dose to fall asleep, don’t take it.

There is no drug hangover the morning after using Sea Kelp. A couple of minutes after you wake up you are fully alert.

The schedule posted above may be too much during times when you are naturally relaxed, such as on vacation. But these same doses may not be enough if you are going through a high stress process such as moving, exams, or a breakup. You will have to experiment.

ONCE IN A WHILE USE OF SEA KELP

You don’t have to take regular daily doses of Sea Kelp if you don’t need to. You can use it just when you are facing a stressful situation, like the Monday morning staff meeting when it’s your turn to make the presentation.

At those times you can start the above regimen a few days before the event, increasing the dose on the day of. Or, you can take ½ tablet at bedtime the night before and a ½ tablet or more at breakfast the day of.

Use the chart as a base line and experiment. Find what works best for you.

SEA KELP AND HYPERACTIVE CHILDREN

Sea Kelp is safe for everyone, except people with slow metabolisms. It can even help a hyperactive child who would otherwise be prescribed the drug Ritalin.

Children are calmer after only a few days using Sea Kelp. They remain engaged and interested and are better able to listen to instructions, comprehend what is expected of them, and control their behavior while they follow through. This new-found control makes them feel better about themselves.

Hyperactive children move so fast that they miss a lot and make mistakes. The same way you might miss a highway exit if you were speeding. Sea Kelp puts on the brakes and slows them down so they can catch life’s exits.

This treatment is not for children who are simply precocious and enthusiastically engaged. What might be called “a handful.” It is for kids who are missing out because of their hyperactivity and lack of control.

THE AMYGDALA’S ROLE IN ANXIETY 

Whenever you are stressed, it’s the amygdala’s fault. It is your early warning system to threats, whether real or not. It controls the way you react to threatening stimuli whether remembered, newly learned, or only imagined.

In the beginning when humans first started evolving, fear was the one emotion necessary to give the species the best chance of survival. That’s why fear was our first emotion. The fear reaction is located in the amygdala, a brain structure responsible for the generation of other emotions, but especially fear.

The amygdala is referred to as the reptilian, or snake, brain and was the original brain to evolve in humans. It is located in the limbic system, the center of our emotions, learning, and memory. The amygdala is darkly moody, suspicious, untrusting, and always on guard.

The amygdala also has a lot of power. For instance, it has the authority to send a message directly to the limbs without prior consultation with the cerebral cortex, the “you” area responsible for decision making. That means the amygdala can make you act without thinking.

Each time the amygdala does this it also sends a simultaneous message to you, telling you what it has just done. If you act quickly you can countermand the amygdala’s order. Otherwise, the ordered limb will follow through with no input from you. It will appear to be acting on its own. In truth, it will be acting under the direction of the amygdala.

If you think about it, isn’t it better to jump back from a shadow that makes the amygdala suspicious but turns out to be only a chimney, than to not jump back and get hit by falling bricks? The order to jump back comes from the amygdala.

Another example: I was lying in bed reading, and in my peripheral vision I saw something crawling on the wall. Before I had a chance to turn my head and investigate, my left hand had turned the magazine into a weapon and swatted it.

At the last second I saw it was a spider and shouted no, just as the magazine hit the wall. I was too late to countermand the amygdala’s kill order to my left arm.

As it happens, I like spiders and never kill them. But my amygdala spotted a potential danger realized millions of years ago and went straight into run for your life mode. Before I could explain that it was just a spider.

Admittedly, despite the grief it brings fear is necessary, because it leads to avoidance of danger and promotes safety. It couldn’t be any other way, as without the amygdala and a powerful fear response, humanity would not have been around long enough to evolve.

There was a study done where the amygdala was removed from a group of test rats. After the surgery the rats lost all fear of everything, even cats. They became easy prey without the amygdala to warn them of danger.

THE ANXIETY LOOP BETWEEN THE AMYGDALA & THE CEREBRAL CORTEX 

Many of your body’s alarm circuits have pathways that assemble inside the amygdala in order to quickly provide it with direct information about threats.

When your amygdala suspects danger to you, it can suck your mind into a fear loop that leads to intense anxiety:

It starts by sending you a warning to beware of something, say, to remind you that you are deathly afraid of speaking to an audience, when you have just agreed to give a Rotary Club speech.

When you receive amygdala’s warning, you are alerted and proceed to get anxious. You begin to consciously consider the warning and remember other disasters in your public speaking career.

This conscious consideration results in you resending the same message back to the amygdala—that it’s true, you are afraid of speaking in public—and unwittingly setting up a loop.

The confirmation from you to the amygdala that it is correct in its assessment, sends it into overdrive.

The amygdala then propels an even stronger warning to you, and you again respond in kind. Voila, the loop is firmly established, and you begin truly stressing about the event.

This damaging internal dialogue can continue back and forth until you work yourself into a panic attack. Powered by inertia, the loop can continue until interrupted by an outside force.

AN EASY MENTAL EXERCISE HELPS PREVENT THE ANXIETY LOOP

This exercise appears simplistic, but used along with Sea Kelp it can help to alleviate anxiety. It also helps to improve your overall outlook on an event, on a day, or on life.

At the beginning of the anxiety loop process you have a choice: agree with amygdala, start stressing, and stay in the loop until you are paralyzed with fear and worry.

Or, don’t accept the amygdala’s interpretation. Instead, create a new, sunnier message to send back to it. Assuage the amygdala by telling it that its reading of the situation is wrong. That in fact everything is fine. To relax, because you got this. If necessary, lie to yourself, or I should say to your amygdala.

In short, stop agreeing with the amygdala when it sends you fear messages regarding something your mind tells you is not threatening, like public speaking. It matters what thoughts you let rattle around inside your head. When you catch yourself thinking negatively and fearfully, stop. Simply think something cheerful instead.

Use calming return messages such as: Relax, there’s nothing to worry about; Relax, everything will be fine; Relax, you’re doing a great job; Relax, you can do this, etc.

If you do this each time you get anxious, just lie to yourself and tell yourself you’re ok, you will be amazed at how it can pull you back from the brink of unnecessary anxiety.

Remember that this exercise is done in conjunction with taking Sea Kelp. Alone, it will not have much chance against the force of a strong biological reaction to stress.

Please be nice to each other, and look for my next post: Blog 49: Ugly Toenails, where I show you how to make them beautiful again.

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