20 most common physical symptoms of anxiety- what they are and why they happen.

what's up guys dr shepherd here and today we are gonna talk about 20 of the most common and maybe a little bit surprising physical symptoms of anxiety i'm a psychiatrist and psychotherapist and unfortunately i've also suffered from anxiety two so i am very well acquainted with some of these physical symptoms and a lot of people think that anxiety is all in our heads that it's just worry and doesn't necessarily have an effect on our bodies and yeah that can be true in some cases and the worry can be a really big piece of things but the physical symptoms can also be significant and i think people sometimes underestimate how significant the physical symptoms can be so as always this is not medical advice this is just meant for educational purposes and hopefully it'll help you start a conversation with your doctor or your therapist you can't diagnose someone with anxiety just based off of physical symptoms but in someone who does have anxiety it can be really relieving to know that these are some of the physical symptoms that they can suffer from most of the physical symptoms that we see with anxiety trace back to changes in our nervous system specifically changes in the activation of our sympathetic nervous system and the activation of our parasympathetic nervous system these two sides of our nervous system are typically very delicately balanced in anxiety disorders though we see an over activation or an increase in our sympathetic nervous system this is also called the fight or flight nervous system so essentially when you have an anxiety disorder your nervous system behaves like you have just encountered a bear but all the time and if you were encountering a bear that would be great we would want to have our fight-or-flight nervous system activated and we wouldn't want to be wasting time on our parasympathetic rest and digest response but again if it's happening constantly that's a problem physical symptom of anxiety number one fatigue and weakness as you can imagine this overdrive of your system this constant activation this constant feeling hyped up and restless and tense makes you really tired you're expending a lot of energy to keep yourself in this fight-or-flight response and it's exhausting this can feel like just run-of-the-mill sleepiness like you're just not getting enough sleep at night or it can feel really profound like you are just plain exhausted no matter how much sleep you get how much caffeine you have you're tired and some people even feel it in their limbs like they might feel weaker maybe if they're someone who's interested in sports or enjoys weightlifting for example they simply cannot lift as much or don't perform as well in their sport physical symptom of anxiety number two is muscle tension our nervous system is primed and ready for a fight and that means that we are going to be tense we are going to have our muscles ready for a fight sometimes when we're anxious we also have problems keeping our posture correct and we tend to forego things like exercise that we know are going to be good for us and those things also tend to help with muscle tension people with anxiety especially tend to feel this muscle tension and strain in their necks and their backs and it can be really significant physical symptom of anxiety number three headaches there are a whole bunch of possible reasons why we develop headaches when we're anxious or stressed first of all our bodies release certain chemicals and stress hormones that change the way our blood vessels carry blood to our head like i mentioned before people with anxiety also tend to have tension in their neck and their back and that can certainly contribute to headaches too things like clenching your teeth not hydrating well not sleeping well not getting enough exercise of course all of those things can contribute to headaches and they are much more likely to be seen in someone who is feeling really stressed and anxious and just isn't able to care for themselves like they normally would physical symptom of anxiety number four dry mouth so i mentioned the parasympathetic nervous system a little bit earlier and this is the nervous system that's responsible for telling us that it's time to rest and digest so basically says everything's chill we're cool you can just eat something take a breather take a nap if you need to one really important part of digestion that is mediated by the parasympathetic nervous system is the production of saliva saliva helps us break down our food and it moistens it so that we can swallow it more easily so like i also mentioned earlier when we are stressed or anxious we tend to deactivate that parasympathetic nervous system meaning we tell our body look sorry not time to rest and digest right now you've got bears to run away from so since it's not time for us to digest food there's no need for saliva your brain says hey you're not eating any time soon so don't worry about making any saliva your mouth gets really dry symptom number five is shortness of breath when we get stressed or anxious our brains tell our bodies that hey you're gonna have to run away you're gonna have to fight something like things are really intense right now you better make sure that you're breathing quickly and getting enough oxygen so that you can do what you need to do to get out of here when we get stressed or anxious our brains tell our body hey you gotta get ready to run you need to take in a lot more oxygen to power your muscles so that you have the energy to get out of here or fight or whatever so in order to meet those potential future demands we start taking shorter and more shallow breaths so we start breathing really quickly hyperventilating of course that can be a vicious cycle because then you feel like you're breathing faster oh my goodness i have to breathe even faster i'm not getting deep enough breaths and your brain meanwhile is telling you you got to get more oxygen in and it can make you feel really really short of breath and even more stressed physical symptom number six chest pain and chest tightness chest pain is a legit scary symptom of anxiety and it can be really intense it is not at all uncommon for people who are having panic attacks or suffering from just extreme anxiety to end up in the emergency room with chest pain because they think they're having a heart attack it can be really intense and really uncomfortable and of course it's one of those symptoms that you want to take seriously you want to make sure that you've had a doctor check you out that you get the all clear if this is something you're experiencing just like with all the other symptoms but it is possible to have chest pain and chest tightness just from anxiety this can be from a couple of different things but first of all like we mentioned earlier there's a lot of extra muscle tension when you're anxious and your chest is no exception to that so you might feel tightness in your chest just from your chest muscles being tense we also tend to have a faster and more intense heartbeat we tend to breathe more quickly and all of those things can create physical sensations in our body that are uncomfortable and if we're very anxious and paying a lot of attention to them they can become downright painful as i mentioned earlier we also kind of shut down the parasympathetic nervous system and that affects our digestion issues with digestion like heartburn or problems with your esophagus and the way the esophagus moves all of that stuff can also contribute to a feeling of chest tightness and chest pain and people with anxiety are more likely to have digestive issues and more likely to have problems with the movement of their esophagus physical symptom number seven memory problems and confusion this actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it i mean if you are a parent or just have a day where you're super duper busy and you have a lot of demands coming at you all at once you start to feel really scatterbrained right and it's hard to listen to the kids yelling at you about this thing pay attention to this bill that you just got in the mail your phone's going off you have this deadline at work you get stressed and you can't pay attention to everything at once so even if you just have anxiety that isn't caused by this sort of external stress you can still have that same reaction when you're anxious your brain is constantly scanning the environment for threats it's scanning your internal world it's trying to figure out if you're safe or not and it's trying to keep track of a million different things at the same time that's a lot of pressure and it causes you to feel really easily distracted when you're distracted and stressed and constantly on the lookout like that you are going to forget things you're going to have trouble taking in and retaining new information and trouble recalling it when you need to recall it so all of this can add up to make for some serious memory problems and significant confusion it's also not uncommon for me to see people who think they're developing alzheimer's disease or some other form of dementia because the because the memory problems can be that bad physical symptom number eight fast heartbeat irregular heartbeat or just feeling like your heart is pounding so again we alluded to this a little bit earlier but when we are anxious and our sympathetic nervous system is going into overdrive it tells our heart to pump blood faster and pump it tells our heart to pump more blood to our muscles so that they can get enough oxygen to fight or run away or whatever they need to do to take care of the threat this is a combination of stress hormones and adrenaline and it can really leave you feeling like your heart is going a million miles an hour some people also feel like funny flutters in their chest when they're really anxious i kind of think of it like feeling a fish flopping around in your chest kind of a gross idea but it definitely feels like that again this is one of those things like chest pain you don't want to mess around with heart stuff so it's really important that your doctor checks this out make sure that it's not due to something else because heart problems can cause these symptoms too but it is possible to not have anything wrong with your heart at all and still have these really uncomfortable sensations when you're feeling very anxious physical symptom number nine nausea vomiting stomach discomfort general gi blah so like we discussed earlier when we're super anxious our sympathetic nervous system starts to take over and our parasympathetic nervous system starts to take a step back our brains tell our bodies hey time to run time to fight we're not eating right now we can't do this right now so our brain starts to shunt blood away from our digestive system and focuses it into our muscles our lungs our heart the things that we need to fight or flight when we have this decreased blood flow to our digestive system our digestive system starts to slow down and that can cause some gi discomfort gi problems like nausea like vomiting like heartburn all of that and just general discomfort like i mentioned earlier anxiety also puts us at higher risk for certain problems with our esophagus and with our stomachs obviously those things can also contribute to gi issues number 10 diarrhea diarrhea gets its own special category not because it's necessarily all that special to me i separated it from the other gi issues that we just talked about because the mechanism is a little bit different and it seems a little bit weird you would think if our parasympathetic nervous system is taking a step back and our digestion is slower why are we pooping more you would think well you just wouldn't poop right like you don't want to be running away from a bear and pooping all over the place not ideal um but we kind of do and the reason for this is because the large intestine or the colon is the exception to the rule that digestion slows down the release of these certain stress hormones and our sympathetic nervous system activation tells our large intestine hey you might need to run away we need you to be light fast quick on your feet how about you go ahead and get rid of everything you've been carrying around with you so that we don't have to drag it along with us our brains are basically like you're probably not gonna need this poop in a fight so how about you leave it here leave it at home and then run i guess it just didn't take into account the modern problem of like i don't know cleanliness can't just like poop behind it push in front anyways so you poop when you're anxious and aside from that people with anxiety are also at higher risk of things that make you go poop uh illnesses that make you poop so things like ibs irritable bowel syndrome for example physical symptom number 11 shaking tremors and twitches so think back to like the last time that you did something really scary or really intense if you have had a baby before think back to after you gave birth you were probably very shaky and maybe you were a little bit cold i don't know but that's not the main reason we shake like that because of this incredible release of adrenaline along with other stress hormones this adrenaline tells our muscles hey we're getting ready for a fight like something big is going down and all of this extra energy gets pushed to our muscles and kind of comes out in the form of shaking and tremors i just think of it as like this huge surge of energy that's rushing through you and there's like nowhere for it to go so you start to shake physical symptom of anxiety number 12 sweating flushing changes in temperature like hot flashes and cold chills again we're getting ready for a fight so there are gonna be changes in blood flow that increase blood flow to certain areas of the body that cause us to feel hotter to maybe start to flush to start to overheat and sweat and then once we get overheated like that our brain says whoa things are getting too hot we need to dampen it down let's start sweating a little bit when you're anxious and you don't get a lot of relief from that anxiety those two competing things and those fluctuations in temperature can happen really quickly so you might find yourself feeling hot flashes in one moment and cold chills in another your body is basically just trying to regulate temperature but trying to prepare for a fight at the same time and it's overshooting in both directions physical symptom number 13 urge to pee i think of this a lot like the urged poop that we talked about earlier your body is trying to get rid of all the extra stuff there is some research suggesting that our kidneys actually produce more urine when we're feeling anxious but the biggest reason that we have to pee more often and more urgently when we're feeling anxious is probably because of the way our bladder contracts stress hormones that are released when we're anxious cause the bladder to squeeze down in a different way than it normally would and this makes it feel like we have to pee sometimes when people are really startled really scared they can even completely lose bladder control because of this reaction physical symptom number 14 tingling and numbness earlier we mentioned the shortness of breath that we tend to feel when we're anxious and that can lead us to hyperventilate when we hyperventilate we release a lot of carbon dioxide more carbon dioxide than we normally do you might think of carbon dioxide as a bad thing and think that we don't need it in our body but we actually do need a certain amount of carbon dioxide for our bodies to function properly when we hyperventilate we breathe off so much carbon dioxide that it causes changes in the ph of our blood these changes in ph then lead to changes in certain electrolytes like calcium and potassium and changes in the way our blood vessels are functioning as we mentioned earlier there are also changes in the way that our blood vessels function just because of the stress hormones so all of these changes can come together to constrict the blood vessels that lead to your extremities like your fingers your toes your lips and that can reduce the blood flow that they're getting causing them to feel cold or clammy or tingly or even numb and of course that freaks you out even more you hyperventilate more and they get even more tingly and numb it's kind of the case with a lot of this stuff it's really a vicious cycle sometimes physical symptom of anxiety number 15 dizziness this is another one that's often related to hyperventilation when you're feeling anxious or stressed even if you just breathe a little bit faster it does change the way that your blood vessels carry blood to your brain and when the blood flow decreases to your brain you get dizzy or lightheaded we also tend to focus more on very subtle sensations when we're feeling anxious or stressed so you might turn your head and notice a very slight wave of dizziness that maybe you wouldn't normally notice and that can make you more anxious physical symptom of anxiety number 16 acne and blemishes there are probably a couple different ways that anxiety and stress can contribute to worsening of acne and worsening of just skin problems in general and first is probably stress hormones when we produce more stress hormones we are more likely to have problems with our skin we also tend to sweat more when we're anxious and people that are anxious can get very fidgety and touch their faces more they might also be more likely to pick at their face and pick it blemishes that maybe wouldn't be a problem otherwise all of this stuff comes together and can really cause some problems with your skin number 17 blurry vision and tunnel vision this is probably related to hyperventilation again like the dizziness feeling but it's also probably related to the fact that when our sympathetic nervous system takes over our brain tries to focus us in on the immediate threat the immediate danger that's right in front of us so if you are again trying to run away from a bear you want to focus on your escape route you don't want to be distracted by things going on around you so your vision is going to tunnel in on what's right in front of you basically you pay less attention to what's in your peripheral vision when we get scared or anxious we also tend to have our pupils dilate and when our pupils dilate we get a lot more light coming in this in general is meant to help us see better so that we can escape whatever we need to run from or so we can fight whatever we need to fight but sometimes all of this extra light coming in can actually overwhelm our vision and cause it to feel blurry physical symptom of anxiety number 18 feeling of throat tightness choking or feeling like your throat is gonna close or like it has a lump in it this can be another really really scary sensation it really feels like you're choking or like you can't get enough air in it feels like your throat is physically tighter and for some people it gets to the point where they can't eat or drink because they're so afraid of the tightness and these uncomfortable sensations in their throat this is something that we see in anxiety in part because of the dry mouth sensation that we talked about earlier just having dry mouth can make your throat feel like there's a lump in it we also tend to get really tight in our necks and our throats as well when we're feeling stressed or anxious so these muscles that run from the bottom of your face down to your chest can get really tight too and that can make you feel like your throat is closing we also talked about how muscle tightness plays a role in a lot of the physical symptoms of anxiety and throat tightness can be related to muscle tightness in general as well so these muscles that run down the front of your throat can get really tight and can just feel like they're squeezing your throat we also talked earlier about how anxiety can impact your gi system and things like heartburn or esophagus spasms that are more likely in people with anxiety or people who are under a lot of stress those things can actually cause a sensation of throat tightness physical symptom number 19 yawning we don't know exactly why this symptom happens but it could be related again to hyperventilation yawning is something that some researchers believe is related to changes in the blood levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide there are also other theories that have talked about yawning as a way to cool your body down when you're overheated so if we tend to overheat when we're anxious we might yawn to compensate for that and last but not least physical symptom of anxiety number 20 insomnia problems sleeping are so common in anxiety in fact it's one of the symptoms that leads people into treatment oftentimes if you just have generalized anxiety disorder you may not be particularly concerned about your worry or your anxiety many of us feel like it's just part of our personality and we have no choice but to worry all the time but for many people that will progress to a point where they can't sleep anymore because they're so anxious and so stressed about things they just can't turn their mind off they can't stop those worries when it's finally time to get some sleep thankfully this along with all of the other symptoms that i just talked about are things that get better as the anxiety gets better we use a bunch of different methods to treat anxiety depending on what the cause is how severe the anxiety is and what the person that we're treating prefers so we can use things like therapy different medications different lifestyle changes but the same approach may not work for everyone so sometimes we have to try a couple of different things before the anxiety gets better if you already subscribed to my channel or you follow me on my other social media platforms you probably know that i talk a lot about these other treatments for anxiety as well as things that you can do in your day-to-day life to help your anxiety if you want to learn more check out the playlist on anxiety i also have an anxiety boot camp course that can be really really helpful it's basically all the things that i teach people to help with their anxiety all in one place and you can also check out the resources section of my website for more information on books that i've used that i find really helpful for anxiety so if you like this video give it a like hit subscribe if you aren't already and leave me a comment down below i'd love to hear more about how you manage the physical symptoms of your anxiety big shout out to those who have subscribed to my patreon this month thank you guys so much for your support thank you for being part of this and allowing me to continue producing free educational content like this i appreciate you guys so much if you guys like my content and want more exclusive stuff head over to the patreon and thank you guys so much for watching i'll see you guys next time

Channel: Melissa Shepard, MD

Views: 81,881

Keywords: anxiety symptoms, scary symptoms of anxiety, anxiety weak legs, anxiety difficulty swallowing, what does anxiety feel like physically, common anxiety symptoms, anxiety chest pain and shortness of breath, can anxiety cause shortness of breath, does anxiety cause, does anxiety cause dizziness, can anxiety cause diarrhea, can anxiety cause stomach issues, can anxiety cause headaches, can anxiety cause physical pain, can anxiety cause chest pain, dr melissa shepard

Id: rdP_zcwc_h4

Length: 23min 10sec (1390 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 20 2021