Is your favorite breakfast contributing to your anxiety symptoms?

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Nicole Ceil is not a medical doctor, and nothing herein constitutes medical advice or a patient-provider relationship. Please consult your healthcare provider before undertaking a healthcare regimen. Never disregard medical advice or delay seeking treatment. 

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Anxiety is the WORST! Going from “I got this” to heart palpitations, ringing ears, sweaty palms, and shortness of breath in the blink of an eye is enough to knock anyone’s confidence down a few pegs. If you experience anxiety, you’ve likely talked with your therapist about all sorts of strategies for mitigating anxiety in the moment such as mindfulness, deep breathing, re-framing, or tapping. These are all AWESOME strategies. I use them all the time. But if you’re in a productive therapeutic relationship, and you’re using these strategies to soothe your nervous system, but your anxiety still impacts your daily life, it’s time to think about diet.

Diet? Yes, diet. Bear with me here.

Anxiety, according to the Mayo Clinic, is the “intense, excessive and persistent worry and fear about everyday situations” and symptoms look a little like this:

  • Feeling nervous, restless or tense

  • Having a sense of impending danger, panic or doom

  • Having an increased heart rate

  • Breathing rapidly (hyperventilation)

  • Sweating

  • Trembling

  • Feeling weak or tired

  • Trouble concentrating or thinking about anything other than the present worry

  • Having trouble sleeping

  • Experiencing gastrointestinal (GI) problems

  • Having difficulty controlling worry

Hypoglycemia is “is a condition caused by a very low level of blood sugar (glucose), your body's main energy source” (also according to the Mayo Clinic), and symptoms look like this:

  • An irregular heart rhythm (heart palpitations)

  • Fatigue

  • Pale skin

  • Shakiness

  • Anxiety

  • Sweating

  • Hunger

  • Irritability

  • Tingling sensation around the mouth

  • Crying out during sleep

  • Confusion, abnormal behavior or both, such as the inability to complete routine tasks

Notice any overlap? Better yet, if I didn’t tell you which symptoms belonged to which condition, would you have been able to tell the difference?

Hypoglycemia is pretty common, and it happens in response to eating sugary or starchy foods (bagels, toast, cereal, fruit, sweetened or non-fat yogurt, juice, etc.). The sugar in that food digests quickly and moves into the bloodstream. This isn’t awesome, as the body doesn’t love have really high levels of sugar in the bloodstream. So, to compensate, our pancreas produces a hormone called insulin, which helps move sugar from the bloodstream into the cells, quickly. 

The trouble is, this can lead to low levels of sugar in the bloodstream. Also not awesome. When blood sugar is low, the brain doesn’t get enough glucose (fuel), and we start to feel the symptoms of hypoglycemia listed above (which happen to feel a lot like anxiety).

So what can you do to prevent hypoglycemia? It starts with breakfast. Rather than a high sugar or starch breakfast, opt for foods that contain fat and protein, such as eggs, nut butters, full fat yogurts, sausages, bacon, and avocado. If breakfast doesn’t seem right without a piece of toast or a banana, at the very least add some eggs cooked in butter on the side, but please, skip the juice. 

What about my cholesterol? Great question! The latest research indicates that dietary fat intake (from whole foods like eggs and bacon) isn’t associated with an increased risk for cardiovascular disease. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30954077. However, unstable blood sugar is a source of inflammation, which isn’t great for your vascular system. 

If you’re looking for strategies to lessen your anxiety symptoms start with breakfast. These satiating foods will help keep your blood sugar stable all morning. You may even find that you’re less ravenous for your 10AM pick-me-up. Continue this style of eating at lunch and dinner for stable afternoon blood sugar and more restful sleep. 

Download a Blood Sugar Control Macro Pairings guide to start creating snacks and meals to support a healthy body and a peaceful mind. 




Nicole Ceil