News

It is likely that we have all experienced some form of anxiety throughout our lifetime as short-term anxiety is a normal part of life. You may feel anxious before an exam, before your menstrual cycle, or when faced with a problem at work. However, anxiety that is experienced over a long period of time can be problematic, causing a range of psychological and physical symptoms.

The WHO estimates that 1 in 13 people globally have some form of anxiety disorder,¹ and the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Study found that anxiety disorders are the most predominant mental health problems worldwide.²

Are you finding yourself stressed and overwhelmed? If you feel increasingly irritable and have that feeling of being on edge, you may need to support your nervous system.

The nervous system makes us who we are, enabling us to sense, think, feel, remember, and move. When our nervous system isn’t working well, it can affect our social and emotional wellbeing, as well as our day-to-day performance at work or school. 

Situational factors, past experiences, learned helplessness, dark nights, and a lack of sound nutrition to support our neurotransmitters and nerve cell structure, might predispose us to low mood.   

Are you prone to low mood or mood swings or not feeling motivated or sociable, perhaps coupled with low energy? Do you often feel you need to drink coffee to increase your energy levels and stay focused, or do you feel the urge to have a chocolate bar mid-morning? Or maybe you’ve been craving salty or spicy foods more lately?

Do you have persistent inflammation, perhaps with pain and discomfort e.g. in joints, skin or the gut, or perhaps you’ve had an injury that is taking a long time to heal? Or do you react to certain natural environmental substances like pollen, dust, fur, mould or even foods you eat?

You might need support to balance your immune response

Do you have severe issues with tiredness all the time, running out of energy really easily, even with simple daily activities? Do you find your feelings of fatigue are not relieved even after long periods of sleep or rest? Or perhaps your energy is severely affected when you train or do exercise, and you take a long time to recover?

You might need support for cell energy metabolism.

Are you are always tired, perhaps also feel the cold, generally overweight with thinning hair, water retention, and have poor skin quality? Have you been told, or suspect, your thyroid blood test (TSH/thyroxine) is out of range?

You might need support for your thyroid gland.

Thyroid disorders affect one in twenty people in the UK – could you be one of them?i

The thyroid gland is small, but mighty. It regulates how quickly our mitochondria produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the ‘energy currency’ of our body, and in doing so, underpins metabolism and the health of every body system.ii Its key tools are thyroid hormones that communicate with our body cells - thyroxine (T4) which can be converted to the more active triiodothyronine (T3).

Are you often ill, picking up infections easily and/or finding it hard to shake them off?

You might need support for your immune system.

Your immune system is your body’s defence mechanism, but it needs to be trained and supported to work well. A lack of immune supporting nutrients, stress, robust skin, lung and gut barriers or an imbalance of bacteria can all inhibit immunity, resulting in more frequent or more serious infections.

Are you worn out by stress, feel tired but wired, struggle to wake up, unable to relax and have difficulty sleeping? You may rely on coffee and sugary foods to boost your energy, crave salt or sugar, have low mood and motivation and struggle to maintain your weight, particularly around the middle?

If you’ve answered yet to any of these questions, you might need support for your stress response and adrenal hormones.

We should feel alert upon waking and energised over the course of the day to help us rise to and meet the challenges of the day, gradually becoming tired into the evening to prepare us for sleep. Stress is unavoidable in today’s life with constant notifications on our phones, busy jobs, relationship troubles, financial worries, busy family life and trying to achieve a work-life balance. It is not so much the number of stressors we have, but rather how we process and manage it.