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Can anxiety cause muscle ache


10 Most Common Physical Symptoms of Anxiety : Intrepid Mental Wellness, PLLC: Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners

10 Most Common Physical Symptoms of Anxiety : Intrepid Mental Wellness, PLLC: Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners

10 Most Common Physical Symptoms of Anxiety

 

Anxiety and panic disorders can produce a wide range of distressing physical symptoms. Many people are unaware that their symptoms are caused by anxiety, which can make the problem worse, as many people worry that their symptoms are caused by an underlying disease, leading to further anxiety. This vicious circle can be broken by learning about anxiety and being able to recognize the physical symptoms. Here are the 10 most common physical symptoms of anxiety.

 

Fatigue

Fatigue is one of the most common symptoms associated with anxiety, panic disorder, chronic stress, depression and other mental health disorders. Chronic anxiety leaves the body and mind in a constant state of tension and high alertness. The mind is constantly scanning the external and internal environment for threats, leading to emotional distress and physical tension. This constant state of high alertness leads to mental and physical exhaustion, which will often persist even after a long sleep.

 

Increased Heart Rate

Anxiety is a natural response to danger and is needed for humans to survive. High levels of anxiety trigger changes in the body to help prepare for dealing with threats and danger, also known as the fight or flight response. However, if you're living with chronic anxiety, your body and mind are often unable to tell the difference between real and imagined dangers, which means that the fight or flight response may be continually active. One of the first changes to occur during the fight or flight response is an increase in heart rate.  

 

Heart Palpitations

Heart palpitations are often one of the most distressing symptoms associated with anxiety, as they can feel scary and many people worry that they are having a heart attack, particularly when palpitations are combined with chest pain. Heart palpitations can feel like your heart is pounding, fluttering, beating too fast or missing beats. Some people can even feel their heart beating in their throat, neck or head. While heart palpitations can be scary, they usually pass within a few seconds.

 

Shortness of Breath

Shortness of breath is another distressing symptom that leads many people to worry that they are having a heart attack, choking or experiencing problems with their lungs. Shortness of breath is usually caused by breathing too quickly (hyperventilation), as the body is inhaling too much oxygen and exhaling too much carbon dioxide. Hyperventilation will not harm you, but you may feel as if you are choking, have a lump in your throat or are unable to take in enough air. 

 

Dizziness

Feeling dizzy, faint or unsteady is often the result of hyperventilation, although it may also be caused by other issues related to anxiety, such as muscle tension in the neck and shoulders. Many people feel lightheaded and worry that they might pass out during a panic attack, but some people with an anxiety disorder also experience chronic dizziness and problems with balance.  

 

Muscle Aches 

Muscle aches and joint pain can be caused by tension, as well as general poor health. Anxiety causes the muscles to tense up, which can lead to pain and stiffness in almost any area of the body. Constant stress and worry can also prevent the immune system from working properly, leading to decreased resistance to infection and disease. Infection increases inflammation in the body, which can cause a range of symptoms, including joint pain.

 

Muscle Weakness

Another common symptom of chronic anxiety is weakness in the muscles, most commonly experienced in the legs and sometimes the arms. During the fight or flight response, the body is preparing to take action against danger. One of the ways in which the body prepares for this action is to redirect blood flow to the areas most needed, including the legs, which are needed to run away from danger. Increased blood flow to the legs can make them feel weak, tingly or like jelly.

 

Headaches

Headaches and migraines are often caused by tension, particularly in the neck and shoulders. Teeth grinding, facial tension, poor posture and hyperventilation can also cause headaches and migraines. Sharp pain, a dull ache or a feeling of pressure around the head and eyes are common symptoms associated with anxiety. As anxiety can also upset the balance of hormones in the body, some women notice an increase in migraines, as they can be triggered by changes in hormones.

 

Digestive Discomfort

Excess gas, bloating, stomach cramps, acid indigestion, heartburn, constipation and diarrhea can all be caused by stress and anxiety. Several digestive problems, including irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), have been linked to chronic stress and mental health problems. Anxiety can also increase the symptoms of food intolerance and sensitivities in some people.

 

Tingling Sensations

Pins and needles, tingling and numbness are common symptoms that mostly affect the extremities, but can also be experienced anywhere in the body. Tingling of the lips, face and arms can be particularly distressing, as many people worry they are having a stroke. Odd sensations in the body, including tingling and numbness, are usually the result of hyperventilation, but can also be caused by physical tension.

 

Anxiety can cause a wide range of distressing physical symptoms, but recognizing and accepting that these symptoms are temporary and harmless helps to alleviate fears and prevent further anxiety. The most common physical symptoms of anxiety include fatigue, increased heart rate, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness, muscle aches, muscle weakness, headaches, digestion, discomfort and tingling sensations.

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How to Minimize Muscle Aches Associated with Anxiety

Muscle aches are one of the most well-known symptoms of anxiety and stress. It often seems that after an extended period of stress, the body tenses and muscles begin to develop uncomfortable symptoms.

These types of muscle aches are usually a minor inconvenience, but others find that they can become a tremendous problem, making them severely uncomfortable and possibly leading to behavioral changes.

Why Muscles Ache

Anxiety exacerbates long-term stress and the release of adrenaline from your fight or flight system. These responses affect the muscles and the way your body interacts with them.  

When you have anxiety, you cause many issues that lead to muscle tension:

  • As adrenaline pumps through your body, your blood vessels constrict. That causes your muscles not to receive the blood flow they need, which in turn causes them stress that leads to tension and aches.
  • Your body is also sending messages to your muscles to prepare to fight or flee. Then, when no fighting or fleeing occurs, your muscles get fatigued and stressed. This also leads to tension.
  • Anxiety affects your hormones, which are chemical messengers that your body uses to send signals to your muscles and nerves, as well as neurotransmitters which provide a similar action straight from your brain. When these are off balance as a result of anxiety, aching is possible.

Not all muscle aches come straight from your body's reactions to stress either. Some of them come from the way you, yourself, respond when you're stressed. For example, many people with anxiety end up slouching more, or avoiding exercise, or sleeping longer. All of these can actually lead to muscle aches and tension themselves, simply because the changes in behaviors stretch and push on your muscles.

As you can see, there are many reasons that anxiety causes muscle tension, and all of that muscle tension can lead to muscle aches.

How to Stop Anxiety Muscle Aches

As soon as your muscles start to ache, treatment is not unlike muscle aches from exercise or injury. These aches are simply your muscle's way of rebuilding themselves and ensuring they're in the best of health. So if you want, you can treat these aches using many of the same tactics that you would use to treat any of those aches, such as:

  • Hot shower
  • Over the counter painkillers
  • Stretching

Loosening up your muscles can be very effective at relieving some of the tension that you feel which in turn will decrease the aches that you experience. Some solutions that are specific to anxiety include:

  • Massage It's not clear exactly why massage also seems to help with anxiety, but it's likely that the stress-release activity combined with the good feelings you get in your muscles after the massage is over has anxiety reduction benefits.
  • Exercise Exercise may create muscle aches in some ways, but over time it will improve your muscle's ability to respond to stress, and should decrease your anxiety as well. Exercise can be very effective for controlling muscle tension.
  • Yoga Yoga is, of course, a form of exercise. But many people find that yoga seems to have its own benefits for anxiety symptoms, especially muscle tension. Yoga can help improve muscle movement and stretch them out to decrease future tension.

One of the most important things is to keep in mind is that you need to make sure you don't let your muscle aches overcome you. Ideally, you need to stay active, fight through it, and do your best to make sure that you're still taking steps to control your anxiety.  

Summary:

Anxiety causes muscle tension, muscle fatigue, and several other issues that all link back to anxiety. Hot showers, stretching, massages, and pain killers – the same treatments one would use for any type of muscle aches – can decrease some of the discomfort. Because muscle aches are caused by anxiety, only reducing anxiety can provide some relief.

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Increased anxiety: how to resist by relaxing

09 July 2020 15:00

Everyone experiences anxiety and fear at certain moments, but sometimes they literally interfere with life. How to understand that you are developing an anxiety disorder, and what ways to deal with it? Rehabilitator Sergei Agapkin and psychiatrist-psycho-neurologist Viktoria Zhadenova spoke about this on the Russia 1 TV channel.

Everyone experiences anxiety, anxiety and fear at certain moments, but sometimes they literally interfere with life. How to understand that you are developing an anxiety disorder, and what ways to deal with it?

Rehabilitation doctor Sergei Agapkin and psychiatrist-psycho-neurologist Viktoria Zhadenova spoke about this on the Rossiya 1 TV channel.

She reported that anxiety is a very common disease. According to WHO, 265 million people suffer from anxiety disorders, and most of them are women.

Anxiety disorders are of two types - a panic attack (proximal anxiety) and generalized anxiety, which can last for more than a few weeks and months.

It can be so strong that a person cannot cope. People often do not leave the house, stop working, become completely incapacitated, the energy inside the body decreases, the doctor explains.

Many people who have such a problem quite intuitively find some way out: they have some kind of action that extinguishes their anxiety for a while.

The first symptom of anxiety is poor sleep and fatigue.

When awake, a person cannot sit still, he is constantly on edge, he always needs to do something - call, write, read, tell someone about his condition.

"This is adrenaline and activation of the sympathetic nervous system when there is overexcitation. All this is based on adrenaline, fear, when a person begins to look for a way out, like a hunted animal: what can be done so that fear passes, in order to protect oneself? But there is a way out, unfortunately not," says the psychiatrist.

At the same time, a person may be physically ill, he may experience various types of ailments: pain in the stomach, in the intestines, frequent headaches, increased pressure, although there is no hypertension.

This state can also be accompanied by negative emotions - anger, despair - at oneself, at others, Dr. Agapkin adds.

The psychiatrist explains that this is already connected with the hormonal background: "Adrenaline turns into norepinephrine, which causes aggression."

In addition, there may be a feeling of tension in the muscles: as if the person is always ready to jump in order to escape. And this fear is as if real: "something will happen to me, they will (conditionally) kill me, and I have to run away from here," the doctors explain.

Anxiety disorders are most often treated in two ways - psychotherapy and drug treatment.

As far as psychotherapy is concerned, body therapy works well in this case – body massage. But relaxation after it acts for a short time, and if you do not know the cause and do not eliminate it, then the problem may return.

Drug treatment helps to comprehensively deal with this problem, and in this case, antidepressants, neuroleptics against anxiety are used.

These drugs are not addictive and should not be feared. “I think that anxiety is much worse, which can lead to disability,” says Zhadenova.

According to the psychiatrist, the most effective treatment is bodily practices of any kind.

Gymnastics, yoga, breathing exercises work well. It is better to breathe in the stomach, making the exhalation a little longer than the inhalation, which helps to relax.

Meditation will also help: you can simply dive into yourself and look for some comfortable place inside, Viktoria Zhadenova advises.

Dr. Agapkin adds: "When your condition is already stable, you need to understand what makes this condition worse."

"Here, each person has his own. Someone is annoyed by unwashed dishes, someone does not feel very good after drinking alcohol, and someone - 8 cups of coffee a day serves as such a provocateur. Find what causes you anxiety, and take it away," the doctor advises.

Experts remind: nature does not tolerate emptiness.

"If you have taken something away (reading newspapers, drinking alcohol), then you must take this place in this life with something. That is, you must have something that you will do that will relieve this anxiety For some, this is relaxation, for some, on the contrary, quite intense physical activity. For some, fine motor skills: embroidery, knitting, drawing, "says Sergey Agapkin.

Victoria Zhadenova, for her part, continues this list: "Music therapy or sports are very useful in the treatment of anxiety disorders. Yoga qigong is good - slow, but more intense sports also help in this case."

"There is a double work here: when the anxiety goes away due to the movements of the bodily practices, and dopamine is also released, which also improves mood and calms," the psychiatrist explains.

medicine health psychology treatment Sergey Agapkin stress anxiety society news

How does anxiety manifest itself in the human body and how to deal with it?

Anxiety and excitement are natural emotional reactions that are familiar to everyone.

We are made up of two “subunits”: our brain and our body.

The body is controlled by a structure called autonomic nervous system (ANS). This is a rather complex highly organized system that regulates the actions of all our internal organs and glands.

The main role of this system is to maintain the constancy of the internal environment of our body (homeostasis).

The autonomic nervous system has two divisions - sympathetic and parasympathetic. The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for calmness, restoration of internal resources, returning the body to a normal state, sleep.

And the sympathetic nervous system is the opposite. It is with the help of it that the body launches the mechanisms of reaction to anxiety: fear, fight, flight.

The material was prepared by a neurologist, parkinsonologist at Euromed Clinic, Ph.D.

What physiological reactions occur in the body during the manifestation of anxiety?

One of the first reactions of the body is an increase in the heart rate. This physiological manifestation of the body is important to prepare for actions, for example, to run. Sometimes anxiety can be accompanied by life-threatening conditions, such as acute heart failure. If you are worried about pain in the region of the heart, spreading to the left arm, the zone of the lower jaw, you should immediately consult a doctor.

Changes and respiratory rate . It becomes frequent, deep, it is important for the body to get a large amount of oxygen, which in turn serves as a source of energy for the muscles.

Increased perspiration . Intense sweating helps to "escape" from the anxiety factor. Sweating is a typical and common symptom.

Also there is tension in many muscles . Sometimes this causes pain.

Recall that all these processes take place as natural physiological reactions. This is a response of the body to the manifestation of external and internal factors.

TOP tips for coping with anxiety?