Eating ice cream when you feel depressed, anxious or sad provides amazing benefits. While ice cream helps calm the nervous system, it provides a stimulus to the thrombotonin. This is a hormone that is responsible for triggering the happiness and excitement in humans.
Foods naturally rich in magnesium may, therefore, help a person to feel calmer. Examples include leafy greens, such as spinach and Swiss chard. Other sources include legumes, nuts, seeds, and whole grains. Foods rich in zinc such as oysters, cashews, liver, beef, and egg yolks have been linked to lowered anxiety.
The ice techniques work to help jolt your system out of the fight or flight response. They act as grounding exercises to help distract you from the feelings of panic and focus on your body and surroundings. The ice can also trigger a pain-like response in your brain that forces your neurotransmitters to refocus.
Besides the homey warmth of this true comfort food, milk has loads of B vitamins that reduce anxiety and improve mood. For instance, vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) raises serotonin levels to perk you up.
Sucking on an ice cube will get rid of dry mouth and increase saliva production. “Sucking on an ice cube is therefore activating the parasympathetic nervous system to kick in, which can have a calming or distracting effect,” she says.
Put an Ice Cube in Your Hand or use Cold Water
Splashing cold water on your face repeatedly or putting an ice pack on your forehead can reduce anxiety. This process activates the divers reflex which lowers heart rate and breathing when exposed to cold water.
Dark Chocolate
The flavonoids in the cocoa help protect your cells. They're a type of antioxidant that may also help lower your blood pressure, boost the blood flow to your brain and heart, and make you less anxious.
Anxiety happens when a part of the brain, the amygdala, senses trouble. When it senses threat, real or imagined, it surges the body with hormones (including cortisol, the stress hormone) and adrenaline to make the body strong, fast and powerful.
In fact, the evidence shows water and hydration can play a role in preventing and managing the symptoms of anxiety. We all enjoy the cooling sensation a cold drink of water provides on a sweltering summer day. Our bodies are masterfully programmed to let us know when it's time to rehydrate.
Zeisler notes that chest icing might help get your sympathetic nervous system out of overdrive — which if in this heightened state can increase anxiety and heart rate, per Cleveland Clinic — based on evidence (like the aforementioned study) that suggests cold stimulation can do this.
Lots of people turn to sugary sweets when they feel anxious. That's because sugary foods can weaken the body's ability to respond to stress. Sugar can help you feel less frazzled by suppressing the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis in your brain, which controls your response to stress.
A panic attack is an intense wave of fear characterized by its unexpectedness and debilitating, immobilizing intensity. Your heart pounds, you can't breathe, and you may feel like you're dying or going crazy. Panic attacks often strike out of the blue, without any warning, and sometimes with no clear trigger.
Follow the 3-3-3 rule.
Look around you and name three things you see. Then, name three sounds you hear. Finally, move three parts of your body — your ankle, fingers, or arm.
The B-vitamins in bananas, like folate and vitamin B6, are key to the production of serotonin, which can help improve your mood and reduce anxiety.
Skipping meals releases stress hormones like cortisol to increase energy, which causes stress on the body and increases anxiety, as well as depression, diabetes and high blood pressure. Not eating regularly also depresses metabolism and decreases the ability to lose weight.
Blueberries
When we're anxious and stressed, our bodies crave vitamin C to help repair and protect our cells, and blueberries are packed full of it. Small but mighty, blueberries are bursting with antioxidants and vitamin C which have been shown to provide anxiety relief.