5 Ways to Regulate Your Nervous System and Lower Anxiety
There are numerous ways we can effectively support the body in reducing stress and anxiety. Anxiety is not just in the brain, or simply an imbalance of chemicals in this organ. It has multiple root causes and there are many ways to begin healing. Today we’re talking about ways to regulate the nervous system so you can feel that sense of calm you long for.
Eat for Blood Sugar Balance
Nutrition has a major impact on stress and anxiety levels and how our nervous system functions as a whole. Blood sugar disregulation plays a surprisingly large role in higher anxiety and stress levels. Balancing your meals with fat, fibre and protein helps support blood sugar stability, promoting a calm and regulated nervous system. Refined sugars, processed foods, caffeine and hidden food sensitivities are a few underlying nutritional factors at play in stressing the nervous system. Additionally, nutritional deficiencies, including B vitamins, vitamin D, chromium, magnesium and other minerals also affect blood sugar balance, contributing to imbalanced moods.
Eat and Supplement to Balance Your Microbiome
Balancing gut bacteria has shown to elicit positive affects on vagal nerve tone and mood, including anxiety, due to the connection between the microbiome and the brain. Eating a gut-healing diet is an important way to restore this balance. Focus on foods that inhibit the growth of bad bacteria and pathogens, such as sugars and processed foods, and add in more foods that will promote the growth of good bacteria, such as probiotic foods and prebiotic vegetables. Certain supplements can also be very helpful in bringing balance back to the gut microbiome in conjunction with proper nutrition.
Activate the Vagus Nerve
There are many ways to activate the vagus nerve to get the body out of fight-or-flight. They’re quite simple and you may already do some of them without even realizing it! Gargling, singing and humming are all easy ways to send calming signals to our nervous system and lower anxiety. Additionally, practices like chiropractic, massage and acupuncture are beneficial in supporting nervous system health.
EFT or “Tapping” for Less Anxiety
Emotional Freedom Techniques or “Tapping” is another fantastic way to lower stress, reprogram stress signals and initiate a parasympathetic response. Harvard Medical School research has shown that tapping on specific points on the body turns off the amygdala’s alarm response, which is the part of the brain that senses danger. Another study by Dawson Church, Ph. D, showed that cortisol levels dropped significantly with tapping, by 24-50%, which was correlated with reduced anxiety.
Create A Calming Morning Routine
You’ll likely agree that starting your day off rushing into work and stressed about all the things you need to get done that day is the least relaxing thing you could do. Begin creating your own version of a calming morning routine before jumping into your day, even if it’s just 10 minutes. Calming practices can include making tea, reading an inspiring book, listening to music, meditation, journalling, gentle movement or other ideas from this article. The key is to make it sustainable and habitual for you specifically!
For more information on how we can help you heal from anxiety and find more balance in your daily life, reach out to us at hello@winnipegnutrition.com.
Asher Kleiber
Registered Holistic Nutritionist™
Sources:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00044/full
J. Fang et al. “The Salient Characteristics of the Central Effects of Acupuncture Needling: Limbic-Paralimbic-Neocortical Network Modulation.” Human Brain Mapping 30, no. 4 (April 2009): 1196-1206
