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Anxiety can be created by the body, mouse heart study suggests

nature.com

51–60 of 91 posts

Re: Anxiety can be created by the body, mouse heart study suggests

#51
The body generates a hurricane of consciously-interpretable signals. A lot of people can agree with "anxiety can come from the body", but I think it's worth going further - anxiety can be computed, all over the body, and then the brain is a bit of an internet/routing hub itself for all those messages.

Re: Anxiety can be created by the body, mouse heart study suggests

#52
post #28

I didn't even know that this was a matter of debate. I had moderately serious heart problem (atrial murmur, sort of the less-serious cousin of afib/atrial fibrilation) and it was extremely clear to me that whatever was happening in my chest was also directly spiking my feelings of anxiety. To be clear, I mean a direct heart->anxiety link, as opposed to "I'm thinking about my heart problem and therefore my anxiety is…

I have a friend with panic attacks and she was pretty much the last one in our circle of friends to figure out that stomach distress was triggering attacks. The Vagus nerve is a puppet master and it can fuck with your sense of well-being on a good day, but if you have an adrenal disorder, good fucking luck.

    stomach distress was triggering attacks. The Vagus nerve is 
    a puppet master and it can fuck with your sense of well-being 
    on a good day
This rings true. I had one actual panic attack in my life and it was absolutely wild and confusing.

For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what caused it. I certainly was not particularly mentally stressed out that day. I'm not even really anxious in general compared to others. I am middle aged and have had a lot of acutely stressful days without panic attacks, and also just... a lot of days in general... so I can't imagine why an unstressful day lead to one.

It certainly didn't feel like it originated within my brain. It felt like my body was triggering it. It felt like an incident in the past when I was diagnosed with acute pericarditis and nearly died. However, when I went to the ER following the panic attack, they found nothing physically wrong on the EKG.

Of course, we are not necessarily biologically or cognitively well-equipped to self-diagnose "why" our brains are feeling a particular thing. But nonetheless whether it was my vagus nerve or something else, it certainly felt like it originated outside of my mind.

Re: Anxiety can be created by the body, mouse heart study suggests

#53

I didn't even know that this was a matter of debate. I had moderately serious heart problem (atrial murmur, sort of the less-serious cousin of afib/atrial fibrilation) and it was extremely clear to me that whatever was happening in my chest was also directly spiking my feelings of anxiety. To be clear, I mean a direct heart->anxiety link, as opposed to "I'm thinking about my heart problem and therefore my anxiety is…

I have GERD. Prior to properly getting diagnosed I went through a bunch of tests and episodes because the sensations manifested as heart-attack-like symptoms. I can tell you the anxiety produced was, ... palpable.

That much have been an ordeal. A sibling poster posted about a friend having a very similar experience.

Re: Anxiety can be created by the body, mouse heart study suggests

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It soothes and calms the parasympathetic nervous system Wouldn't you want to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system? Not calm it?

I think the non-scientific explanation is that with conditions such as anxiety and chronic stress it's consistently engaged, but only slightly (like background noise). You need to fully stimulate it for it to relax afterwards. That can also be accomplished with breathing exercises, ice baths, etc.

That can also be accomplished with breathing exercises, ice baths, etc.

Or yoga...That stretching! And posture.

Re: Anxiety can be created by the body, mouse heart study suggests

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It soothes and calms the parasympathetic nervous system Wouldn't you want to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system? Not calm it?

I think the non-scientific explanation is that with conditions such as anxiety and chronic stress it's consistently engaged, but only slightly (like background noise). You need to fully stimulate it for it to relax afterwards. That can also be accomplished with breathing exercises, ice baths, etc.

The parasympathetic nervous system is a control mechanism over the sympathetic nervous system. When the latter is stimulated, you become anxious and excited. When the former is stimulated, it tamps down on the latter, causing you to relax. Either one or the other is active.

“Relaxing” the parasympathetic system would therefore free the sympathetic nervous system to activate more strongly, thereby making you more anxious.

It’s distracting and disorienting when people appropriate medical and scientific language to explain their internal experience of the world. One is measured through experiment, the other through direct perception.

Re: Anxiety can be created by the body, mouse heart study suggests

#56

I didn't even know that this was a matter of debate. I had moderately serious heart problem (atrial murmur, sort of the less-serious cousin of afib/atrial fibrilation) and it was extremely clear to me that whatever was happening in my chest was also directly spiking my feelings of anxiety. To be clear, I mean a direct heart->anxiety link, as opposed to "I'm thinking about my heart problem and therefore my anxiety is…

Eat potassium and chelated magnesium

Re: Anxiety can be created by the body, mouse heart study suggests

#57
This could explain what is happening with long covid. Many sufferers (including me) complain about feeling anxious and stressed, along with insomnia. We assume it is from the worry of being sick or having to deal with life. But maybe myocarditis which is common with Covid is causing the anxiety and insomnia. Suffers need sleep and the removal of stress to heal, so people are stuck in an endless loop.

Re: Anxiety can be created by the body, mouse heart study suggests

#58

Yes that's why yoga is so good at calming you down and making you healthy. It soothes and calms the parasympathetic nervous system, and helps relieve and release many held tensions in the body. It's no good just to do meditation and calm your mind if your body and nervous system is still holding on to so much stress. The body remembers many things and "embodies" many emotions. You can notice this if you do part-by-pa…

That’s actually not what the paper is saying. It’s only comparing heart rate changes to anxiety.

Re: Anxiety can be created by the body, mouse heart study suggests

#59
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mice and rats have long served as the preferred species for biomedical research animal models due to their anatomical, physiological, and genetic similarity to humans. Advantages of rodents include their small size, ease of maintenance, short life cycle, and abundant genetic resources. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3987984/ It's almost as if research is done on mice on purpose . Of course you're goin…

I think the iron-man argument is -- wouldn't it be much less a waste of everybody's time here if we never posted mice articles, and only waited until they go to the human stage to share/discuss them? Of course it's a free community, people are welcome to post and upvote whatever they like, still we do have cultural norms here around high signal/noise and I understand the sentiment.

I mean, that's the entire purpose of the algorithm and downvoting things. Our "cultural norms" are to downvote and ignore if something doesn't interest us. Not to explicitly whine about something being posted in the first place.

Does a comment complaining about the high signal/noise ratio do anything but discourage discussion?

Re: Anxiety can be created by the body, mouse heart study suggests

#60

I didn't even know that this was a matter of debate. I had moderately serious heart problem (atrial murmur, sort of the less-serious cousin of afib/atrial fibrilation) and it was extremely clear to me that whatever was happening in my chest was also directly spiking my feelings of anxiety. To be clear, I mean a direct heart->anxiety link, as opposed to "I'm thinking about my heart problem and therefore my anxiety is…

I have GERD. Prior to properly getting diagnosed I went through a bunch of tests and episodes because the sensations manifested as heart-attack-like symptoms. I can tell you the anxiety produced was, ... palpable.

see gutsense.org, maybe it helps.

also helped me to eat more gelatine (one teaspoon in the morning), seemingly the body can work these amino acids very fast and it sounds crazy but I felt the effects within a day. The main problem didn't go away for a long time, but a lot of small side issues went away.

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