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Healthy Habits
Anxiety, Worry and Fear
Chemistry is an interesting subject. The pursuit of scientific inquiry in the chemical realm is to find out what combinations of items are put together to create what things. At the heart of the chemical world are things called molecules and elements. The elements combine to create the molecules that then combine to create all physical things. Physical things, in many respects, are the topic of choice in another branch of science called physics.
Physics is an equally interesting subject. Physics is a scientific topic related to the action of the physical things made by the chemical parts discussed earlier. After probing deeper and deeper to find out why certain things acted the way they do, physicists entered the chemistry world once again to find out what these elements and molecules were made of. In this respect, chemistry and physics are intertwined.
This discussion is not meant to be a scientific one, yet in order to impress upon the reader the importance of the topic for this column there needs to be some support for what is going to be presented. Taking what we know about the world, we can say that all things are chemical and physical in nature. Even the things we cannot see with our eyes, like the air, have a chemical component with a physical nature. Its components can be described and its behaviour can be predicted. Although these qualities may only be at the microscopic level, they still exist. Why is this important, you may ask, when looking at anxiety, worry and fear? That is a great question.
In the body, every health care problem can be broken down into a chemical or a physical or a psychological problem. Knowing that at some level the chemical and physical problems can become one, it needs to be questioned if the psychological problems are also at one with the physical and chemical at some level. Ask any health care provider and the answer will most likely be a resounding yes. Anxiety, worry and fear are prime examples of this relationship.
Most people can tell you that when they are anxious, their stomach feels upset. When some people worry, they become physically restless while others are physically incapacitated. When in fear, their hearts race and they sweat. This much is obvious. Looking deeper, however, how much are these emotional or psychological states actually effecting you on the microscopic physical and chemical levels? This deep intertwining of these three components has been the subject of much scientific interest for hundreds of years, and continues to challenge the health care field in many ways.
We have all heard that being anxious about the present, worrying about the past and having fear of the future are not healthy. Are we all aware of what negative implications these actions have on our overall health and the future of our bodies? The "glue" that holds all things together is some type of universal energy that all scientists have a hard time describing. This "glue" is also what provides life to humans in a way that non-living things such as rocks could never possess. Although this seems obvious, to a scientist it is hard to understand the difference when all the elements, molecules and "glue" are apparently the same, except that elusive component called Life.
When we are anxious, become worried or develop a fear it appears that living creatures take the resulting problems to a new level. A level that exceeds the simple chemical and physical changes because it also interrupts the very "glue" that holds us together. It impairs our thoughts, our energy, our ability to heal and our life as a whole. Most of us realize that anxiety, worry and fear have little to do with a healthy life yet we continue to let them pervade our daily lives. The complexity of the issue I have tried to describe may or may not be clear, that's how complicated the issue becomes. Sometimes it is difficult to put into words that which we need to understand most. Hopefully, it has simply made you think a little bit more of what you are anxious about, what you are worried about and what your fears are.
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