Living with such a pervasive and subjective sickness as anxiety is never a walk in the park. Besides all the uncomfortable symptoms, you probably feel misunderstood and marginalized… in fact, you will easily misunderstand and marginalize yourself, unless you can keep a good perspective on what you’re going through. Anxiety can be the source of many physical sicknesses, but many sicknesses can also ignite anxiety, such as lupus for example. There’s an interplay between your psychological and physical states that you should be attentive to, if you want to be healthy and live to old age.
Recent studies have demonstrated that women with lupus are much more likely to develop mood and anxiety disorders, compared to healthy women. Other studies demonstrate that people suffering from severe anxiety can develop symptoms similar to lupus. This is why we always advise anxiety sufferers to begin their treatment by checking with a medical doctor and doing a full check-up: because even though anxiety can source a wide range of physical and psychological conditions, the reverse is also true. So it’s always best to check with your doctor beforehand and get all the appropriate exams. Once your doctors clearly tells you there’s nothing wrong with your health on a physical levels, you will know where you have to focus your efforts.
You should be serious about managing your anxiety, because if you don’t it might set off serious diseases in the long run of which lupus is indeed a valid example. As a matter of fact, debating whether certain conditions lead to others is much like debating if the chicken came before the egg… very much pointless. Anxiety certainly goes hand in hand with many diseases, but it’s possible to hinder the advance of anxiety and its counterpart sicknesses by making some fundamental lifestyle changes.
Before doing anything else, you have got to get rid of the it’s just anxiety mindset. Because overcoming anxiety might just be the single most important decision you make in your life.
Once you feel you’re ready to change your life around, there are some general guidelines you should strive towards: get more exercise, find new hobbies, exclude stimulants from your diet, and try to embrace you anxiety rather than opposing it. Anxiety is just a reaction to something that’s not right in your body and soul. You will find much higher odds of success trying to understand what makes you anxious and finding ways to deal with it; if you merely confront your anxiety in itself, it will probably make you feel worse.
If you’re worried you may have a serious condition such as lupus, talk with your doctor about it; in all circumstance, you should know that people with anxiety disorders can show the same symptoms as people with lupus, without necessarily having auto-immune problems.
In the same way, keep in mind that the obsessions that come along with anxiety are self-fulfilling prophecies. If you dwell in those dark thoughts for too long without taking action to reclaim your well-being, there’s a real chance you’ll end up becoming sick in your body, as well as your mind.
