Food and Fear – How Food Gives You Anxiety and Stress

Are you careful about the kind of fuel you put into your car to insure it runs efficiently? If so, are you as careful about the kind of fuel you put into your body to ensure it runs efficiently? Probably not, if you are the average person. Yet, if we lack proper nutrition, our whole nervous system can be thrown out of whack.

How Food Makes You Anxious & Stressful:

It’s well known that what you eat directly and importantly impacts your body’s functioning and your subsequent experience of well being. In fact, some people refer to food as a drug.

When you are allergic to a food, fighting off the allergy puts stress on your immune system. If your anxiety level is high, your immune system is already stressed; your weakened immune in turn induces more stress, which also increases the likelihood that you have food allergies of which you are perhaps unaware.

According to Douglas Hunt (No More Fears, Warner, 1988), in some cases, food allergies can trigger panic like symptoms. He describes one woman who panicked after eating tomatoes, another after eating peanuts.

If you are a junk food addict, or if chronic stress and anxiety leave you forever prepped to flee, not allowing you to properly absorb the nutrients in the foods that you do eat, you may be missing out on essential nutrients necessary to master your fears. Moreover, when under stress, your need for vitamins and minerals increases.

According to Dr. Douglas Hunt, the following are essential anxiety smashers:

B vitamins and Vitamin C
The mineral calcium
The amino acids gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and glutamine

Fear Forum

“The combined assault of chemicals, excessive pollens, dusts, and molds with excessive intake of sugar, milk, yeast, or wheat can overload one’s body to the breaking point.” — Douglas Hunt, M.D. in No More Fears.

He suggests that food allergies can trigger panic like symptoms and that food supplements can bring fast relief from frightening panic attacks and even stave off an attack.

Take just one of these nutrients, vitamin 131, on which the efficiency of your hypothalamus depends. When stress overloads the hypothalamus, for example, in the case of a prolonged infection like mononucleosis or hepatitis, a serious fever, heavy anesthesia during surgery, or extended grief, B1 gets depleted.

The normal person, explains Hunt, will eventually bounce back, though it takes time. But if you are fear-prone and easily overwhelmed by stress, thiamine metabolism in the hypothalamus may never catch up. If you also smoke, drink alcohol, or eat excessive carbohydrates, essential vitamin and minerals are further exhausted.