In my early twenties, I suffered from really bad anxiety. I’m talking debilitating panic attacks. Tightness in chest, couldn’t breathe, heart palpitations, racing heart.

I tried to manage it as best I could, but it only got progressively worse to the point where I had to take time off work. I could not drive on a highway and eventually I could not even be alone for a few minutes. At the time, I was living on my own and my parents were in a different city.

At my lowest point, my parents came to town and rented a hotel room to take care of me. I couldn’t handle being in my own apartment anymore but I couldn’t handle being in public either. I stayed locked up in that hotel room with my parents by my side until I could get it together again. I was literally like Marge in that episode of the Simpsons where she gets mugged and develops agoraphobia.

I sought conventional treatments and made progress but it was always a struggle. I also started researching alternative therapies and became very interested in holistic health. I started supplementing, ate more whole foods, started doing yoga, etc.

However, the game-changer for me was when I got an IgG food sensitivity test done and found out I had an “extremely high” sensitivity to almonds. This was eye-opening to me as I was regularly consuming almonds: almond butter, almond milk, massive bags of tamari almonds from Costco… oops.

I quit the almonds right away and, no joke, the anxiety improved exponentially. That’s when I discovered the real power of food.

Since then, I listen more closely to my body and pay better attention to what I feed it. I’ve noticed it often tells me what it needs or doesn’t need. The challenge is sometimes figuring out what that is

Hope this helps!

M.

PS – By no means am I suggesting that we should all stop eating almonds and anxiety will be eradicated from this earth – or that managing anxiety is this simplistic. What I learned and want to share is that the food we eat is an integral part of our health and it should never be overlooked as a possible trigger.

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