Very little progress is possible without addressing diet. In fact many professionals believe that addressing diet is the total cure for overcoming panic and anxiety. However, you'll find in the upcoming parts of the program that there are many factors that get intertwined. In future parts I'll be addressing those.
Let's begin with diet. I dislike being redundant, but let me again say, diet is the foundation of improvement and without it we can not expect any improvement.
The biggest dietary mistake is a high refined carbohydrate diet consisting of bagels, rolls, breads, cakes, coffee and sodas containing caffeine. Why?
Refined sugars from these types of foods easily break down to blood sugar causing a rapid rise of blood sugar--as much as 50 calories/minute. This rapid increase in blood sugar is sensed by the pancreas which counters it with the creation of insulin which
reduces the sugar in the blood. Under normal conditions the blood sugar would stabilize, however, after years and years the system is overtaxed and causes an over abundance of insulin to be created. This over abundance causes the blood sugar to drop too low which is the condition known as hypoglycemia.
If you google hypoglycemia you'll find a page full of symptoms which include nervousness, jitteriness, shortness of breadth, anxiety, increased heart rate, palpitations... which is why many professionals treat anxiety with diet alone. And if it were not for other learned complications--conditioning--from months, years, decades of having anxiety, this might well be all that's required.
To get started, you are best to eliminate all forms of white-white bread, bagels, rolls, cakes, white potatoes, white processed rice, sugar. And of course stay away from anything with caffeine. Avoid fructose. I would not suggest artificial sweeteners. Stevia is the best natural sweetener and is available in health food stores everywhere. It's an herb from Paraguay .
Eat nuts, meats, eggs, nonprocessed cheese, vegetables, and consume only breads made of whole grains. Use natural sweeteners such as honey sparingly. And at first, avoid consuming more than one portion of fruit a day.
Because you may have nutritionally stressed your body, I recommend a multivitamin such as RainBow Light's Complete Nutritional System--available in most health food stores or you can order it at http://www.dstressdoc.com/complete-nutritional-system.htm.
Minerals have likewise been depleted--especially calcium. The best calcium/mineral supplement is in ionic form such as a product called Xooma also available at
www.Xoomaworldewide.com/powerfulwater and you can read more about this fantastic product at: http://www.dstressdoc.com/alkaline-coral-calcium.htm. Contact me at knic@comcast.net for more information.