It's Not All in Your Head

The root causes of anxiety can often be found in the body. Here’s what you can do about it

- By Ellen Vora. Photographs by Michael Reaves, Eugene Mymrin and Getty

Symptoms of anxiety and mental health disorders have grown threefold between 2019 and 2020 according to the Centers for Disease Control, fueled in large part by COVID-19. The pandemic has made lockdowns, remote work and learning and social distancing commonplace. Adjusting to what has begun to feel, for many, like a never-ending series of triggers, today’s “new normal” needs a new approach. Functional medicine psychiatrist Ellen Vora, MD has just that, which she shares in her new book, the anatomy of anxiety (Harper Wave, March). Vora uses a holistic approach, one that takes into account ways that environment and diet can trigger and exacerbate physical symptoms, successfully curbing some anxiety without medication. In this excerpt from her book, Vora explains how to characterize different types of anxiety and how some simple fixes can lead to significant improvements in anxiety levels—something we can all benefit from.

SOME THREE HUNDRED million people worldwide struggle with an anxiety disorder, and this staggering figure has only worsened as we enter our third year of the pandemic. During COVID-19, the number of people reporting symptoms of anxiety and depression skyrocketed by an extraordinary 270 percent, as researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation found when comparing 2019 to 2021. But most of us don’t need to see the statistics to know we’re in an epidemic of anxiety—we feel it closing in around us, in the form of our own anxiety and that of our friends, family, children, coworkers and our fellow denizens of the internet.