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Last Updated: Aug 6th, 2008 - 09:50:39 |
Anxiety Disorders
Anxiety disorders are serious medical illnesses that affect approximately 19 million American adults.1 These disorders fill people's lives with overwhelming anxiety and fear. Unlike the relatively mild, brief anxiety caused by a stressful event such as a business presentation or a first date, anxiety disorders are chronic, relentless, and can grow progressively worse if not treated.
Facts about Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is characterized by 6 months or more of chronic, exaggerated worry and tension that is unfounded or much more severe than the normal anxiety most people experience. People with this disorder usually expect the worst; they worry excessively about money, health, family, or work, even when there are no signs of trouble. They are unable to relax and often suffer from insomnia. Many people with GAD also have physical symptoms, such as fatigue, trembling, muscle tension, headaches, irritability or hot flashes. Fortunately, through research supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and by industry, effective treatments have been developed to help people with GAD.
Gene Hunting
Many years of research have demonstrated that vulnerability to mental illnesses?such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, early-onset depression, anxiety disorders, autism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder?has a genetic component. It is now clear that these disorders are not due to a single defective gene, but to the joint effects of many genes acting together with nongenetic factors.1,2,3 Despite the daunting complexity, progress is being made. Researchers are hunting genes because they are likely to be a vital key to deciphering what goes wrong in the brain in mental illness.
Anxiety Disorders
Anxiety is a normal reaction to stress. It helps one deal with a tense situation in the office, study harder for an exam, keep focused on an important speech. In general, it helps one cope. But when anxiety becomes an excessive, irrational dread of everyday situations, it has become a disabling disorder.
Facts About Anxiety Disorders
Most people experience feelings of anxiety before an important event such as a big exam, business presentation, or first date. Anxiety disorders, however, are illnesses that fill people's lives with overwhelming anxiety and fear that are chronic, unremitting, and can grow progressively worse. Tormented by panic attacks, obsessive thoughts, flashbacks of traumatic events, nightmares, or countless frightening physical symptoms, some people with anxiety disorders even become housebound. Fortunately, through research supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), there are effective treatments that can help.
What Causes Asthma ?
It is not clear exactly what makes the airways of people with asthma inflamed in the first place. Your inflamed airways may be due to a combination of things. We know that if other people in your family have asthma, you are more likely to develop it. New research suggests exposures early in your life (like tobacco smoke, infections, and some allergens) may be important.
Phobic anxiety increases heart disease death risk among women
Women with phobic anxieties, such as the fear of crowded places, heights or going outside are at higher risk for fatal heart disease than women with fewer or no anxieties, according to a report in today’s Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
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