Generally, doctors and specialists define anxiety as being in a trance of worries and fears about an ambiguous future.

This spell comes from a fixation on an anticipated event, either realistic or made up. People in this state can become impaired physically and psychologically.

Anxiety becomes a disorder when it prevents people from living a normal life.

Types of anxiety disorders

Four common anxiety disorders include:

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)

Patients with GAD excessively worry about daily problems, such as physical and mental health, finances, careers and their home life. They could also have trouble sleeping, and muscle cramping or tension.

Panic disorder

Patients experience an unanticipated, intense feeling of danger without actually being at risk. Symptoms often mimic a heart attack.

Social phobia

Patients feel overly judged by their peers and become embarrassed more often. They feel overly self-conscious about themselves in any social situation. They often will exhibit panic attack symptoms.

Specific phobias

Patients have a strong fear of something that poses a threat to them or is made up. Common phobias include heights, water, animals, or situational examples. They can have a panic attack or extreme anxiety over these phobias, sometimes without experiencing it; they can just think about it.

Determining which anxiety disorder you might have can be difficult. Many symptoms overlap or mimic some from a different disorder.

Five symptoms you shouldn't ignore

Fortunately, there are common symptoms of all anxiety disorders. Contact your doctor if you experience one or more of these symptoms:

1. Excessive worry

The main symptom of an anxiety disorder is worrying. You can worry about everyday things, big or small. It also involves having anxious feelings that persist throughout the week or last for months.

Worrying becomes unwarranted when it prevents you from going through your daily routine. This can also be accompanied by physical symptoms, such as muscle aches or tiredness.

2. D isrupted sleep patterns

Naturally, you'll be nervous the night before an important interview or a final exam. What distinguishes normal nighttime worries and anxiety from normalcy is the frequency.

If you find yourself lying awake in bed multiple nights a week with agitated or worrisome thoughts, you might have an anxiety disorder. These thoughts can be about real problems or about nothing.

Another clue: if you wake up with a racing heart or mind and are unable to calm yourself.

3. Muscle tension

Continuous muscle tension is often associated with anxiety disorders. Muscle tension can include, but is not limited to, jaw clenching, raising your shoulders, making fists, or moving various muscles throughout your body.

This symptom can be so persistent that it becomes part of your daily life. If you've had these tendencies for a long time, you may not even notice them anymore.

Exercise can help manage your muscle tensions if you need a quick solution for it.

4. Persistent indigestion

Anxiety doesn't just affect your mind; it can also spread to other parts of your body and cause physical issues.

"Anxiety can worsen symptoms of abdominal cramps and pain and make you literally feel sick to your stomach," according to the ADAA.

People with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) sometimes suffer from anxiety, which can worsen IBS symptoms.

5. Panic attacks

Panic attacks happen when you feel overwhelmingly fearful and hopeless with physical symptoms, such as a racing heartbeat, chest pain, hot or cold flashes, light-headedness, and sweating. These episodes can last for several minutes.

You might dread when your next attack will happen and try to elude places where previous ones occurred.

Don't be afraid to reach out

If the symptoms above describe you and your situation, you are likely dealing with anxiety. See your doctor or a specialist to help you with the proper treatment plan. Reaching out will only get you on track to managing your symptoms so you can live life the way you want.

The post Do you know what anxiety really feels like? 5 signs you may have it appeared first on FamilyToday.

Smoking is bad for you. We all know that, and yet according to the Centers for Disease Control, approximately 15 percent of all Americans over the age of 18 smoke cigarettes.

The CDC also notes that cigarette smoking is directly or indirectly responsible for one in every five deaths each year. Contrary to popular belief, not all those deaths are related to lung disease. As it turns out, this habit directly (and negatively) impacts your entire body:

1. Circulation and heart disease

Your circulatory system is responsible for carrying blood to and from your heart. When we talk about keeping our circulatory systems healthy, we tend to focus on diet and exercise. However, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute points out that smoking is a major risk factor for heart disease.

The chemicals found in cigarettes can cause plaque to build up in your arteries. This can lead to a condition known as atherosclerosis, more commonly called "hardening of the arteries."

If enough plaque builds up on the walls of your arteries, you may experience a blockage. Depending on where it's located and how big the blockage is, it may lead to chest pain, a heart attack or a stroke.

2. Reproduction and fertility

If you want to have children, you should pay special attention to this side effect of smoking. Did you know that smoking cigarettes can negatively impact the fertility of both men and women?

Human fertility is dependent upon good circulation. Smoking a cigarette means letting 7,000 chemicals spread through your entire body, inhibiting that circulation. In men, smoking (or even second-hand smoke) can damage blood vessels, leading to a reduced sperm count, hormonal issues and even lead to complete infertility.

For women, the risks are just as great. The chemicals found in cigarettes can affect your cycle, disrupt ovulation and even damage your reproductive organs. If you do manage to get pregnant while smoking, you'll have an increased risk of experiencing a miscarriage - and your baby will have a higher risk of serious health problems, too.

3. Stomach

The chemicals found in cigarettes are not good for your digestive system and can lead to deadly health problems.

For example, your chances of developing cancer of the stomach or esophagus are more than doubled if you smoke cigarettes.

Likewise, smokers are far more likely to develop gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD, than non-smokers. Smoking relaxes the esophagus, increases the acidity of your stomach and reduces salivation, all of which can cause GERD.

4. Bones

As women and men age, their bones become increasingly brittle and porous. We all experience it, but smoking cigarettes can speed up the process and cause osteoporosis.

Smoking impacts your bones' strength in two ways. First, it reduces your body's ability to absorb calcium, a mineral that's essential for bone building. Second, it reduces estrogen, something that both men and women need to help their bones hold onto calcium and other minerals.

The longer you smoke, the more likely it is that you'll end up with brittle, breakable bones as you age.

5. Brain

Smoking can damage your brain, making it dependent upon nicotine and increasing the chances that you'll experience a stroke or aneurysm.

We already talked about arterial blockages and smoking, so you know that having a stroke is a real possibility for smokers. However, it's also true that smoking is the single biggest risk factor for developing aneurysms - a bulging of the blood vessel - in the brain. If this aneurysm bursts, it can be deadly.

Smoking is particularly dangerous if you already carry one of several gene variations; having one of these genes can make it five times as likely you'll develop an aneurysm. However, "even if you have the gene, you can dramatically affect your risk by not smoking. If you smoke, you are multiplying the effect of the gene," says Joseph P. Broderick, M.D.

6. Skin

Skin is the human body's largest organ. It can be easy to forget that, but the truth is that smoking can cause damage to your skin and cause you to look years older than your age.

Here are just a few of the ways that smoking can affect your skin:

It can cause bags underneath your eyes
It can cause premature wrinkles
It can greatly increase your chance of developing psoriasis
It can make it harder for wounds to heal and easier for scars to form
It can make you susceptible to human papillomavirus, which causes warts
One of the best ways to protect your skin and keep its healthy glow is to quit smoking.

Ready to Quit?

As you can see, smoking is not just bad for your lungs. The chemicals in cigarettes and the process of smoking them can damage your whole body from your head to your toes.

The good news is that if you quit, you can expect to see rapid improvements in your health. So, what are you waiting for? Put down that pack and get ready to reclaim your healthy today!

The post Six things smoking is doing to your whole body appeared first on FamilyToday.

Many people get frequent headaches and usually don't pay any attention to them. If you can take something over the counter to eliminate the pain, you may never bother speaking with your physician about it.

However, when it comes to pain and other side effects (like fatigue, dizziness, or nausea) that accompany your headache, it might be time to think more seriously about such a "common" pain.

While we don't have to schedule a doctor's appointment every time we have an ache or pain, frequent headaches may not always be as they seem. The nagging pain that you continuously feel in your head could be caused by an oral health condition.

Dental pain and headaches have a lot in common. When pain is in the nerves and muscles that go throughout our face and neck, it can cause pain and discomfort to form a loop, making it hard to detect where the problem started. Your headache could trigger discomfort in the jaw or neck area or vice versa.

The trigeminal nerve

With a headache or a toothache, the pain transmits from one sole source (known as the trigeminal nerve). It's the most significant sensory nerve located in our head and causes us to feel pain from our external face, teeth, jaw, scalp, and other intra-oral areas. If pain occurs in one part of the nerve, it's likely that the same sensation will happen in different branches of the nerve - so, a continuous toothache can easily cause you to experience a severe headache.

The confusing pain connection

Jaw clenching or muscle tightening in the face can also cause headache pain, due to the high level of interconnectivity between the external and internal parts of your head.

If you clench your teeth, you'll notice an instant connection with your neck muscles. Patients who experience a neck injury will tend to hold their tension in their teeth, leading to pain in the jaw muscle (and related headache pain).

Another factor that makes it challenging to locate the source of head, neck or oral pain is that headaches don't have any physical signs or symptoms. If you're receiving treatment for migraines, sinus headaches, or tension headaches, and the medication is not helping, talk to a dentist to check if there are any underlying oral conditions - you may be diagnosed with TMJ or TMD.

Learning about TMJ and TMD

When you are dealing with headaches, ongoing migraines, or overall facial pain, you could have a condition known as TMJ or TMD. Both situations involve the temporomandibular or TM joints (located on either side of your head). These joints help the muscles, ligaments, bones, and joints in your face work as they should.

TMD (or Temporomandibular disorders) can happen when your TM joints aren't working properly, causing you to experience various types of pain.

Confusing them with a headache

More than 15 percent of Americans suffer from chronic facial pain, including jaw pain, earaches, and severe headaches, caused by TM disorders. And while the discomfort may be temporary, it can come and go for years without being correctly diagnosed.

The exact cause of TMD is very unclear. However, some dentists agree that it could be from:

• Grinding or clenching of the teeth

• Injury to the jaw or head

• Dislocating of the jaw

• Stress that leads to clenching of the facial muscles

• Forms of arthritis present in the RA or OA joints

TMJ and TMD are serious conditions. If left untreated, it could lead to other medical conditions such as malnutrition, eating disorders, or tinnitus. It could also cause the jaw to lock involuntarily, which could cause you to choke if you are eating at the time.

If you're noticing additional side effects to your headaches, you may find that your head pain is the direct result of issues with your oral health (and a range of other severe conditions). Be sure to consult with your doctor if you have any concerns about ongoing headaches and talk to your dentist about a possible TM disorder.

The post Is your headache just a headache? Or something more serious? appeared first on FamilyToday.