Normally, anxiety is a healthy response to stress. Anxiety can help you overcome pressures at work, efficiently study for a test, focus on schoolwork, increase concentration and motivation, and help you triumph over difficult tasks. Anxiety can be a great coping mechanism; however, it can also be an immobilizing disorder. Therapies and treatments are effective and available now more than ever, and can help you live a dynamic, rewarding life.

Anxiety disorders vary from mild feelings of fear and apprehension to extreme and debilitating feelings of panic and dread. Often, these severe feelings of terror are irrational and groundless and can disrupt your daily responsibilities and diminish your quality of life. More than 40 million Americans are affected by anxiety disorders each year.

Types of anxiety disorders include:

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) – chronic, unwarranted, and inflated worry accompanied by symptoms of muscle tension, sweating, trembling, sleeplessness, fatigue, headaches, and irritability.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) – uncontrollable, unwelcome, repetitive, and interfering thoughts and rituals that consume daily life.
Panic Disorder – acute, rigorous, and unbearable assaults of terror that strike unexpectedly and swiftly, accompanied by symptoms of dizziness, chest pain, shortness of breath, pounding heart, nausea, shivering, numbness, chills, hot flashes, peculiar feelings of unreality, and a fear of dying.
Phobias – (e.g. agoraphobia and social phobia) illogical fears of certain things or situations that can put unreasonable limits on life and set off feelings of extreme anxiety accompanied by symptoms of trembling, sweating, and pounding heart, as well as, panic attacks.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – feelings of intense anxiety that stem from living through a traumatic event such as rape, war, abuse, natural disasters, kidnappings, hostage situations, car accidents, and plane crashes. Symptoms include: flashbacks, emotional deadness, nightmares, depression, insomnia, exhaustion, inability to concentrate, panic attacks, and being easily distracted, startled, and angered. Often, people suffering from PTSD have trouble holding a job, keeping relationships, and carrying out daily responsibilities.

A Rat Brain's Secret to Stress: Exercise may equal less stress From Stress Relief, a New York Times article by Gretchen Reynolds Researchers have made a significant breakthrough about how exercise may make the brain more impervious to stress. For some time scientists have known that exercise fuels the creation of new brain cells; however, it was still unclear how the new brain cells could behave differently from other brain cells and how exercise could influence anxiety and other mental states directly. By examining the brains of active and inactive rats researchers found that in stressful situations the brains of exercised rats appeared calmer than the brains of unexercised rats. It seems that research is cracking the answer to why exercise decreases stress. Go here to read this article in full.