Can anxiety/stress really cause pins and needles and other very odd symptoms?
Anxiety can cause symptoms that many people regard as strange. Anxiety responses are mediated by the sympathetic branch of the autonomic part of the nervous system. When you become anxious, adrenalin is secreted and this will cause changes to your heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate, gut function and other aspects of your physiology. Basically your body is being made ready for vigorous physical activity such as running away or fighting, needing lots of energy. Humans, however, can’t always respond physically and we suffer the consequences particularly if the stress is long-term. In an anxiety-provoking situation, some people will experience panicky feelings including hyperventilation (breathing too rapidly and shallowly, affecting the relative amounts of blood gases), light-headedness, a feeling that the heart is beating much too fast and very obviously, & sometimes there is a feeling of unreality….etc. When the worst part of the experience is over, this can leave you feelin
When physical symptoms are caused by mental or emotional stress it is called ‘somatization’. For example, many people have occasional headaches caused by mental stress. But, stress and other mental health problems can cause many other physical symptoms such as: chest pains, tiredness, dizziness, back pain, feeling sick, diarrhoea, period problems, etc. The relationship between the mind and body is complex and not fully understood. When we ‘somatize’, somehow the mental or emotional problem is expressed partly, or mainly, as one or more physical symptoms. However, the symptoms are real and are not imagined. You feel the pain, have the diarrhoea, etc. It is very common. Sometimes we can relate the physical symptoms to a recent stress or to a mental health problem. For example, you may realise that a bout of neck pain or headache is due to stress. Anxiety and depression are also common reasons to develop physical symptoms such as palpitations, aches and pains, etc. Often the physical symp
