Anxiety is one of those chronic conditions that is easy to ignore (in its milder forms) or post-pone dealing with even when it is obviously affecting your life (in moderate to severe forms). This is because it’s not life threatening, at least not immediately so. It is also because people who have anxiety have often had it for most of their life and they’ve learned little tricks to cope with it without even fully realizing what they’re doing.

The problem is that anxiety can very seriously affect every aspect of your health if you don’t deal with it in a way that actually eliminates it. Coping techniques may help you get by but they are not going to eliminate the ill effects on your physical health – and your emotional health.

Anxiety creates a “stress response” in your body which means that your body produces large amounts of the hormone cortisol. In the last few years there has been a flurry of research evaluating all the negative effects cortisol can have on the body. Occasional bursts of cortisol won’t do any noticeable harm. However, elevated levels of cortisol over an extended periods of time, as is often found in people who suffer from anxiety, can have severe effects on your health.

Here are some of the more common effects of elevated cortisol: heart disease, diabetes, joint damage, compromised immunity, and sleep deprivation.

These are all very serious conditions that cuts your lifespan but as much as 15 years on average. These are also debilitating diseases that greatly decrease the overall quality of your life. Dealing with your anxiety in a way that actually cures permanently the condition is a way of increasing your lifespan and also greatly enhancing the quality of your life.

This may seem like a weird analogy at first but someone who does not deal with their anxiety is sort of like a person who fails to do general maintenance on a car. It doesn’t make much difference when the car is brand new but as the car ages, it takes an increasing toll on the car and it will eventually kill it (like the engine in my car that blew up when i never changed the oil when I was very young).

You can get away with ignoring your anxiety for only so long before it WILL take its toll on your body. The sooner you take care of it the better chance you’ll have to prevent the detrimental effects it can have on your health.

There is no reason you should wait any longer. There are natural remedies that DO work and that have no side effects like many of the prescription pills on the market.