Imagine you are a cavewoman (or caveman) and you are scanning the land, hunting your next meal. Suddenly you hear a rustle and it’s a lion! Now you’re running away, heart racing, sweaty palms, and your breathing speeds up-because your body feels you are in trouble and it’s using all its might to protect you. You’re not thinking about dinner anymore—you’re focused on survival.
That exact response is anxiety, in its most ancient, primal form. It’s your body’s built-in “Panic! This is your alarm” system, and it’s designed to protect you from danger. Even today, thousands of years later, our nervous system is still wired the same way. The only difference really is that these days the lion has been replaced with a million Whatsapps, money stress, traffic, social pressure, kids schedules, and just life in general.
This rush of fear or unease comes from a small part of your brain called the amygdala. It constantly scans your environment for threats, whether it’s real or imagined. When it detects danger, stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol get released. These chemicals help you fight, flee or freeze, whatever it takes to survive the threat. The problem? In modern life, we don’t burn off that energy by running from predators. So we end up feeling the effects of anxiety which are tight chest, racing thoughts, digestive issues as examples without the resolution that physical danger used to bring.
Stress is your response to external pressures like a work deadline or morning jam. It usually passes once the situation resolves. Anxiety however, is more persistent. It can feel like fear without a clear cause or it may linger long after the stressor is gone. A little anxiety is normal. It can even help sharpen your focus and keep you alert. But when it becomes overwhelming, chronic, debilitating, or interferes with daily life, it may be part of an anxiety disorder.
Anxiety can look like this:
- Racing thoughts or spiralling worry
- Sleep issues
- Stomach upsets or digestive problems
- Muscle tension or headaches
- Feeling easily overwhelmed, irritable and/or disconnected
So what can you do?
There is some good news- just like you can train your muscles, you can train your nervous system. Here are a few little ways to help your body feel safe again:
- Breathe like a cavewoman at rest. Long, slow exhales activate your parasympathetic nervous system (your calm state). Try- in for 4 seconds, out for 6 seconds. Repeat for a few minutes when you feel anxious.
- Move your body. Your body was built to move! Movement is one of the best ways to burn off excess stress hormones. Walk, stretch, swim, dance or do any strength training to help your body get rid of any toxic stress.
- Eat to support your brain. Stable blood sugar = stable mood. Include healthy fats (yes, fats), fibre and protein in your meals. Nutrients like magnesium, B vitamins and omega-3s are especially calming for the nervous system. More on this below.
- Rest like you mean it. Your brain needs downtime. Good sleep, less screen time and real relaxation (not just scrolling) help regulate anxious thoughts
- Talk about it. You’re not alone. Therapy, journaling or chatting with someone you trust can shift anxiety from a chaotic swirl into something you can understand and manage. Often anxious thoughts feel like a messy, knotted ball of wool and talking them through to gently untangle the threads, turns these knots into a neat, soft ball of yarn you can actually work with.
At Sally-Ann Creed we want you to know anxiety isn’t a flaw. It’s a feature of your beautifully protective, slightly overreactive brain. The same system that helped your ancestors outrun lions now needs your help adjusting to traffic, emails and deadlines.
“Anxiety is not a disease-it’s a signal. Your body is trying to tell you something important: that you need safety, rest, or a change.”
Dr. Nicole LePera, holistic psychologist
Magnesium
Why do you see “magnesium” everywhere you go or every time you open up social media? Is it the incredible nutrient that it’s played out to be? Absolutely!!
- It’s involved in over 300 enzymatic reactions
- It regulates cardiac rhythm
- Muscle movements, nerve function, DNA repair and so much more
A few quick facts:
- Magnesium is stored in our bones (50-60%), muscles (30%) and in our brain and other tissues (10-20%).
- The recommended daily intake for females over 19 is 240-360 mg and for males is 240-420 mg.
- Pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, dark choc, spinach and beans and oats are all really nice sources of magnesium.
But the focus of this article is on magnesium’s role in anxiety and stress, in particular how magnesium helps your body respond to and recover from stress. When you’re stressed (whether physically, mentally or emotionally) your body burns through magnesium more rapidly. Low magnesium levels can increase the production of stress hormones like cortisol, which in turn can worsen feelings of anxiety, fatigue and irritability.
In fact, one fascinating study found that 45% of stressed individuals had a magnesium deficiency at baseline.
Even more interesting? Magnesium deficiency symptoms and stress symptoms often look exactly the same. Anxiety, fatigue, low mood, irritability, tight muscles, poor sleep, all can stem from either stress or low magnesium or both.
Low magnesium → more sensitive to stress → stress uses up even more magnesium → repeat.
The sciency bit:
Magnesium helps regulate the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis of your body’s central stress response system. In other words, it helps you shift from fight-or-flight back into rest-and-repair. When your brain senses danger (even if it’s just traffic), your hypothalamus releases Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) to tell your pituitary to make adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) which tells your adrenal glands to release cortisol, your main stress hormone.
Here’s where magnesium is really great:
- Magnesium calms the part of your brain that sounds the stress alarm, so your body doesn’t jump to full alert so quickly (Magnesium moderates NMDA receptors in the hypothalamus, so less CRH is released at the start of the cascade.)
- It helps your brain pass on the stress message in a more balanced way (In the pituitary, magnesium keeps cells from overreacting to CRH, preventing an oversized ACTH surge)
- Magnesium helps your adrenal glands release cortisol in a more measured way, avoiding a flood of stress hormones (t influences adrenal enzymes so cortisol release is more measured, not a full‑blown flood)
- It supports the feedback loop that tells your body, “Okay, danger’s passed you can relax now.” (By supporting glucocorticoid receptors, magnesium helps cortisol feedback work smoothly so your system shuts down the stress response faster.)
- Magnesium also supports your brain’s natural calming system (GABA), helping you feel more steady and less reactive.
- Magnesium helps your stress system respond appropriately (not excessively) and switch off sooner. That means fewer meltdowns, better sleep and more resilience in everyday chaos.
