Anxiety and Amino Acids

There is no doubt about it, that whereas not very much is known about the causes of anxiety by science, supplements like amino acids do help.

In addition transcendental meditation would have to help too, as during meditation we can ignore for a while the ambient stresses of life, and have more time to examine our mental processes. Let's face it we create unhealthy mental patterns, which if allowed to grow, manifest as mental illness. In buddhism three personality types are identified. They are the aversive type, the greedy type and ignorance. The essence of buddhist teaching is that we let go of our habits and petty defenses and live in the here and now leading to a different sort of happiness.

As far as the amino acids go, glutamine increases mental alertness and elevates mood. Arginine can produce a similar result not only through its improvement of mental health by increasing circulation (to the body and the brain), but probably more so by increasing growth hormone levels.

Other amino acids which affect the brain even more directly are tyrosine, tryptophan, and d-phenylalanine. For example tyrosine is a precursor to dopamine (for mental alertness - but so is iron!), adrenalin and noradrenalin, T3 and T4 the thyroid hormones, melatonin the sleep hormone, and melanin skin for pigmentation. Just think about that! You wouldn't want to be deficient in tyrosine would you?

At the end of the day, you might want to learn a lot about nutrition, as mental health and nutrition are tightly interwoven. Then you might start peeling off the layers of pretension in your life, and find the real you. No need to be anxious! Even death is not to be feared, so why worry?

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