Nutrition, Diet, Music, & Exercise for Those with Anxiety Genes

What Types of Nutrition May Be of Help for Chronic Stress, Post-traumatic Symptoms, or Nervousness?

What's the 5-HTT gene got to do with agoraphobia or anxiety? How limited are future career plans when you are trapped at home for many years with agoraphobia-the fear of panicking in unfamiliar spaces?

Research at the Stoneybrook University in New York revealed that if you inherit a short version of the gene called 5-HTT, you're more likely to be predisposed to experiencing anxiety and fear or to become

depressed. It could happen after stress or a trauma, or from hormonal changes, such as the weeks following childbirth. And it could last for years. Or a person could develop "white outs" while riding the bus. Chronic anxiety with tremors when arriving at work in the morning could follow you the rest of the morning.

Other studies reveal that you also may be sensitive to carbon dioxide in the air, feeling panicky when the there's five percent carbon dioxide in the air. For people without a genetic sensitivity, the air in your environment would have to reach seven percent carbon dioxide before you'd feel anxious.

If you're chronically anxious, have panic disorder or have advanced to agoraphobia, and are afraid of leaving your home or other familiar surroundings, if you can't drive, ride in a bus without getting a white-out, or walk more than a few feet from your home without anxiety causing you to return home, tailoring your nutrition may be of help. You may not even feel depressed or be aware of any other feeling but a physical sense of dread, trembling, or numbness in your elbow.

You may panic, feel dizzy, become short of breath, hyperventilate, and go through the fight or flight syndrome. You may have adverse reactions to stress, medicines, anesthesia, or foods. You could become allergic or sensitive to loud sound effects in movie theaters, have a fear of bus travel beyond a certain point, or have white-outs while traveling, perhaps developing more frequent migraines.

You crave healing sounds in music that make you feel relaxed. Perhaps you are experiencing post traumatic stress disorder. If you don't have agoraphobia, perhaps it is sociophobia that keeps you away from opportunities to meet people and make friends. Or your stress may be from a physical condition that worsens when you talk on the phone or meet new people and have to speak in public. Or your panic may increase when you are in a group and fear that you're being singled out, judged, or discriminated against.

Sometimes you develop an increasing sensitivity to dental anesthetics. For example, you react immediately with a panic attack when given a dental injection, but can be calm when the same minor dental work, such as a deep cleaning on one tooth, is done without anesthesia.

Why do you feel anxious, get panic attacks, or become homebound for decades with agoraphobia? Hyperactivity in the brain's fear center due to the fact that you've inherited a short instead of a long 5-HTT gene could be the cause. The brain's fear center is connected to the amygdala and hippocampus.

Perhaps you have a short 5-HTT gene. Maybe you can't travel without become anxious, stressed, or panicked. Maybe you get headaches from travel or have a low stress level. Maybe you panic when you laugh or are in any way emotionally stimulated by sound, touch, sight, scent, or experience.

You may not be able to sit in a movie theater or view a play without feeling anxious from the loud sound effects or the flashing lights. You look for calming experiences. The problem is you have electrical activity in your brain.

The electrical activity is in motion all the time, even when nothing should cause fear-such as when you laugh or make love. You overreact to anything that stimulates that electrical center in your brain's fear center. It doesn't have to be anything that would cause fear to people who have inherited a long copy of the 5-HTT gene.

The world is divided between calm people with a long 5-HTT gene and anxious individuals with a short 5-HTT gene. People with a short 5-HTT gene live with constant electrical activity in their brain's fear center.

You may feel either anxiety or depression if you have a short 5-HTT gene. Look up the article reporting a study that links depression to an overactive fear center in the brain titled, "Bound for Gloom and Doom," Proceedings of the National Academy or Sciences, October 11, 2006. You can find this online at ScienceNOW Daily News. Online, check out ScienceNOW's search engine.

If left untreated, agoraphobia can burn itself out with moderate exercise, but it may take years. You need to study how your genes react to various treatments so that you don't become dependent upon the treatment and not find the cause.

If your problem is post partum anxiety or menopause, and you're concerned about hormonal imbalances on top of genetic predisposition, such as a short 5-HTT gene or defects in your autonomic nervous system inherited at birth compounded by your environment and trauma from physical, emotional, or environmental stress, or even a slight head injury years ago, work on the physiological, nutritional, and genetic causes of what is keeping you bound to your home.

Always first ask your doctor whether you're healthy enough to try out vitamins and supplements. What worked for one person may be similar or very different from what will work for you. Be sure to find out how your genes react to the buildup of certain vitamins or minerals from food supplements.

Consider taking a genetic test for adverse reactions to vitamins or other consumable items. Or if you don't want to spend any money for a test that may or may not work correctly yet, as the science is in its infancy, try out one vitamin or nutrient at a time in small amounts until you know how you react to tiny amounts before you consume the whole capsule.

Be warned that you could be allergic to any amount and have a shock reaction to anything you eat, including vitamins that come from a bottle. So if you do test yourself, start with whole foods, natural vitamins and not synthetic types.

Your doctor will tell you whether you are healthy enough to try out any vitamins or minerals that come from a bottle. Ask the doctor to tell you what you might expect such as how a certain vitamin or supplement will affect your body. For example, ask whether the vitamin or supplement you take will overstimulate your thyroid?

Are certain B complex vitamins you take over-stimulating your thyroid? Know your body type, metabolism, and genetic predispositions. Find out how fast or slow your body builds up and metabolizes vitamins, foods, and supplements in ways that might build up in your body to over stimulate glands or organs.

Are there toxic substances in the water you're drinking? Are you using a water distiller that takes out all the magnesium and calcium, and you aren't replacing those minerals in your food supplements so your body can function properly? What trace minerals are you taking?

Who else in your family had anxiety problems, migraines, or other inherited issues? Did a parent smoke, drink too much caffeine or alcohol, or take any medicines or supplements during pregnancy that might have influenced your autonomic nervous system's response to stress or other perceived changes?

When you eat fruit or sugary foods, is there a rush of insulin and adrenalin that makes you tremble with anxiety? Are the sugars in your diet worsening chronic gum disease by keeping your blood glucose level too high?

Anaerobic bacteria under the gums thrive on excess sugar and yeast in your blood. Have you looked at your reactions to food that is a combination of protein and good oils such as extra virgin olive oil and Omega 3 fish oils?

Have you discussed with your health professional whether certain foods "hit you like a bomb" and cause anxiety or other symptoms of blood sugar changes? Agoraphobia has a female-to-male ratio of 2-3:1. Social phobia is more common in females, but more males ask for treatment due to the social pressures on men to earn an income throughout adult life. Talk with health professionals that specialize in these symptoms.

Is it metabolic syndrome for you or something else? Do you have the short 5-HTT gene? Or is another part of your body giving you an important message to heed? Find out how your genes process what enters your body and how your genes and brain electro-chemistry react to stress. Stress is rapid change. Does food hit you like a bomb?

What Nutrition Helped Mrs. Xyz's Hyperinsulinism and Metabolic Syndrome

You need to tailor your foods and treatments to your own genes and work with health professionals that look at the whole person, and not solely the one symptom. No real names, she requested. So we'll call her, Mrs. Xyz who had post-partum agoraphobia soon after her first and second baby's birth.

What worked for Xyz may not work for you because your metabolic system is different from hers. Between 1965 and early 1972 Xyz was housebound with agoraphobia and panic disorder. It began after the birth of her first and second children in March 1965 and in November 1966. It resumed in 1981 to 1985 and from 1999 until 2004 when she started a better nutrition program without eating the chocolate that she craved, sugary desserts, and shell fish.

Each body type has different nutritional variations just as you have different genes that can be switched on and off by various methods. Her metabolic syndrome and agoraphobia with panic disorder, her sensitivities to carbon dioxide in the air, to dental anesthetics, and to a variety of foods and scents would be different than yours.

What set off anxiety experiences or panic attacks or the insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome that caused her to gain weight after childbirth in her belly rather than in her hips or thighs is genetic. It could be different from what sets off your physical reactions or experiences.

Sugar and too much salt, too many dairy products and too little greens were not good for my health. You are different. Keep in mind that your genes influence how food affects your body. What environmental sounds, scents, or experiences affect your panic level?

By switching to vanilla instead of chocolate desserts, and a largely vegetarian Mediterranean and Japanese diet (seaweed, salmon, whole grains, green vegetables, no caffeine, and decaf green tea with lemongrass or herb tea with blueberry leaf), she was soon able to travel by bus and walk for a half hour near her home. Caffeine and other foods were wreaking havoc causing adverse reactions as well as her growing allergy to most dental anesthetics.

More than two million people in the United States suffer from this incapacitating anxiety, a panic state, when traveling away from their homes. It's a fear that wells up when under even the slightest stress or in an unfamiliar situation.

When traditional medicine failed to help, a friend sent Xyz a book on yoga exercises and meditation. She practiced the positions with determination to help herself.

In addition to the approximately 28 Yoga postures, she used music therapy, calming ethnic music of strings, flutes, and slow drums at 60 beats per minute to bring down her naturally high adrenaline state. She also changed her diet to vegetarian and low-mercury fish such as wild (not farmed) salmon. She cut out all white sugar and salted foods, all caffeine and chocolate as she had genetically inherited hypertension from the age of eighteen.

She added raw vegetables and cut out certain starches in high amounts such as cooked potatoes and loads of cooked rice and substituted tofu, protein powder, and grapefruit pectin powder, two scoops per day. A fish and fruit diet also worked wonders and is helpful for those not strict vegetarians. Xyz's breakfast began with cooked fresh cold water fish like baked salmon in lemon juice because it's helpful to those with genetic-based hyperinsulinism and genetically high blood pressure.

Her monthly estrogen migraines also grew less painful as a result. The vitamins she took were Vitamin E in the natural form with all eight toctrienols and with 100 mg. of selenium, Vitamin C, and beta carotene, and the usual B complex vitamins found in health food stores in normal amounts fewer than 100 mg.

She also took magnesium 400 and calcium 600 to 1000 mgs. At the time Xyz was 25 years old. She's nearing age 70 now. Back then, she couldn't exercise much with agoraphobia because exercise increased the lactic acid in her body. Lactic acid creates panic attacks in persons prone to panic disorder. Exercising caused exercise asthma, hyperventilation syndrome, and panic attacks.

During pregnancy, the estrogen and progesterone levels increase dramatically in a woman's body. A pregnant woman has 200 times as much estrogen in her body than before or after pregnancy. After childbirth, that estrogen and progesterone level drops suddenly. The result for Xyz's genetic make-up, lifestyle, and nutrition resulted in panic attacks with agoraphobia and hyperventilation syndrome.

One way for Xyz to get rid of her fear of leaving the house and the panic attacks was to get pregnant again. By the third month of pregnancy with all those hormones flowing, she'd feel incredibly calm again. But she couldn't do that after childbirth when hormone levels of estrogen and progesterone plummeted.

Yoga was Xyz 's next resort. Yoga required stretching instead of the usual exercise movement that would increase her already hyper state of adrenaline and insulin in Xyz's blood. In addition, she had low blood sugar (hypoglycemia and too much insulin as she previously mentioned--(genetic hyperinsulinism).

Too much insulin from too many fast burning carbohydrates grew Xyz a protruding belly that didn't look great on her 112-120 pound average height body. Her fasting blood glucose of 84 to 86 would drop to 60 (boderline hypoglycemia-low blood sugar) when she drank two tablespoons of honey in lemon water during a fasting glucose tolerance test.

For several years Xyz was totally housebound and suffered dozens of panic attacks a day some days. Other days she'd have chronic anxiety for the entire day, and panic when she had to sit in her graduate school classroom. At the time, her evenings were spent as a graduate student in literature.

She'd tried every exercise from aerobics to belly dancing. She never learned to drive and frequently became allergic to the air in buses, trains, and as a passenger in cars. So she never traveled very far. Luckily, the supermarket and shopping centers were within two blocks.

Yoga was the only movement that relaxed her without giving Xyz exercise asthma and the tremors. The stretching of her muscles removed the lactic acid from her body in the same way that a runner stretches a leg against a tree to cool down and remove the lactic acid that builds up in the body during exercise.

The build-up of lactic acid may have been in part, causing Xyz to shake with the low blood sugar and overstimulated hyperthyroid tremors and go into a panic attack upon exercise. Too much insulin poured into her bloodstream, possibly causing the shakes.

She had been under heavy stress and had a family history of inherited anxiety passed on from generation to generation. She wondered whether the city's water she'd been living in contained mercury or rocket fuel causing her thyroid problems or whether her genes predisposed her to chronic anxiety for years after childbirth.

Persons who are biologically prone to agoraphobia and panic under the slightest stress normally are born with shy, over-aroused dominant introverted feeling) nervous systems. They often secrete a high level of catecholamines.

Their adrenaline level is frequently at a higher base level than in the average or naturally calm person. They secrete much more insulin into their blood than people who are literally immune from anxiety attacks.

On top of this, she had insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and a wide waist line with relatively narrow hips, although she had a slim, small-boned, ectomorphic body with a weight under 112 pounds after the birth of her second child. She consumed entire cheesecakes and pound boxes of chocolate with no weight gain. Forty-five years later, she weighs 125 pounds.

Sometimes the left hemisphere of the brain (high verbal intelligence) begins to fire at a different rate, faster or slower, than the right hemisphere (visual art and emotion). When the two hemispheres get out of sync, panic and shaking could occur at any time of the night or day, when you laugh or sleep, walk through the street or sit in a chair.

Stretching from the Yoga positions calmed Xyz so that she could relax and enjoy the day's events. She'd been a person with an avoidant/dependent personality type. Xyz withdrew from direct people contact and became a recluse in order to stop being emotionally, a "hot reactor."

An 'invisible' hot reactor reacts to the slightest stress not by outward anger, but inwardly and silently, by a dramatically increased blood pressure, pulse rate, and sudden, gripping fear to people and slight mental stress, even though there is no facial expression change or bodily motion to show what's narrowing or calcifying from sugar (and insulin's overabundance to sugar) on the inside.

All Xyz ended up with was the protruding pot belly of hyperinsulinism--on the thin, small-boned frame of an average-height woman. Hyperinsulinism is also called metabolic disease. In her situation, it combined with agoraphobia, panic disorder, chronic anxiety and sociophobia-fear of people, loud sounds, and ringing telephones. In her situation, outwardly, emotion is introverted, so nobody can see what you're feeling on the inside.

Sometimes closet extroverts forced to act like introverts to please introverted family members in power can help to push a genetically prone person into panic disorder. Usually, some physical stress does it, such as childbirth, surgery, or even getting married or a first job and moving out of the family.

Xyz had to change her diet to healing foods that would not further stimulate her thyroid, as sugar and simple carbohydrates were doing when they quickly turned to sugar as soon as they reached her bloodstream. An overstimulated thyroid, perhaps overstimulated by sugar, too many carbohydrates, too many B vitamins, too much tofu or soy and other items that overstimulate the thyroid also may cause the shakes and anxiety. Examples of sugary drinks overstimulating the thyroid were fruit juice, white rice, bran muffins, and bagels.

As a biological introvert, sensitive to people's actions, noise, intrusions, and words, Xyz's whole body would over react to any stress in her environment, until she had to back off and become housebound. The phone would ring and her pulse and pressure would hit the ceiling.

She'd been conditioned from early childhood that when the phone rang it usually was a relative from out of town announcing another funeral of another older extended family member. So the phone ringing signified loss.

She couldn't sit in cinema theaters as the sounds effects were so loud that they caused panic attacks. The loud effects overwhelmed Xyz's nervous system and caused panic tremors that subsided when the film or loud music had finished. Gentle string and harp music calmed her, especially Baroque music of the 17th century and new age meditation music.

Xyz didn't dare answer the phone or she'd go into hyperventilation syndrome and start breathing too fast in terror at the voice on the other end. As part of socio-phobia, she had been expending a ton of energy in response to an ounce of provocation. Xyz was afraid of everything that could elicit a physiological response. Belly dance music, if not loud, created a feeling of well-being and prayer.

To counteract her weak calming branch, the more Xyz stretched with Yoga exercises, the cooler and calmer she became. Xyz noticed that at the height of her panic attack, that she'd go into the Yoga positions and stretch her muscles. The result was a sudden sense of calm.

Qi Gong and Tai Chi helped improve Xyz's balance. She'd always had problems keeping her balance, even when young, during the post-partum phase when agoraphobia and panic disorder hit hard, keeping her housebound. She sensed the problem focused in her inner ear balancing mechanism.

Xyz hadn't realized that the amounts of vitamin B complex she took stimulated her large, fast thyroid so much that the anxiety increased even more. Vitamin B (complex) stimulates the thyroid. In Xyz's body, her particular genes allowed the vitamin to over-stimulate her thyroid because of her sensitivity to various types of vitamin B.

Xyz happens to be a slow oxidizer, and the vitamin B she took thinking it would calm her actually remained in her body and bloodstream far longer than it would be in the body of a fast oxidizer, thereby stimulating her thyroid more than it would in the body of a fast oxidizer. In that person's body, the excess vitamin would be removed more quickly.

That's why it's important to find out how your genes turn on and off in reaction to food and food supplements and how these vitamins affect other parts of your body. It's all about how your genes respond to food, medicine, or environment.

When Xyz walked for a half hour or more a day in small, 10 minute walking sessions, the anxiety would fade. A feeling of sending out waves of love to her worst enemy took over her body and mind. Her dominant introverted feeling personality type emphasized values. She asked herself: Is this issue worth weakening my heart's pacemaker by an adrenaline bath? The answer was always, of course not. For Xyz, music became a healing tone.

The type of music affected her brain's fear or calming center and healed my body to the point of a feeling of well-being instead of anxiety. Harp music, calming sting music, and even slow, new age music relaxed her. Belly dance music and music of India allowed her to stretch and do her Tai-Chi exercises to the music as well as Yoga-type stretches. From there, Xyz moved to high-energy belly dancing alone in her room, stretching out her arms in a type of dance-prayer-tai-chi and yoga stretch and moving her arms and shoulders or feet in a folk or tribal dance.

When done in short spans, not long, exhausting hip-drops, the exercise did calm Xyz, and a feeling of well-being arose along with stress reduction. Nutrition played a part. She had to balance her magnesium and calcium to feel relaxed. Xyz 's body had to understand the feeling value of serenity and calmness at the molecular level as well.

The best and healthiest answers came when she asked a value question, "is it worth it?" The term "worth it" meant asking whether the solution, need, benefit, or answer had been worth it to her health in the long run.

Gentle chair yoga and later stretching on a yoga mat had been the best event in her youth and beyond. It provided a link to learning to relax by stretching until calm. Listening to calming music or chanting became a relaxing experience during a panic episode.

The calming, ethnic or meditative new age music such as Indian music relaxed Xyz. Her whole body would physiologically react to the beat of the music. The slow beats, precisely music of 30-60 beats per minute brought her down to a relaxed normal feeling.

Music distracted Xyz's brain from firing off anxiety neurons. The right hemisphere of her brain was shooting off energy from neurons a lot faster that the left hemisphere of her brain. Both hemispheres should have been working together in balance at more or less the same rate.

This had been another cause of Xyz's chronic anxiety, panic attacks, and ultimately being housebound with agoraphobia (literally, fear of the outdoors). She walked away from convention medicine and turned to Ayurvedic medical books for kind solace. Yoga helped her most along with Qi Gong, a form of Tai Chi for health and balance.

What Xyz had been afraid of (phobia) hand not been the marketplace, or outdoors (agora in Greek), but her body's panic reaction to stress. She perceived stress as threatening.

Stress followed by panic happened so fast that her logical side didn't have time to calm her down. She confessed that she had a weak calming branch. To strengthen her parasympathetic nervous system's calming branch, Xyz later in life practiced slow, abdominal breathing to music, where the breaths are regulated by the music tones. (One example today would be the Breatheasy ™ CDs or mp3 files) that were not around when Xyz was young.) Your sympathetic nervous system reacts with anxiety whereas your parasympathetic nervous system calms you.

Again Yoga came to the rescue in the 1960s as a great substitute for the slow breathing machines or music. How Yoga worked specifically was by the actual stretching of the muscles. When muscles stretch they cool down the panic by changing the posture. The stretching removed the adrenaline, lactic acid, and insulin from the muscles, and the muscles stopped shaking.

Xyz 's breathing grew slower as she stretched and went through the basic postures. Her monthly migraines eased with added magnesium. Meditation became easier. Finally, Xyz could relax after a good, but gentle Yoga stretch.

What's your body type? Different body types metabolize nutrients according to their own physiology. There are fast and slow 'metabolizers.' Have yours checked and measured.

Stretching Away the Panic Attacks

To get rid of the panic attack, Xyz would begin by sitting in a half lotus position. For hyperventilation syndrome, she would breathe into a brown paper bag to increase the carbon dioxide.

When she returned to normal, she'd breathe fresh air slowly because carbon dioxide causes sensitive people with panic disorder to have a panic attack from breathing carbon dioxide if the carbon dioxide in a crowded or unventilated room grows to five percent.

Typical people won't feel symptoms until the carbon dioxide in a room grows to seven percent. To help herself, Xyz would hold her left foot firmly and place her left foot and heel against her right middle thigh near the knee while stretching her arms downward.

The position of her foot resting against her inner thigh became the most calming stretch position for Xyz. She also gently stretched my arm muscles and the rest of her leg muscles. Then Xyz allowed her forearm to relax and rest against her raised knee. She'd sit for two minutes in this posture.

The weight of her forearm gradually lowered her knee. By the time the knee was lowered as far as it needed to go, Xyz became calmer. Simultaneous slow, but not deep breathing helped. Deep breathing produced dizziness and hyperventilation syndrome.

Yoga, tai chi, and Qi gong exercises also helped Xyz's inner ear problems. Xyz had a damaged left inner ear. After the ear injuries healed, Xyz had life-long vertigo attacks whenever she became under stress. The stretching and movement of yoga as a series of postures helped her regain her balance.

Eventually Xyz's brain compensated for the damaged inner ear, and the vertigo and ear problems lessened, especially by the side bend Yoga exercise. Stretch your panic away your panic.

Vitamins
Xyz's vitamin regimen included 150 mg. of selenium, 400 mg of natural vitamin E, with all eight toctrienols, 600 mg. of magnesium, a little calcium to supplement her dietary calcium, and the amino acid, taurine (half or quarter of a 500 mg capsule). After age 40, Xyz added the more absorbable form of Coenzyme Q -10 and a bottle of low-dose multiple vitamins. After becoming a senior citizen, Xyz added a little R-lipoic acid. Of course, your body would be different and require supplements tailored to your own needs.

Xyz consumed whole foods, a small amount of low-dosage vitamins, minerals such as magnesium which helped her monthly-cycle-related migraines. She added a tiny amount--a half capsule of the amino acid taurine and a balance of Omega 3, (fish oil) Omega 9, (avocados) and Omega 6 (olive oil) fatty acids along with good nutrition.

She remained with a modified fish and Mediterranean or pan-Asian diet that emphasized no salt added to natural foods. Xyz made almond milk by soaking a handful of raw almonds overnight in a glass jar in the refrigerator.

She ate frozen blueberries because fresh blueberries contain an ingredient that removes some of the vitamin B from your body. Frozen or cooked blueberries don't because the B vitamin removing enzyme is disabled by freezing or cooking. She added a scoop of rice protein to help her bones and arteries.

What helped Xyz's agoraphobia to recede, besides the nutrition includeds the stretching and relaxation with world beat music in the background, again keeping to 60 or less beats per minute. What also works well is the music CD, Sheltering Stones, by Richard Searles (Earth Dance Music, Sherman Oaks, CA).

Music

Instrumentals with gentle voice sounds as in Mystic Voyage, from the CD Sheltering Stones, is a calming. It's a Celtic music work of plucked strings and soft voices that helps listeners to visualize misty and mystic mornings at Big Sur in California. Another helpful recording for relaxation is Michael Rowland's Fairy Ring suite, with information and downloads available online.

Unsweetened products such as unsweetened almond milk has reputation for building bones, (but be sure to find out how your body reacts to taking liquid ionic multiple mineral supplements so you get enough, but not too much to trigger other problems. Also, yoga is known for stretching and calming.

To counteract her weak calming branch, the more Xyz stretched with Yoga exercises, the cooler and calmer she became. People's bodies react to the tempo of the music. If a music piece is only 60 beats a minute with a metronome, (or less) the human body responds to that beat and calms down to a feeling of relaxation.

Your body eventually moves in sync with the music beats. That's why if you feel anxiety, choose slow music. Breathe from your abdomen or diaphragm and breathe as slowly as is comfortable.

Most people's entire bodies, physiologically react to the beat of music. The slow beats, precisely music of 60 beats per minute or less, may calm anyone to a relaxed normal feeling. The wrong type of music (that's wrong for your brain) would make you feel uneasy or anxious. Slow harp music works well.

Slow, dreamy, classical string and brass music of the 17th century convey calming tones may feel best for you. Also what works is ambient music for stress-reduction, and relaxing music made for meditation. When calm, brains with anxiety genes may also react well to certain forms of belly dance or tribal dance music with a slow beat to stretch to, and not the constant drumming.

What you listen to affects your heartbeat. So you don't want a person with a fast heart beat to listen to rapid drumming music such as found in some belly dance solos.

The focus of each movement emphasized keeping your individual balance. With certain world music themes, doing the belly dance hip-drop might help you focus on losing the stress. Others prefer healing slow harp music to do tai chi or chair yoga.

The point is to customize your nutrition and combine it with relaxing music and light exercise tailored just for you. What food and music type makes you feel better?

For more info: browse my books, Neurotechnology with Culinary Memoirs from the Daily Nutrition & Health Reporter (2009). Or browse: How Nutrigenomics Fights Childhood Type 2 Diabetes & Weight Issues (2009) or Predictive Medicine for Rookies (2005). Or see my books, How to Safely Tailor Your Foods, Medicines, & Cosmetics to Your Genes (2003) or How to Interpret Family History & Ancestry DNA Test Results for Beginners (2004) or How to Open DNA-driven Genealogy Reporting & Interpreting Businesses. (2007). Or Predictive Medicine for Rookies (2005). Helpful for relaxation is the music, the Fairy Ring Suite, download.