Lack of Appetite Anxiety Symptom
Lack of Appetite, not feeling hungry, have no desire to eat are common symptoms of anxiety, including generalized anxiety, social anxiety, and panic attacks.
Lack of appetite is more common anxiety and panic attack symptoms due to how profound those experiences can be.
This article explains the relationship between lack of appetite and anxiety, especially anxiety disorder.
Article Menu
Lack Of Appetite Common Symptom Descriptions
- You’ve lost your normal appetite.
- Even though you haven’t eaten in many hours, you still don’t feel hungry.
- You also might notice that even the foods you used to love have little or no appeal.
- Even the thought of food or eating is unappealing.
- It doesn’t matter how long you haven’t eaten, you aren’t hungry.
- Even the thought of eating turns your stomach.
A lack of appetite can:
-
- Occur occasionally, frequently, or persistently.
- Precede, accompany, or follow an escalation of other anxiety symptoms or occur by itself.
- Precede, accompany, or follow a period of nervousness, anxiety, fear, and stress, or occur "out of the blue" for no reason.
- Range in intensity from slight, to moderate, to severe.
- Come in waves where it’s strong one moment and eases off the next.
- Occur for a while, subside, and then return for no reason.
- Change from day to day, moment to moment, or remain as a constant background during your struggle with anxiety disorder.
All the above combinations and variations are common.
To see if anxiety might be playing a role in your symptoms, rate your level of anxiety using our free one-minute instant results Anxiety Test, Anxiety Disorder Test, or Hyperstimulation Test.
The higher the rating, the more likely anxiety could be contributing to or causing your anxiety symptoms, including feeling like impending doom symptoms.
---------- Advertisement - Article Continues Below ----------
---------- Advertisement Ends ----------
Causes
Medical Advisory
Talk to your doctor about all new, changing, persistent, and returning symptoms as some medical conditions and medications can cause anxiety-like symptoms.
1. The Stress Response (acute stress)
Anxious behavior activates the stress response, which causes many physiological, psychological, and emotional changes that prepare the body for immediate action—to fight or flee.
This survival reaction is often referred to as the fight or flight response, the emergency response, the fight, flight, or freeze response (some people freeze when they are afraid like a “deer caught in headlights”), or the fight, flight, freeze, or faint response (since some people faint when they are afraid).[1][2]
Visit our “Stress Response” article for more information about the stress response and the many changes it causes.
Some of these changes include:
- Quickly converts the body’s energy reserves into “fuel” (blood sugar) so that we have an instant boost of energy.
- Shunts blood to parts of the body more vital to survival, such as the brain, arms, legs, and vital organs, and away from parts less vital for survival, such as the stomach, digestive system, and skin.
- Suppresses digestion so that most of the body’s resources are geared to fighting or fleeing.
- Reduces stomach digestive juices while increasing hydrochloric acid to assimilate remaining food quickly.
- Suppresses salivation to aid in suppressed digestion.
- Tightens muscles to make the body more resilient to injury, which includes the stomach muscles.
To name a few.
The higher the degree of the stress response, the more dramatic the changes.
Since stress responses push the body beyond its balance point, stress responses stress the body. As such, anxiety stresses the body.
Consequently, stress dramatically affects the stomach and digestive tract, which can suppress appetite.
There can be other factors, as well, such as:
- Stress hormones can suppress hunger signals.
- Chronic anxiety can cause stomach and digestive system upset, reducing appetite.
- Anxiety can make a person preoccupied, masking appetite.
- An anxious person might avoid certain foods or eating situations due to anxiety-related fears or rituals.
Any of the above can cause or contribute to a lack of appetite.
2. Hyperstimulation (chronic stress)
When stress responses occur infrequently, the body can quickly recover from the many stress response changes.
However, the body can't completely recover when stress responses occur too frequently, such as from overly apprehensive behavior.
Incomplete recovery can leave the body in a state of semi-stress response readiness, which we call “stress-response hyperstimulation” since stress hormones are powerful stimulants.
Hyperstimulation is also often referred to as “hyperarousal,” “HPA axis dysfunction,” or “nervous system dysregulation.”[3][4]
Visit our “Hyperstimulation” article for more information about the many ways hyperstimulation can affect the body and how we feel.
Hyperstimulation can cause all the changes of an active stress response even though a stress response hasn’t been activated. Consequently, hyperstimulation can cause a lack of appetite as long as the body is hyperstimulated.
Lack of appetite is a common symptom of anxiety and hyperstimulation.
---------- Advertisement - Article Continues Below ----------
---------- Advertisement Ends ----------
Other Factors
Other factors can create stress and cause anxiety-like symptoms, as well as aggravate existing anxiety symptoms, including:
- Medication
- Recreational drugs
- Stimulants
- Sleep deprivation
- Fatigue
- Hyper and hypoventilation
- Low blood sugar
- Nutritional deficiencies
- Dehydration
- Hormone changes
- Pain
Select the relevant link for more information.
Treatment
When other factors cause or aggravate this anxiety symptom, addressing the specific cause can reduce and eliminate this symptom.
When an active stress response causes this symptom, ending the active stress response will cause this acute anxiety symptom to subside.
Keep in mind that it can take up to 20 minutes or more for the body to recover from a major stress response. But this is normal and needn’t be a cause for concern.
When hyperstimulation (chronic stress) causes a lack of appetite, eliminating hyperstimulation will end this anxiety symptom.
You can eliminate hyperstimulation by:
- Reducing stress.
- Containing anxious behavior (since anxiety creates stress).
- Regular deep relaxation.
- Avoiding stimulants.
- Regular light to moderate exercise.
- Eating a healthy diet of whole and natural foods.
- Passively accepting your symptoms until they subside.
- Being patient as your body recovers.
Visit our “60 Natural Ways To Reduce Stress” article for more ways to reduce stress.
Recovery Support members can view chapters 5, 6, 7, 14 and more for more detailed information about recovering from hyperstimulation and anxiety disorder.
As the body recovers from hyperstimulation, it stops sending symptoms, including this one.
Symptoms of chronic stress subside as the body regains its normal, non-hyperstimulated health.
However, eliminating hyperstimulation can take much longer than most people think, causing symptoms to linger longer than expected.
As long as the body is even slightly hyperstimulated, it can present symptoms of any type, number, intensity, duration, frequency, and at any time, including this one.
Even so, since a lack of appetite is a common symptom of stress, including anxiety-caused stress, it's harmless and needn't be a cause for concern. It will subside when unhealthy stress has been eliminated and the body has had sufficient time to recover. Therefore, there is no reason to worry about it.
Since worrying and becoming upset about anxiety symptoms stress the body, these behaviors can interfere with recovery.
Passively accepting your symptoms – allowing them to persist without reacting to, resisting, worrying about, or fighting them – while doing your recovery work will cause their cessation in time.
Acceptance, practice, and patience are key to recovery.
Keep in mind that it can take a long time for the body to recover from hyperstimulation. It's best to faithfully work at your recovery despite the lack of apparent progress.
However, if you persevere with your recovery work, you will succeed.
You also have to do your recovery work FIRST before your body can recover. The cumulative effects of your recovery work will produce results down the road. And the body's stimulation has to diminish before symptoms can subside.
- Reducing stress.
- Increasing rest.
- Faithfully practicing your recovery strategies.
- Passively accepting your symptoms.
- Containing anxious behavior.
- Being patient.
These will bring results in time.
When you do the right work, the body has to recover!
---------- Advertisement - Article Continues Below ----------
---------- Advertisement Ends ----------
Therapy
Unidentified and unaddressed underlying factors cause issues with anxiety. As such, they are the primary reason why anxiety symptoms persist.[5][6][7]
Addressing your underlying factors (Level Two recovery) is most important if you want lasting success.
Addressing Level Two recovery can help you:
- Contain anxious behavior.
- Become unafraid of anxiety symptoms and the strong feelings of anxiety.
- End anxiety symptoms.
- Successfully address the underlying factors that so often cause issues with anxiety.
- End what can feel like out-of-control worry.
All our recommended anxiety therapists have had anxiety disorder and overcame it. Their personal experience with anxiety disorder and their Master's Degree and above professional training gives them insight other therapists don't have.
If you want to achieve lasting success over anxiety disorder, any one of our recommended therapists would be a good choice.
Working with an experienced anxiety disorder therapist is the most effective way to treat anxiety disorder, especially if you have persistent symptoms and difficulty containing anxious behavior, such as worry.
In many cases, working with an experienced therapist is the only way to overcome stubborn anxiety.
Recovery Support
The Recovery Support area of our website contains thousands of pages of important self-help information to help individuals overcome anxiety disorder, hyperstimulation, and symptoms.
Due to the vast amount of information, including a private Discussion Forum, many of our Recovery Support members consider it their online recovery support group.
Prevalence
In a recent online poll we conducted, 70 percent of respondents said they had a lack of appetite as an anxiety symptom.
NOTE: Because stress also taxes the body’s resources much harder than normal, eating regularly is wise even though you may not feel like it.
Keeping your body’s energy supplies satisfied can prevent premature fatigue, low blood sugar, and more stomach and digestive problems due to a lack of eating.
For more information about stomach and digestive system sensations and symptoms, see the “Stomach distress” symptom.
Common Anxiety Symptoms
Additional Resources
- For a comprehensive list of Anxiety Disorders Symptoms Signs, Types, Causes, Diagnosis, and Treatment.
- Anxiety and panic attacks symptoms can be powerful experiences. Find out what they are and how to stop them.
- How to stop an anxiety attack and panic.
- Free online anxiety tests to screen for anxiety. Two minute tests with instant results. Such as:
- Anxiety 101 is a summarized description of anxiety, anxiety disorder, and how to overcome it.
Return to our anxiety disorders signs and symptoms page.
anxietycentre.com: Information, support, and therapy for anxiety disorder and its symptoms, including Lack Of Appetite anxiety symptoms.
References
1. Berczi, Istvan. “Walter Cannon's ‘Fight or Flight Response’ - ‘Acute Stress Response.’” Walter Cannon's "Fight or Flight Response" - "Acute Stress Response", 2017.
2. Godoy, Livea, et al. "A Comprehensive Overview on Stress Neurobiology: Basic Concepts and Clinical Implications." Frontiers In Behavioral Neuroscience, 3, July 2018.
3. Elbers, Jorina, et al. "Wired for Threat: Clinical Features of Nervous System Dysregulation in 80 Children." Pediatric Neurology, Dec 2018.
4. Teixeira, Renata Roland, et al. “Chronic Stress Induces a Hyporeactivity of the Autonomic Nervous System in Response to Acute Mental Stressor and Impairs Cognitive Performance in Business Executives.” Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2015.
5. Hofmann, Stefan G., et al. “The Efficacy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Review of Meta-Analyses.” Cognitive Therapy and Research, U.S. National Library of Medicine, 1 Oct. 2012.
6. Leichsenring, Falk. “Is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy the Gold Standard for Psychotherapy?” JAMA, American Medical Association, 10 Oct. 2017.
7. DISCLAIMER: Because each body is somewhat chemically unique, and because each person will have a unique mix of symptoms and underlying factors, recovery results may vary. Variances can occur for many reasons, including due to the severity of the condition, the ability of the person to apply the recovery concepts, and the commitment to making behavioral change.