Worried Sick? How To Chill Out for Your Health

By:
Stacey Colino

Did swine flu freak you out? Did contaminated peanut butter make you lose your cool? Do health headlines give you the jitters?

You’re not alone. “Health anxiety” often spreads faster than an illness—and can cause its own adverse health effects. It’s a phenomenon that often occurs when news about a serious illness that you didn’t even know existed dominates the headlines. “There’s an interaction between people’s natural fears and worries about their health and the media hysteria that directs our attention to things that could potentially harm our health,” says Gordon Asmundson, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Regina in Canada and co-author of It’s Not All In Your Head: How Worrying about Your Health Could Be Making You Sick—and What You Can Do about It. “But often, health anxiety goes beyond the facts or inherent risks associated with an illness.”

While a reasonable amount of concern about your health can help you tune in to symptoms that might require medical treatment, too much health anxiety can take over your life, interfering with your peace of mind and your ability to function. If you’re spending hours a day scouring the Web for information about your symptoms or a particular condition, or you’re taking extreme measures to avoid risk—like skipping your child’s soccer game to avoid contact with other people—your health anxiety may be approaching the problematic zone, Asmundson says.

NEXT: Chill out

 

In which case, you’d better try to chill out for the sake of your health. Here’s how:

• Consider the probability of your developing whatever you’re afraid of—whether it’s the swine flu, a brain tumor or skin cancer. “If you’ve recently traveled to Mexico or been around someone who had the swine flu, you may be at an increased risk,” says Asmundson. “But otherwise, you may be misinterpreting or overestimating the chances and seriousness of catching this flu. Taking a more objective perspective on the situation can help reduce health anxiety.”
  
  
•  If you have symptoms that warrant a doctor’s attention—like a strange skin growth—schedule a check-up. But try to avoid constantly checking your symptoms or seeking reassurance from doctors to prevent these behaviors from becoming habits.
  
  
• Be proactive. Take steps to improve your hygiene, diet, exercise, stress management, sun protection and other habits—that way, you can rest assured that you’re being proactive about safeguarding your health.
  
  
• Recognize when anxiety itself is your problem. If health anxiety starts keeping you up at night or interfering with your daytime life, it may be time to seek professional help. With cognitive-behavioral therapy, which is very effective at reducing health anxiety, people learn to identify when they’re making too much of their symptoms or misinterpreting them, and then try to challenge their convictions about them, Asmundson explains. You might note, for example, that your recent headaches are more likely to stem from stress than a brain tumor, especially since they’re easily relieved by relaxation or over-the-counter pain medicine, and rarely occur when you are not stressed out.
  
  
• Some people with intense health anxiety also may benefit from taking an SSRI antidepressant, Asmundson says.

However you do it, it’s worth the effort to find ways to relieve your health anxiety, so you can get back to the business of enjoying your life, instead of fretting about your health, says Asmundson. Remember that anxiety itself can be bad for your health.

But don’t let it worry you.