After being subjected to a lot of stress or anxiety due to a specific situation in your life, you may begin to feel physically ill. For example, you start to notice that your throat hurts a lot and you start to worry. What does this mean? Is pain a cause of anxiety? What does it mean that pain is a cause of anxiety?
If you are interested in finding answers to these questions and knowing how to relieve this annoying pain, keep reading! In this Psychology-Online article, we will talk about the Sore throat due to anxiety: symptoms, causes and treatment.
How to know if a sore throat is due to anxiety
When determining whether the cause of a sore throat is anxiety or not, it is important rule out any medical pathology or serious physical alterations that explain the pain. Furthermore, the appearance of pain must be associated with the experience of stressful events or the accumulation of anxiety-inducing experiences for a long time.
Symptoms of sore throat due to anxiety
How does anxiety affect the throat? The main symptomatology of a sore throat due to anxiety is associated with symptoms which we will show you below:
- Associated respiratory difficulties.
- Altered and labored breathing.
- .
- State of alert and hypervigilance.
- Irritability.
- Increased heart rate.
- and/or ruminations.
- Feeling of weakness or tiredness.
- Sleeping problems.
- Dizziness and tremors.
- Sweating.
- .
- Avoidance of specific situations that generate anxiety.
Causes of sore throat due to anxiety
Stress can give rise to anxiety responses as a consequence of the brain areas it activates and the hormones and substances involved. In fact, it causes a decreased GR (glucocorticoid receptors) in hippocampal granule cells, a disinhibition of the HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) axis and an increase in .
Thus, if we find ourselves in a situation with high levels of glucocorticoids, our body will lower the levels of the receptors to defend itself and prevent them from being activated. In this way, disinhibition occurs as a consequence of the decrease in the activity of corticosteroid receptors, the adrenal axis and an increase in corticosteroids, which increases the anxious response and produces physical damage in different areas of the brain and body.
In short, what is demonstrated is that high levels of anxiety and stress cause a decrease in the immune defenses of the human body. Therefore, being subjected to situations with these characteristics frequently makes us more prone to contracting viral or other diseases.
Anxiety even causes physical ailments to emerge that had been hidden until now. For all this, we see that sustained stress and anxiety can cause sore throats. For this reason, exam periods have been determined as a risk to the physical integrity of students. If you know someone who is going through it, in this article you will see.
Anxiety Sore Throat Treatment
Before starting treatment to remove a sore throat due to anxiety, on the one hand, it is very important to go to the doctor for an examination to ensure that the ailments are not associated with any medical condition. Furthermore, it is also necessary for determine if the use of any medication is necessary to treat sore throat, whether codeine, ibuprofen, paracetamol or others.
On the other hand, if pharmacological treatment is necessary, it must be accompanied by psychological monitoring. To do this, the patient must undergo a psychological clinical interview to determine the variables and factors that are maintaining the anxious symptomatology and the inputs that have caused it to lead to physical ailments.
In short, sore throat due to anxiety must be addressed with a multidisciplinary treatment in which the physical discomfort of this part of the body is treated, as well as the symptoms associated with anxiety through . Specifically, this will consist of putting into practice relaxation and stress management techniquesin addition to addressing the cognitive alterations associated with sore throat.
This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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Bibliography
- American psychiatric association, (2014). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders DSM – 5. Madrid, Spain. Pan-American medical publishing house.
- Belloch, A., Sandín, B., Ramos, F., (2009). Manual of psychopathology, volume II. Madrid. McGraw Hill / Interamericana de España, SAU
- Ezpeleta, L. and Toro, J. (coords.) (2016). Developmental psychopathology. Madrid: Ed. Pirámide
- Martino, P., Scaglia, R., & Cervigni, M. (2019). Exam anxiety and susceptibility to infectious diseases. In Seventh International Congress of Research in Psychology.