The Anatomy of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body’s Fear Response

Holistic psychiatrist Vora outlines anxiety’s effects on mental and physical health in her thought-provoking debut, exploring the physiological sources of anxiety and offering practical guidance to help mitigate symptoms. “Anxiety—that hypervigilant feeling that escalates swiftly to a sense of catastrophe and doom—is as grounded in the body as it is in the mind,” she notes. She teaches readers how to take anxiety inventories (can one’s mood be explained by overcaffeination? dehydration?), avoid unnecessary stress by stabilizing blood sugar levels, rein in social media use, and alter one’s diet to lessen anxiety (healthy fats are your friends). Vora acknowledges that in some situations anxiety is inevitable and offers strategies for coping with it, such as deep breathing, counting backward by sevens, and exercise (“Mother Nature’s Xanax”). The sensible, easy-to-implement advice is delivered in a reassuring tone and is backed up with solid medical rationales from Vora’s professional practice. Readers struggling with anxiety would do well to seek out this first-rate primer. Agent: John Maas, Park & Fine Literary and Media. (Mar.)