I’m not sure when it first started. But I think I have had anxiety my whole life. Sometimes I had my reasons and other times for no reason whatsoever. There is a high probability that you will never get to read this, because I might be too anxious to post it anywhere public. Now, if you somehow stumbled upon this, and you find it interesting enough to keep going, I suggest you refrain from reloading the page. Because, there is a high probability that I might have already deleted it after you landed on this page, feeling too anxious to keep it published.
I can’t help but feeling anxiety from time to time. It’s coded deep in my DNA. But my perspective on anxiety changed drastically one day, when I watched an interview of a hunter talking about his process of hunting. I don’t think I knew him from before. I didn’t do any hunting myself either. This is kind of funny, I’m trying really hard but can’t remember this guy’s name.
The story goes something like this. I think the deal with this guy was, he only eats what he hunts, like some of our ancestors did (Hunters-Gatherers, and all that). A little side note here, I don’t think I would have lasted a week, if I had to do that. So, He has a ritual like he is Dexter or something. Wait! Did something similar happen in Dexter? If so, that is not the event we’re talking about, for legal reasons of course. Anyways, Whenever he goes to hunt he follows his ritual, which is a series of tasks in order. Don’t ask me about that, I don’t remember the specifics.
So, he goes to the hunting ground. Begins the process of tracking his prey. In this case, I think it was a deer. As soon as he spots the deer, he goes into stealth mode. He does not want his prize to see him, obviously. But there is more to it than that. He doesn’t even want it to feel his presence.
Now here is the part where I found it super interesting. He describes it like this, well apart from the obvious one that it is going to run away, the reason he doesn’t want the deer to think it is being hunted, because it will get anxious. And the reason he doesn’t want the deer to get anxious, now hear this, he doesn’t like the way it tastes afterwards when that happens. Wow! This guy, right?
But, I’m thinking, “wait, what does one have anything to do with the other?”. According to him, When the deer gets anxious, it tastes sour. You might be thinking, “who cares what it tastes like? I hate this guy right now. I am feeling really sad for the deer. And I’m furious!”. Well, I get how you are feeling. But stay with me here for a bit. Why does it matter if it tastes sour and how does that relate to anything for that matter. The flesh being sour might have something to do with acid.
Now, I am no biologist or a medical scientist by any means. So, I had to go shopping. Here’s the thing, the deer is a mammal, like you and me, us humans. It turns out our blood has a balance between acid and alkaline. This is sometimes referred to as blood pH level. So, our body is in a constant battle for the harmony between acid and alkaline.
What happens if your blood is too acidic? Well, there is something called Acidosis. Since I don’t want to break my teeth trying to pronounce a bunch of medical jargon, so I won’t go into more detail on that. Best case scenario, your flesh is gonna be sour, hopefully no one will notice! Worst case scenario, severe acidosis can lead to shock or even Death, according to some medical articles I read. So, take a moment to think about how anxiety is directly affecting not only the mind, but also the body.
Now, I might not be the guy who would know anything about the effects of stress/anxiety on blood pH level. Although I found some mentions of it on the internet, I’m too lazy to be digging through scientific research for evidence. If you find any evidence for that, please let me know.
Also, I hate to go on a tangent here, but I feel like my confidence in medical science is going down day by day. Take nutritional science for instance. One day I hear, milk and bread are good for you, another day I hear these are poison for your body. Food pyramid! What a scam! Nutrition is more of a sport than science at this point, few teams are playing, the ball can be in anyone’s court at any given moment.
At the risk of sounding morbid, we are all going to die, one day or another, unless there is a breakthrough that cures the “disease” called “aging”, that causes cellular death. What is “aging” anyway? Why do we have to age? How interesting would it be, if we stopped aging in our youth? Forever Young! Damn! I miss those days where I didn’t feel like I had been put through a blender/juicer when I woke up, just for sleeping on my wrong side. Now, that is a topic of discussion for another day.
Until that day of our demise comes, our body & mind is our own responsibility. Now having said that, I want you to take everything I say with a big bucket of salt, coming from someone who is anxious about every little thing, burning brain cells on things that do not matter, living primarily off of gluten, salt & sugar, and some protein here and there, and doesn’t know what the interiors of a gym looks like.