Gamma-aminobutyric Acid (GABA)
When you are feeling stressed, worried, or anxious, its effects are felt all throughout your body. Stress actually has chemical and biological reactions in your body, and can cause imbalances if experienced for a prolonged amount of time. Scientists conclude that depression and anxiety may stem from an imbalance of chemicals, nutrients, and vitamins within your brain and nervous system, therefore leaving you vulnerable to internal and external stressors of many kinds. When you are deficient in certain chemicals that act as “brain food”, you are more prone to feeling the effects of stress throughout your body. Gamma-aminobutyric acid is a neurotransmitter that plays an essential role within the nervous system. It helps to manage messages for your brain, in conjunction with your nerves and synapses, and inhibits nerve transmission in the brain, therefore producing a calming effect on your mind.
Gamma-aminobutyric acid is one of the most widely dispersed neurotransmitters. It works alongside the neurotransmitter called Glutamate, which is responsible for sending messages throughout the nervous system. However, GABA actually works to stop these messages from being sent, and helps to regulate how the body responds to stress and different stimuli. Without Gamma-aminobutyric acid present, the body sends messages without regulation, which can contribute to nervous tension, panic, anxiety, and fatigue, which are all symptoms of anxiety disorders and clinical depression.
Psychological imbalances may cause a fluctuation in your moods, energy levels, and even mental and cognitive acuity. When prolonged stress or depression is present, it causes an overload of chemical messages, hormones, and biological reactions to occur. These instances may even result in physical symptoms that are commonly cured with prescription drugs. Over time, there are a number of free radicals and excessive substances that accumulate within the body to create a flawed chemical message throughout the body. This may create the mental “fuzziness” that is present with many psychological thoughts and messages. These foreign substances are actually quite toxic on the brain and nervous system.
The physical symptoms that may result from a deficiency in Gamma-aminobutyric acid are nausea, lack of mental acuity and cognition, headaches, a fluctuation in blood pressure due to the amount of hormones in the blood stream, blurred vision, lack of accurate memory, and general fatigue and lethargy. The adrenal glands are responsible for excreting cortisone, the stress hormone, into the blood stream once these chemical messages are relayed from the brain. This is hard on all organ systems, throwing them all out of whack and causing illnesses to arise.
To correct any imbalances due to anxiety and prolonged stress, try incorporating this all natural supplement into your diet. This nutrient will act as a protective layer to your brain, nerves, and synapses, and may help the body not react to negative stimuli from the internal or external environments. It will help to balance your hormone levels, and will work alongside Glutamate to send balanced chemical signals throughout your body. The best way to fight anxiety and depression is to keep yourself balanced, in control of your biological reactions, while maintaining mental clarity. The effects of Gamma-aminobutyric acid are numerous and vital to your psychological well-being.