Anxiety is an unpleasant feeling of future-oriented fear and apprehension. The feeling may be accompanied by physical signs of tension, including the following:

• Pounding or rapid heartbeat
• Aches and pains
• Dizziness
• Shortness of breath^[1][8][9]

Feeling anxiety is a normal response to facing a stressful situation, but excessive, hard-to-control, and long-lasting anxiety may be a symptom of anxiety disorders, such as generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, specific phobias, and panic disorder, or of other disorders, including medical conditions.^[10]

Anxiety can be a normal response to facing a stressful situation. Anxiety symptoms can also be caused by medications or supplements, drugs of abuse, trauma, childhood experiences, and anxiety disorders or by another medical condition, such as hyperthyroidism, hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), and heart arrhythmias, among others.^[9][11]

Antianxiety medications, including beta-blockers, antidepressants, benzodiazepines and buspirone, can help reduce anxiety symptoms, and are commonly used either alone or in conjunction with therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) works well for many anxiety disorders, especially in combination with medication.^[8][12]

While they are not a cure-all, supplements such as lavender, kava, saffron, ashwagandha, and inositol have good evidence for dampening the severity of anxiety symptoms to a moderate extent. However, note that a supplement that helps a situationally stressed person with transient anxiety won’t necessarily be effective for a person with an anxiety disorder. For example, in a 2022 review of studies, kava was not as effective in people with generalized anxiety disorder.^[13] Magnesium also has some promising evidence for lowering symptoms of anxiety in people without diagnosed anxiety disorders.^[14] Finally, cannabidiol provides some reduction of delta-9-THC-induced and experimentally induced anxiety in people with no known health conditions.^[15][16]

Compared to typically less-healthy diets such as the Western diet, Mediterranean-style and vegan diets have some evidence for their ability to improve mood, although more research is necessary to confirm this.^[3] Drinking plenty of water, limiting alcohol and caffeine, avoiding any trigger foods, eating balanced meals, eating complex carbs, and having protein at breakfast may also assist with anxiety symptoms by improving mood and increasing the sense of well-being.^[17]

Some evidence shows that meditation can reduce anxiety symptoms,^[4] performing better than no intervention or sham interventions in people without diagnosed anxiety disorders, and comparably to other active therapies among people with diagnosed anxiety disorders.^[5]

Exercise, particularly high-intensity aerobic exercise and resistance training, may be effective for improving anxiety symptoms.^[6][7] In one 2008 meta-analysis that compared exercise’s effectiveness at reducing symptoms of anxiety to that of other interventions, exercise was as effective as cognitive behavioral therapy; better than mindfulness interventions, stretching, and other therapy; and slightly less effective than pharmacotherapy.^[18]

Music may help reduce medical anxiety; hypnosis has also been studied for medical and dental anxiety, but more research is needed.^[19]

Additionally, binaural beats have been studied for anxiety symptoms and seem to provide modest benefits.^[20][21]