COVID-19 depression and anxiety: How to take care of your mental health
Stress, anxiety, hopelessness the emotions that defined the pandemic and how to cope with them. Listen - 08:36
Taking care of your mental health is just as important as taking care of your physical health. Chris Madden/Getty Images
To say that the past year has done a number on our collective mental health is an understatement. The coronavirus pandemic, high rates of unemployment, racial inequality and a divisive, at times hostile, political climate have driven stress way up among Americans. More than 40% of people reported having symptoms of depression and anxiety in January of 2021, compared to just 11% between January and June, 2019.
Author and science journalist James Nestor says breathing wrong can have dire consequences to our health. Justin Paget/Getty Images
Breathing is something we do naturally, often without thinking. But many of us are doing it completely wrong, according to science journalist James Nestor. He spent a decade investigating all the ways we breathe and compiled the information into the instant bestseller Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art released May 2020.
He calls breathing the missing part of health, as vital to our well-being as how much we exercise, what foods we eat and how much we sleep. Doing it wrong has dire consequences on our health, he says, and contributes to sleep-disordered breathing problems like snoring, sleep apnea and insomnia; mental and behavioral conditions like anxiety, depression and ADHD; and medical issues like high blood pressure, increased heart rate and diabetes.
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