I'm Dr Bill Kefalas.

I'm the medical director of the University of New South Wales Health Service.

What happens in your body is that adrenaline is pumped through your arteries and your heart goes faster, your pulse goes up, your blood pressure goes up.

People can feel that their head pounding.

People can feel themselves flushed or sweaty.

People can feel that their vision's not quite right.

They can feel a bit sick in the stomach.

They can have a very worried feeling in their mind.

The anxiety performance curve is a very important concept for people to understand.

So, basically as our anxiety level increases so does our performance and so at a certain point it levels off.

So, that's the sort of peak, so you're performing at your best, but you are, you know, a bit stressed and anxious .

But if you keep becoming more stressed then what happens is your performance starts to drop and that's when things like going blank, not remembering anything and then worrying so much about the sort of things you're writing down or excessively checking means that you can't, you know, finish the question or you miss questions in the exam and you don't do as well as you should have.

These products on the body cause a very similar reaction to anxiety, so they increase your heart rate, they make you more aware, more alert.

Now sometimes that's not a bad thing, but if you take these things in excess, they will have a detrimental effect on your body. 

The most important thing is that they will make you feel more anxious that what you might be already.

So it's very important to set up a lifestyle that's going to be conducive to lowering the stress levels and keeping you healthy,

Having a good healthy diet, eating lots of vegetables and fruit and having a regular meal.

Getting to sleep around the same time every night.

Try and get up around the same time every day and maybe get outside for a bit of exercise.

Have a plan, like, talk to your teachers, talk to your friends, work out a study timetable.

The most important thing that a good GP will do is listen to you.

They'll wanna explore all of the symptoms that you might have and if there are any physical symptoms, they will check you.

Check your blood pressure and give you a physical checkup, maybe even do some blood tests.

They'll also ask about what else might be happening in your life, whether there's other things that are causing stress and help you to solve them.

If needed, they can refer you to more experienced psychological counsellors or psychologists.

It's quite okay to go and try and find another GP who will listen to you and who will answer your questions and help you solve your problem.