Acupuncture for Anxiety and Panic Attacks: How it Works

So it seems really weird to suggest acupuncture for anxiety or panic attacks, but I found that Chinese formulas as well as acupuncture is one of the single best things for treating this epidemic of anxiety and depression that we have going on in our culture today. Now in this video, I'm going to try my best to give a basic explanation for what with Chinese herbs and acupuncture, we're really doing to help curb those anxiety and panic attacks. Hey, it's Alex Hine, author of the health book, Master the Day. So I've included the free link down below this video. That first link is for a free guide, 5 daily rituals that can help you add 10 years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. And it's a case study of this guy named Li Qingyun, who had an unusually long life by doing certain practices. You can check it out right below this video. So the first way to kind of visualize and conceptualize anxiety, technically it's your kidneys in Chinese medicine that are basically where your body's battery is. And whenever we get run down or we're in actually poor health, that battery, you could think of it as beginning to leak, right? We use words like I'm burning out to colloquially describe this feeling when, you know, culturally we have this metaphor for vitality and for the life force, if I can use that term loosely, where when we get run down, we're getting burnt out, right? And then we start sleeping poorly, we get anxious, we get depressed, we have indigestion, whatever it may be. That analogy is something that Chinese medicine has used for a very long time as well. And as a really clear cut framework for being able to understand where you are in that spectrum and how to treat it with formulas and acupuncture. So the way I think about it is that, let's say you've had a really tough life crisis over a couple of years. You've been sleeping five hours a night, high stress. You're watching after your mom who's in hospice care. You're dealing with business stuff, kids, your own health stuff. It's toasting you. When the battery gets low, one of the most common symptoms we experience is ascending symptoms. So people can develop night sweats, hot flashes, insomnia. Think of like someone who's too heady, they have a hard time falling asleep, staying asleep, all these thoughts. Anxiety is one of them. Panic attacks is one. It can also be stiff neck and TMJ. So it's almost like everything is going up in the body. And even in Chinese medicine, the bladder channel comes right up from down below the lower back, all the way down to the feet, all the way up to the back of the neck and on the head here. So there's this cluster of symptoms that can happen when the battery is running low. It's almost like the battery is leaking, but it doesn't go down in Chinese medicine. For many people, it goes up. For some people, sleep deprivation makes people anxious, wired, and a little bit weird. And other people, it makes them just super tired and they can fall asleep all the time and they can't think and they're foggy. So it's a little bit different for each person. Another way to visualize this is as there's too much up and out and not enough gathering and in. I've shared this video on the qi dynamic or energy dynamic here. It's gone by many different names throughout history, but the general idea is that in Chinese medicine, you view symptoms and your life and your health as like physics-like vectors. So for example, when you eat spicy food and it clears out your sinuses, you have too much wasabi in your sushi, that's spicy flavor, it has movement to it and it's usually out like that. It creates movement. Sour makes your face pucker. It kind of goes like this. So this is an ancient concept that these ancient doctors used to come up with objective, subjective ways to decipher what herbs and practices did in the body. Now, the way I like to think of this is in patients with anxiety or panic attacks, for a long time, there has been too much up and out. So that too much up and out can be too much excessive work, too many active hours, working late, not enough sleep. It can be too many emotions up and out, like you're rushing around. You're generating that fear, that startle response all day long because of what you have going on or psychologically, how you think about your life and why you're rushing. It can be to many other things, but the analogy that's very important is that this person needs to focus on the in and gathering and the way I think of it is the hot cocoa analogy. So the in and gathering hot cocoa analogy is really simple. If you've ever been skiing somewhere very cold in winter and you come home, you're tired, you're cold and you sit on your sofa watching a nice Christmas movie, drinking hot cocoa by a warm fire with a blanket on you and you feel like you could fall asleep at any moment. That's the feeling you want to try your best to generate via your external habits or your life or whatever practices internally help you feel that way. Because in the anxious or person with panic attacks, it's going like this all the time, but frequently it was going like that for years. And now even though you don't have that lifestyle, the body still does this and it can be for a long time before it rains itself back in without treatment. So you want to try to find that hot cocoa analogy of practice in your life, whatever that may be, whether it's working less hours, whether it's a sabbatical, whether it's getting a massage, try to generate that down and in cozy blanket hot cocoa by the fire feeling. Now I don't want to leave you in this video, you know, high and dry without some practices you can actually do. Now there are three things I recommend for people with anxiety or depression. The first one is time in the woods, nature or outside. Now one of the most interesting things I observed personally was that you can feel intensely lonely in an apartment or in a city filled with people if you're living in your own apartment with no interaction, but it's uncommon to feel super lonely or alone or isolated when you're out in the woods alone. So I think humans have developed this kind of protective quality in nature because that's where we've come from and where we've evolved. So I found that for many people, an hour a day in the woods or even walking in the neighborhood, looking at trees and feeling the sun in your face has a very protective response. The second thing is actually physical touch and affection. It's something really, really interesting, the emotional or the social nervous system where people are starved for connection, but also really starved for physical touch. So if you have, you're in a relationship and you can get physical touch, then that's great. But if you're not, trying to find a way to get that in a healthy way is something I found to be one of the most therapeutic for patients, people with anxiety and depression or panic attacks. Now obviously acupuncture or body work is one of the ways to do that. The third way is probably the most fun and it's very simple. It's getting a dog. You know, when you get a dog, you have to spend time outside. You spend time in your body. You're playing with them. You're laughing. You're having fun. Once they're trained. And in general, the process of getting a dog, once they're behaved is a lot of affection, physical touch, companionship, and you're getting out, you're getting activity, you're getting movement in your life and it's, it's play is really what it is. So those are my three action steps in terms of, you know, things you can do, but of course I recommend seeing someone who knows Chinese formulas and acupuncture because experienced it in my own life. Now I also have patients with those conditions a lot. So I hope that helps. Again, check out that first link below this video. That's going to show you exactly some practices you can do to help really build your resources and extend your lifespan and just be healthier. Check it out below this video. And before you go, I have two related videos you might like here.