Turn off anxiety with this video

here's how to shut off anxiety as easy as flipping a switch you know anxiety is one of those weird symptoms because if you're having chronic anxiety symptoms it's sort of tempting to think maybe I have some kind of micronutrient deficiency or maybe I have an issue with my thinking and so I try some cognitive behavioral therapy or journaling or is it something really physiological and chemical or is it something all of the above now in this video I want to share some of the main origins of anxiety how we view it in traditional Chinese medicine and some simple strategies that can help you today hey guys I'm Dr Alex hin board licensed doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book master of the day so let's jump in you know anxiety is something that I unfortunately know intimately well as someone who has chronically pushed himself too hard and apparently hasn't learned his lesson once twice five times 25 times like a lot of driven professionals constantly pushing myself for that next level has produced significant real anxiety symptoms you know we're talking clinical anxiety symptoms not just feeling a little bit on edge not not just feeling a bit anxious but such severe anxiety you can't sleep for days or even well for weeks I'll never forget when I was initially experiencing these symptoms I was wondering you know do I have some kind of nutrient deficiency if you go into a medical book you can see well you know magnesium is potentially correlated with anxiety then you'll go to other medical books that will say oh you know it's just a physiological problem just like people with depression there's just a chemical imbalance and it's serotonin and it's dopamine and it's the adrenal stress hormones and then you can go to all other kinds of branches of medicine or study or God forbid Googling who will say it's your nervous system who will say it's your past life trauma who will say it's all kinds of things but one thing I can tell you for sure if you have chronic anxiety symptoms you probably have a disregulated nervous system and this is probably the most important thing to keep in mind from this video because sure you may have a magnesium deficiency lots of people do but just taking magnesium on its own isn't necessarily enough to fix a lot of the really serious cases of clinical anxiety but what does flip that switch what does turn the needle is focusing on healing your nervous system perhaps the best way to talk about anxiety is to talk about depression because these two are ju opposed adjacent to each other whereas anxiety is The Chronic overactivation of the nervous system really where you have a hypervigilant response to everything these kinds of responses are from a hypervigilant nervous system that is perpetually in a state of fight or flight and so the nervous system is trying to constantly look for threats in the environment in the middle of the night at 3:00 a.m. when you're just randomly walking across the road and you hear a loud noise and so it manifests an overreactive sort of response and so clinically you will see people respond with a hypervigilant response both physically like for example people with heightened anxiety levels or heightened cortisol levels will actually have heightened muscular tension most often in their neck and their jaw and the back of the trapezius muscles and so not only do we see an overactivation of the nervous system there's an overexpression of fight ORF flight ready to go that's that muscular tension right there's a deactivation of certain parts of your body like the digestive system not as many enzymes are produced changes in stomach acid the bow flow in the gallbladder is compromised for anxiety itself our clinical strategy is whether it is mainstream medicine or we're using acupuncture and traditional medicines is that we want to basically shift the nervous system down a couple notches how do you calm this over active quality of the whole system we say that anxiety often relates to the heart and the kidney function in traditional Chinese medicine and so in a way we talked about ju opposing this with depression where with depression we are seeing an underactivation of the system anxiety is where there are still resources in the system right so your body is mobilizing this energy mobilizing these stress hormones and you're seeing a heightened nervous system response a fast heart rate for example and so while one is a more young manifestation a hyper activity an overreaction this chaotic energy like this in the system and you want to just help it calm down depression being the exact opposite there's a deficiency of this pressure there's a deficiency of the battery charge now one of the best ways to unpack where the anxiety is coming from is to really figure out how do I regulate my nervous system now once a season I do a onetime live workshop with a Q&A and actually this fall and winter season I'm focusing more on anxiety and nervous system regulation so so I'm launching a free live Workshop it's just called five daily practices from traditional Chinese medicine to reduce anxiety levels and regulate your nervous system and adrenals you guys can check the link below this video I think we're limited to I think 500 to 10s live that's how many we had last season so make sure you register and get a spot again it's a onetime thing I just do it once per season and I'll Stick Around for hours if you want and answer Q&A so check it out down there below it's really really really uh a bit of my own story as well as really specifically what are the rituals to do today if I'm having anxiety and I'm really just burnt out now let's talk about the somatic or body focused view of anxiety I think in the west biomedical doctors do a very poor job of illustrating how many symptoms are somatic in nature so for example people will hear anxiety and depression their Mental Illness but people forget there is no mind there is no body the Mind literally is inside of your physical flesh bag of your body my personal observation though with patients is that what is more helpful for anxiety is purely to focus on the sematic approaches to treating anxiety what that means is you have certain practices like acupuncture massage physical movement exercise is the single thing I prescribe to patients that have a high level of anxiety day-to-day yoga running soccer dance salsa dancing physical movements and physical exercise is one of the best ways to decrease your cortisol in your stress levels and vent that sort of excess nervous system activity that's really stuck in the body acupuncture is one of the best sematic practices to take your nervous system activity down a many notches and when you look at the actual research on it one thing researchers have found is that one of the main mechanisms of action that whereby acupuncture can treat IBS migraines insomnia depression whatever it is is because of the way it modulates and affects your nervous system so it can decrease stress hormones it can release endorphins all kinds of very neat phys phological effects that way now some final thoughts here on this pattern what I would recommend is to come up with strategies that help you in The Chronic phase of anxiety so let's say overall you're not someone who sleeps very well and you have a low or moderate level of anxiety on a day-to-day basis I would recommend having a chronic strategy and having an acute strategy so if you're someone who's going through these anxiety attacks and panic attacks what I would really recommend is to find something for the acute when it is 10 out of 10 and The Chronic when it is humming along but if some life stressor comes it's going to be a 10 out of 10 in The Chronic phase this is where great sematic practices help regular acupuncture weekly going to the gym four or 5 days a week or yoga or a brisk walk every day your daily meditation practice 20 minutes twice a day but then when you get to the actual panic attack zone of anxiety that's where you need more acute strategies that may be acupuncturist that may be seeing the TCM doctor and getting formulas when your anxiety is this high and may be your biomedical doctor most of the time we say it relates to the heart and to the kidneys of course most of the time people reference the heart or the chest when they're having anxiety but those are some strategies day-to-day that can really help make a big difference before you guys go I work with a limited number of new patients every week in my clinic in Los Angeles and online virtually via tele medicine you guys can just go to Dr Alex hind.com clinic and you can reach out to my clinic team there or book a visit and there's also the information right below this video here our phone number and the email to reach out and book a visit and then before you go I have another another great video on the topic of anxiety right up here