Acupuncture Works for Anxiety

Hi, I'm Dr. Lindsay Trudy of Lovell Acupuncture, and today I'd like to talk about a success in the clinic with a patient who is in her 60s and has been struggling with anxiety and complications with anxiety her whole life, essentially. The patient presented in my office in April 2022 with severe anxiety. She had just been released from the hospital after several months of complications through various digestive disorders that were complicated by her anxiety and related to anxiety. She had very severe anxiety. We used the Beck Anxiety Scale to subjectively evaluate her anxiety, and she had a score of 70 at that time, which is very high. She was having a lot of trouble driving herself. She was having trouble doing basic tasks, and she was having trouble with her relationships and her life. She was not able to commit to full treatment in April, so she came back into my office in July, and we started a very intense treatment plan. Her goal has been to get off of her anxiety medication to feel a lot better physically, mentally, and emotionally. So starting in July, we had her commit to a six-month plan. She was coming in three times a week and then twice a week while also taking Chinese herbs. During that time, she was able to reduce her anxiety medication with the help of her prescribing physician to some degree, but she would have ups and downs with treatment. However, we started to see that first a lot of the physical effects related to anxiety like poor sleep, poor digestion, body-wide pain, some physical symptoms of shaking, numbness, tingling, those type of things were starting to go away. But the mental-emotional part of anxiety was a lot harder to eradicate, and there were some weeks where she would question whether she was getting better. However, we used the Beck Anxiety Index to evaluate her periodically so she could see that she was reporting through this form feeling better. She could recognize that yes, a lot of her symptoms were going away. So after six months, she decided to recommit for another four months, bringing her to almost a year. Today is March 16th, so after 11 months of treatment, we re-evaluated her again. She had a setback in about mid-January. She had a basal-vagal episode, which she had been having quite frequently before starting treatment. For her, that would be extreme anxiety, and then she would easily faint. This was very dangerous because she was worried about falling and hurting herself. So she had had an episode mid-January. However, she recovered quickly, and to the point where between evaluations, she was showing 50% improvement in just two months, in the last two months of treatment. Overall, she has 75% improvement in her symptoms. She still is relying on her anti-anxiety medication, but she still has the desire to be completely off of that, and she is starting to see that she does not have to be dependent on that for the rest of her life. So we re-evaluated her treatment plan, and I gave my patients options. So if they want to remain stable, then we start to reduce frequency of treatment. If they would like more results, then we keep the frequency of treatment, and then we look to work with their prescribing physician to wean them off of their medication. I work in the state of California. I'm licensed by the state of California, and it is out of my scope of practice to prescribe or to give any kind of advice on prescription medication. However, I can be a partner in my patient's care and have them coordinate with their prescribing physician to change their medication safe and effectively. So I'm very excited for this patient. Like I said, she's had nearly 60 years of anxiety and anxiety-related condition and problems related to PTSD, CPTSD, vasovagal episode, and other things that have come up related to anxiety that have started to affect her internal organs. So we're very excited about her progress. I do anticipate that she will be working with me in some capacity for at least another year or two, but we are starting the plan of reducing frequency and becoming less dependent on medication and outside treatment and starting to trust her own body to heal itself. So if you are the kind of person that would like to naturally heal your anxiety and you're looking for a partner in long-term care, you can consult with me, Dr. Lindsay Chartier. I am practicing out of Level Acupuncture in San Diego. I provide treatment in person in the clinic, and I help patients virtually through telehealth. So you can go to my website levelacupuncture.com and book your first appointment. Thanks, and have a great day!