Acupuncture for Panic Attacks

Acupuncture Anxiety Panic Attacks

Anyone who has ever had a panic attack knows how scary it can be. The attacks seem to come out of nowhere—unexpected and unprovoked, and the thought of having another in the future produces disabling anxiety.

Your First Panic Attack

In the throes of your first panic attack, you’re sure you’re dying right here and now, and understandably so. The symptoms of a panic attack can include a rapid or pounding heart, paralyzing anxiety, dizziness, shortness of breath, chest tightness, shaking, sweating, and hot flashes. If you’ve ever had a panic attack, you don’t want to experience another.

What’s happening to you during a panic attack?

Your body is experiencing the fight or flight response, but on steroids. Your adrenal glands are pumping out hormones, including adrenaline, and the physical sensation of overwhelming fear is similar to being in sudden and immediate danger.

Panic Attacks Why Me?

There are numerous theories as to why we suffer from panic attacks. There may be a hereditary component, and triggers may include illness, stress, a major life transition, and medications that increase activity in the brain related to fear reactions.

Acupuncture For Panic Attacks

In Chinese medicine, there are three organ systems that are related to panic attacks; the Heart, Spleen and Kidney systems. The Heart system is home to the Spirit/Mind. Its function is similar to the brain in Western thinking. As such, the Heart is the home to consciousness, emotions, thinking and memory. The Heart is always involved whenever you suffer from any kind of emotional upset or condition.

The Spleen system is digestion. It sifts and sorts what has been ingested, takes what is useful and turns it into nutrients, and disposes of what is not needed. The Spleen system primarily digests foods, but it also plays a role in the sifting and sorting of ideas. The emotion associated with the Spleen is worry; essentially, not being able to sort through and let go of unnecessary ideas.  Worry is a kind of unhealthy rumination. When it gets out of control, worry can produce anxiety and fear; the foundation of panic attacks.

The Kidney system also plays a role in panic attacks in two ways. First, the emotion related to the Kidney is fear, which is the underlying component of panic. Secondly, the Kidney system is the deepest and most nourishing of our organ systems. It’s responsible for how well you age, your underlying body constitution, and is the source of all the fundamental substances in your body. Your Kidney is the organ system most damaged by stress and anxiety. The Western condition of adrenal fatigue (from stress, anxiety, overwork...) correlates to a severe Kidney system depletion in Chinese Medicine.

Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine offers a number of strategies to help relieve your panic attacks. The first line of defense, in treating your panic attacks, would be to calm your Heart/Mind, relieve your anxiety, and minimize your stress. Acupuncture is very successful strategy for your panic attacks, and research has documented the positive effects acupuncture has on brain chemistry. This effect accounts for the relaxing and calming sensation patients feel both during and after their treatments.

Your Acupuncturist will most likely also address your panic attacks by nourishing your Spleen and restoring your Kidney health.  I always prescribe an herbal formula, dietary suggestions, and strategies for stress relief.

Panic Attacks Practical Advice:

1) Your body cannot sustain this high speed fight or flight response for more than a few minutes. It will pass.

2) When you’re in the throes of a panic attack, get up and move around, go for a walk, do some jumping jacks, as your body will metabolize the adrenaline faster. Don’t just sit down, relax, and let it pass.

3) Avoid caffeine in any form and any other foods that you think might trigger an attack.

Acupuncture Anxiety Panic Attacks

Almost always, stressful situations or circumstances are at the core of anxiety and panic conditions.  Do what it takes to get your stress under control. Take daily walks, meditate, sing, do a Yoga class, dance, change your circumstances, or whatever else it takes for you to eliminate stress. Often, a talented therapist can help you discover exactly what is causing your anxiety and help you overcome it.

Acupuncture Meditation

Meditation, deep breathing and relaxation techniques can go a long way in reducing panic attacks. When you start to feel anxiety, use these techniques to fend off an attack. Visualization will help also. When you start to feel stressed, visualize a place or an object that makes you feel relaxed.

Anxiety Exercise

Getting plenty of exercise can help prevent anxiety attacks from happening. Use cardio exercises to keep your anxiety at bay. Getting enough sleep will help also. Eight hours of uninterrupted sleep each night, in total darkness, will enhance the production of melatonin and provide you with a deep rest and rejuvenation.

Acupuncture Is Your Friend

Seriously consider Acupuncture. Panic attacks can be relieved and mostly eliminated with acupuncture. It is proven to be a very safe, effective, drug-free way to eliminate anxiety and panic attacks. The important thing is start now. Don't let your attacks get worse. Inquire today about your specific case.

Acupuncture has been dated back as far as 5000 BC. in ancient China so it is by far one of the most tried out and tested therapies in the world. It is one of the oldest forms of holistic treatment too

Caution: Drugs and Alcohol

Please stay away from drugs and alcohol. Self-medicating will only make things worse. Prescription meds can also become very dangerous in a short period of time setting you up for decades of not ever becoming strong enough to control your own anxiety. Acupuncture makes you strong enough to control your own emotions at will and calmly decide what the best course of action in any situation will be.

Feel Good Hormones

Your acupuncturist, who had to go to school for at least four years full time to be able to do this with the greatest accuracy, inserts needles into specific  trigger points on your body. These points are tiny energy centers located all over the body. You might have heard of chakras from doing yoga or similar, and this is sort of the same philosophy. Our body has a flow of electrical current that needs to be able to run freely for optimum health. When a person suffers from panic attacks, anxiety or depression the flow of energy is blocked and the energy doesn’t flow smoothly. What the needle does is that it sort of awakens a spot where a vital energy has stopped working and jump-starts it back to life again. It makes our natural feel good hormones, called endorphins, flow in the body just as an antidepressant drug stops the serotonin from exiting too quickly. The difference is that an antidepressant drug also leaves a lot of chemical debris on its way that intoxicates the body further which in the long run may make the panic attacks, depression or anxiety worse.

Acupuncture Endorphins

Experiments with Acupuncture have shown that there are higher levels of endorphins in cerebrospinal fluid following acupuncture. Endorphin, abbreviated from "endogenous morphine," is an endogenous opiate produced naturally in the body.

Endorphins Pain

Endorphins are renowned worldwide as anti-stress hormones that relieve pain naturally. Among the various functions of endorphins are its capabilities to enhance the immune system, improve blood circulation, control pain and ward off the effects of aging.

Acupuncture Fear of Needles

Don’t fret if you have a fear of needles… You will be surprised that they are as thin as a cat’s whisker. So thin that many acupuncture needles can fit into a hypodermic needle. They also rarely hurt when they get inserted. A few people might find the insertion a bit uncomfortable but mostly because they are imagining that it will be painful. Once they are in you probably won’t feel any of them, and people don’t feel them coming out either. And rarely is there even a drop of blood to be found anywhere. The needles are always sterile (they come in sterile air-tight plastic packages straight from a sterile factory) and the procedure is very safe with no side effects.

Acupuncture Bonus

Acupuncture is used for many illnesses and can help you with stress and any emotional symptoms, especially stuck emotions, anger, depression, anxiety, panic attacks and phobias. The bonus is that you can’t really refuse the added benefits that acupuncture provides to you in the form of deeper sleep, more efficient digestion and elimination, better immunity, less pain, and a better mood.