Panic Attacks/Anxiety

We rarely treat more than once a week, but there are cases where it is warranted and that may speed up things a bit. And, yes, herbs would help as well. Personally I use very little herbal medicine for any number of reasons (both personal and clinical), but there are a few conditions where I use them often and anxiety is one of them. The daily intake of the herbs helps to consistently relax the body and mind, this lets the acupuncture go deeper and generally speeds all of the results.

Anxiety can take a while to resolve but it is generally a progressive response. That is, once you start feeling better, you progress faster, then feel even better and so on. It sounds like you are in good hands, so try to be patient with the process. I'm not sure what supplements you are on from your MD, but unless you have a clinical reason for being on them, I would either use them in conjunction with the herbal medicine or drop them in favor of the herbal medicine. But you can discuss all of this with your practitioner and get his opinion on the matter.

Well anxiety and panic attacks (and depression for that matter) are certainly treatable conditions with acupuncture and Chinese Medicine. You don't mention how often you are seeing your acupuncturist, so I'm unsure whether 3 times was within a week, a month or some other time frame. Generally speaking, however, you are looking at 5-15 treatments before you have strong changes. We generally treat weekly for at least the first 3-5 treatments and then may space people out further if they are doing well. Much of the brain chemistry involved with anxiety takes a month or so to really change, so 1 month of treatment should have noticeable results and 3 months should have very significant results.

In certain cases we use herbal medicine to help stabilize people and speed up this process to some degree. Your practitioner should be able to help you with this. We often use a formula we have created called CZ which is an excellent formula for stress and anxiety with essentially no side effects. Other traditional Chinese medicine formulas are available but they should be recommended by your practitioner who knows your case. Generally the herbs are restorative (i.e they help treat the condition) rather than symptom masking like many of the western medications. Personally we use herbs for short periods of time (1-3 months perhaps) in most cases.

your comments are greatly appreciated. No I don't want a quick fix, I just want a little relief. I do not want to go back on meds again and I am trying to avoid that at all costs.

Can I ask you what all you did besides acupuncture that really helped you? I am looking for any advice that you can give me...I am so sorry that it took you that long to get better. I am in the early stages of this and have not pushed myself too far.

I am the same way as you I have a very low tolerance for drugs as that is why I went off the meds to begin with. The side-effects were too bad.

Thank you so much and I really appreciate your honesty.

Sommer