Panic Attacks/Anxiety

Comment by Chad J. Dupuis, L.Ac.

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.

Comment by Archived User

Chad,

Thanks for the reply. I am seeing my acupuncturist once a week for the last 3 weeks.

I went yesterday and he wants me to come 2 times a week for a couple of weeks to see if we can get some results a little quicker. He is wonderful and trained in China.

He recommended some herbs for me to take but I am taking some supplements from my doctor and haven't wanted to start them yet. Would I get faster results if I started the herbs?

This has been a long 3 months and I am just so tired and frustrated and want some results quickly. I am trying to be patient. I am having a hard time calming down and keeping the mind quiet.

So will it still be several months before I get the results that I want?

Thank you

Comment by Chad J. Dupuis, L.Ac.

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.

Comment by Archived User

your questions make you sound like you want some kind of magic to make all these bad things go away, rather than the deep kind of healing that would keep your body from throwing these symptoms at you. is that true? if it is, you don't want what i have to say. it took time for your body to get to the point of manifesting depression and panic. since getting there takes time, getting out of it takes time. in my experience, when true healing, rather than a quick fix, is what's wanted, the change start small, sometimes too small to notice, and then grow together from little, separated blips to intervals that again grow together until it's there all the time. it took a looooong time for me to get myself to the kind of point you describe, and i just kept fighting and struggling until the panic i felt was my body's panic about what i was doing to myself. it also took a long time to get me out. like me, you may be doing other things, giving your body real-world reasons for the panic attacks, things that require changes someplace else in your life. i hope that your symptoms are early signs of problems that can be corrected relatively easily, and not the last-ditch efforts of a body pushed beyond all rational endurance. my gratitude for the chinese doctor who kept my body from self-destructing for very good reasons can never be fully expressed. it took 6 years, but i'm alive, didn't have a stroke, a fatal accident, or commit suicide, and that's saying a lot. with my low tolerance for drugs, western medicine would have killed me.

Comment by Archived User

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