Anxiety. Why Won’t It Just Go Away?
Overwhelm, dread, lump in my throat, suffocating, debilitating, afraid, scary, can’t sleep, tense all over, pins and needles in arms and legs, heart racing, heart palpitations, like I’m drowning.
These are actual descriptions from women experiencing anxiety.
What does your experience with anxiety feel like?
It can vary tremendously person to person. And it can have many different root causes in the body. The one thing someone living with anxiety will tell you is that it is REAL, and it is no fun.
The good news is that functional medicine has answers for anxiety that conventional medicine does not have.
This bothered me all through the years when all I had was my mostly conventional education, accompanied by my own dabbling in alternative health. I would occasionally prescribe a medication for anxiety when a woman insisted but I never felt good about it. One of the main side effects of conventional anxiety medication is… guess what? Anxiety!
Conventional medicine recommendations for anxiety are to cut out caffeine, cut out alcohol, exercise, and do yoga. I am here to tell you that for most people these things don’t help.
Yes, you might feel better while you are exercising or while you are doing yoga but that is not enough to help the other 23 hours of the day.
The conventional mental health response to anxiety is to reason your way out of it. Tell yourself that something horrible is not really about to happen, it just feels that way. This can help some people to live with the consuming physical, mental and emotional sensations of anxiety but it certainly doesn’t make it go away. And it feels a little like the old “It’s all in your head” dismissal.
When you have anxiety, you just want it to go away. I know.
I truly believe that I have had certain experiences in my life so that I would understand, have real empathy, and have the incentive to solve the dilemma. I realized this after having a C-section with my first child. And again, after living with anxiety.
I answered a friend’s question about anxiety some years back with the usual conventional recommendations. Then just a few months later I began having random waves of a physical sensation of tightness in my chest, accompanied by feelings that something was wrong, sort of a fight or flight sensation. I also would lie in bed at night and count 3-4 heart palpitations in just 10 seconds.
For me, identifying a gluten intolerance and eliminating gluten took away 80% of my symptoms. The other 20% required a deeper journey, the last of which was not resolved until I learned more and could assess and treat myself with functional medicine.
Food intolerance is a common factor in anxiety but there are many other factors that may play a role for you. Leaky gut, inflammation, poor gut health, copper toxicity, blood sugar imbalance, food cross-reactivity, poor thyroid function or autoimmune thyroid, insufficient methylation, and low amino acids can all be contributors to anxiety.
You may have been told you are just a worrier. I’m here to tell you that those worrisome, dreadful thoughts likely have physical basis that can be addressed. It is NOT just all in your head.
Certainly addressing sleep, and stress, and finding ways to create pleasure in your life is important. And these measures may help to take the edge off your anxiety.
But, when you are tired of just living with it, and when you realize it isn’t just going to go away with exercise or yoga, reach out and let me help.
If finances are keeping you from reaching out, know that I can still take Medicaid and CHP+. I can also give you an insurance invoice to submit to your insurance. And I can take credit cards, including HSA cards now. I am keeping my rates low as long as I can in order to be accessible to more women. Testing is the most expensive part of functional medicine care. There is a lot we can do without testing, and some testing may be covered by your insurance. I want to help, and I’ll do whatever I can for finances to not be what prevents you from getting help.