If you suffer from anxiety or panic attacks, you’re familiar with the symptoms—a racing heart or heart palpitations, chest tightness, numbness and tingling in your hands and feet, feeling light headed, shortness of breath, and the general feeling of fear, or that you might die right now. 

There are a number of causes of anxiety.  Traumatic events top the list.  People who have been exposed to trauma, violence, emotional duress, or threats of any kind know the source of their anxiety. This includes unrelenting stress and worry over a life event or situation that’s not easily resolved. 

Unfortunately, many people experience anxiety symptoms and don’t know why, which only makes the anxiety worse.  These are the people who think they’re going crazy because they seemingly have no reason to feel anxious.  However, it’s important to know that anxiety can be caused by physical problems, such as hormonal imbalances, digestive issues, heart problems, and drug side effects.

Anxiety can run in families.  I have found that many of my patients who suffer from anxiety have either a parent or a child who also struggles with anxiety, too.  This may be due to genetic makeup or how a particular family copes with stressful life events. Whether anxiety in families is due to nature or nurture, it’s not uncommon that family members will have similar triggers for their anxiety.

When I was growing up, I remember a family friend who struggled with anxiety around water.  She had always been paralyzed by the thought of swimming or being in a boat.  Her children also suffered from the same fear, and while the children have ultimately learned to swim, it was a long and painful process, because they had to first deal with their anxiety (and their mom’s) of being around the water.

In Chinese medicine, there are three organ systems related to anxiety; the Heart, Spleen, and Kidneys.

The Chinese view anxiety as worry that has gotten out of control.  Each organ system is associated with an emotion, and worry is the emotion associated with the Chinese Spleen.  The Spleen is also your organ system of digestion.  It sifts and sorts what you’ve eaten, takes what is useful, turns it into nutrients to fuel your body, and gets rid of what is not needed.  While your Spleen primarily digests foods, it also plays a role in the sifting and sorting of ideas.  While the emotion associated with the Spleen is worry, it is essentially the same as not being able to sort through and let go of unnecessary ideas.  Worry is a kind of unhealthy rumination, and when it gets out of control, worry becomes anxiety and fear.

While your Spleen is the organ of digestion, your Heart is the Chinese organ of feelings.  We intuitively know that the Heart is an emotional organ.  We feel things with all our heart, have our heart broken, or thank someone from the bottom of our heart. Your Heart is home to the Shen, or your spirit, according to Chinese theory.  Its function is similar to that of your brain in Western biomedicine.  As such your Heart is the home to consciousness, memory, emotions, and thinking.  Whenever someone suffers from any kind of emotional upset or condition, such as anxiety, the Heart is always involved. 

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

Chinese medicine and acupuncture can offer a number of strategies to help someone suffering from anxiety.  Your practitioner would work by first calming your Shen using acupuncture. This is an effective first line of defense, as research has documented the positive effects that acupuncture has on brain chemistry.   It has been found that acupuncture increases the secretion of endorphins in the brain, the feel good substance associated with pain relief and runner’s high. This effect accounts for the relaxing and calming sensation patients feel both during and after their treatments.

A  practitioner of Chinese medicine might also address your anxiety by nourishing your Spleen and restoring your Kidney health.  Beyond acupuncture, there are a number of safe and effective herbal formulas that can help calm anxiety. Your practitioner can prescribe the combination of herbs that is most appropriate to your individual needs.

Food therapy and lifestyle changes may also be part of your treatment for anxiety.  This may include at-home calming strategies, avoiding stimulants such as coffee or tea, dietary changes, and breathing techniques—all of which can be effective in relieving anxiety.

According to the NY Times, last week a woman fell at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and instead of breaking her wrist, she broke a painting, and an expensive one at that.  When the woman fell, she put a 6” tear into “The Actor”, a rare Picasso painted during the artist’s early rose Period around 1904-05.

The painting now lives in the Met’s conservation laboratory, while the experts figure out how best to restore the painting.  What’s interesting about this whole Picasso assault is that it’s happened before.  In 2006, Stephen Wynn, Las Vegas casino and hotel owner stuck his elbow through a Picasso, called “Le Reve” (the Dream), a painting that Wynn owned.  The painting has since been restored so expertly that apparently the tear is undetectable.

One of the tools the restorers used to put “Le Reve” back together was acupuncture needles to keep the tear flat.  This fact speaks both to the resourcefulness of really good art restorers, but also the nature of acupuncture needles.

Because they are not hollow, acupuncture needles can come in ridiculously tiny gauges (diameters) and the finer the gauge, the more pliable and unobtrusive the needle, which makes it useful for restoring art and for inserting into people painlessly. 

If you are one of those people who have thought about having acupuncture, but hesitate to do so because you think it’s painful; think again.  Acupuncture needles are fine enough to painlessly repair a Picasso, and they are also fine enough to repair your health.

This trio of symptoms—emotional upset, sugar cravings, and belly fat—is a pattern that I see in many of my patients. They come to me because they want to feel better emotionally, but also don’t like the fact that they’re gaining all this weight, especially around the middle.  In addition, when they try to control their eating, all they can do is reach for a Kripsy Kreme.

Gaining weight around your waist increases your risk for heart disease and high blood pressure.  We’ve all heard about the risks of having an apple shaped figure versus a healthier pear shape.  Also, people who are under a great deal of stress or emotional turmoil secrete higher levels of stress hormones that can cause weight to accumulate around the middle.

But what’s going on from the standpoint of Chinese medicine?  I’ve talked about the disharmony between your Chinese Liver and Spleen in previous posts.  This is a common pattern in which strong negative emotions impact your digestion, causing a whole host of hellish symptoms from nausea or a lack of appetite to an uncomfortable lump in your throat, and can even wreak havoc with your bowels.

This upset digestive theory explains a lot, but it doesn’t necessarily account for the fat tire around the middle that I see in so many of my patients.  To understand what’s going on, I’d like to talk a little about an infrequently mentioned organ, called the Triple Burner.  That’s right, there’s an organ in Chinese medicine called the Triple Burner, and the best way to explain how it works is to think about a rice steamer. 

In your standard rice steamer, you put some water in the bottom, a little rice in a pan above the water, and turn it on.  The cooker heats up the water, which usually steams the rice to perfection.  In your body, the digestive process works the same way.  Your internal pilot light (Yang) heats up the food you eat, and turns it into nutrients and energy in what’s called your Middle Burner.  The steam that rises from the rice, or your Upper Burner, is similar to the respiration that comes from your breath, and the water in the bottom, or your Lower Burner, is a bit like the waste that’s excreted after your food is digested. 

In an ideal world, or a healthy body, this whole rice cooker/Triple Burner, digestive process works really well.  However, as I mentioned above, the process can easily be upset by strong emotions.  When that happens, your rice cooker goes on the fritz, and you get gummy rice, clogging up your Middle Burner.  After weeks, and even years of upset digestion, that gummy rice has nowhere to go, except to settle around your middle, and is called…um, Belly Fat.  If that’s not enough, a clogged up Triple Burner can cause lung problems in the form of phlegm, asthma, or bronchitis in your Upper Burner, and bowel, bladder, or yeast problems in your Lower Burner.

In addition, there is a flavor associated with each organ in Chinese medicine, in which a little bit of the flavor is beneficial, but too much is damaging.  The flavor associated with digestion is sweet.  That’s why you frequently want something a little sweet after you eat a meal—to aid your digestion.  However, like Claire, people who have very poor digestion (broken rice cooker) will often have out of control cravings for sugar, indicating that their digestion is off.  Unfortunately, eating more sugar just increases the damage.  For people like Claire who have sugar cravings, the only solution is to cut out all sugar, and as their digestion improves, the cravings will subside.  Acupuncture, Chinese herbs, and food therapy can help here.

It used to be that you were being blown off when a doctor told you that your symptoms were all in your head.  However, the Chinese have a saying that “The emotions are the cause of one hundred diseases”.  My point is that in most cases the road to better physical health is by settling the emotions.

During many of the most recent disasters, a group of acupuncturists who are part of Acupuncturists Without Borders (AWB) have arrived on the scene to treat both victims and relief workers suffering from exhaustion, stress, and anxiety. Volunteers from AWB were on hand near ground zero after 9/11 and were in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.

These acupuncturists use a protocol developed by the National Acupuncture Detox Association (NADA). The NADA protocol employs auricular, or ear, acupuncture, which is simple and can treat a large number of people quickly. Ear acupuncture works a little bit like foot reflexology, in which a map of the entire human body is found in the ear. A Western explanation is that each of the five ear acupuncture points used in this protocol are connected to nerve pathways that alter brain chemistry to calm anxiety.

The NADA protocol was originally developed for the treatment of addictions, and from time to time, I use it in my clinic to help patients who are recovering from chemical abuse and eating disorders. More recently, the NADA ear protocol has been used with good results for the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), not only with victims and relief workers after disasters, but with veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Researchers have found that ear acupuncture offered effective trauma relief in the form of reduced stress and anxiety, better sleep, and a decrease in the need for prescription drugs.

In the weeks and months to come, volunteer acupuncturists will play a small, but vital role in healing the rescue workers and survivors of this disaster.

This is a good question.  It’s a fair question, and you deserve an answer.  Unfortunately any practitioner who gives you a definitive answer in terms of an actual number of treatments is not being entirely truthful; they’re guessing.  For the truth is that there is no correct answer—everyone heals at their own pace.

In addition, a good practitioner should never tell you on the phone how many treatments they even think it will take for you to feel better.  I don’t have a problem with an acupuncturist estimating, or even recommending a number of sessions as a course of treatment, but they have no business doing so until they’ve at least seen you in their office.

The issue here is that there are a number of variables in the healing equation, including the following:

-How long you’ve had the condition.  If your elbow has been bothering you for twenty years, you most likely will take longer than the person who tweaked their elbow last week.

-The nature of your complaint or illness.   Many conditions are quickly resolved with Chinese medicine, including stress, anxiety, digestive issues, PMS, and many types of pain.  On the other hand, deep-seated chronic illnesses, such as autoimmune conditions may take much longer.

-Your general health.  I have seen many young and healthy patients seemingly heal right before my eyes in a single treatment.  However, older patients, those in really poor health, and those on numerous medications tend to need more treatments.

-Your commitment to getting better.  What you do at home in between treatments can make a huge difference in how quickly you heal.  If you implement your practitioner’s suggestions regarding dietary therapy, heating/cooling an injury, herbal formulas, and lifestyle changes, you can speed up your recovery dramatically.

So what do I tell prospective patients when they ask how many treatments they will need?  My best answer is that acupuncture is a therapy and while some people may heal very quickly—in a session or two, others will take longer.  I advise them to give acupuncture a fair try, say three or four treatments, to see how they’re improving.  At that point, I will have a better idea of how many treatments they will ultimately need to heal completely.

The Chinese have a different take on the cold, however, in that cold can actually make you sick and cause pain.  One of the foundations of Chinese medicine is the idea of flow; whether it’s the flow of energy or blood, the course of food through your digestive system, or the smooth flow of your emotions.  When this flow is interrupted, stagnation occurs.  Much like a traffic jam on a busy highway, stagnation in your body can be the cause of pain, tight muscles, indigestion, and even depression.

How does cold play a role?  Well, if you think about it, the nature of cold is to stagnate.  When it gets cold here in the north, the rivers and streams freeze, effectively stopping the flow for the duration of the winter.  This is true in your body, too.  When you are chronically cold, it can cause your energy to stagnate and make your body seize up.  A few examples:

-Jane is a patient I had seen last winter and spring for facial pain, called Trigeminal Neuralgia.  I had not seen her for awhile because the acupuncture treatments she had undergone were working.  However, about six weeks ago, in November, Jane came back to see me because the pain was back and had been worse since the cold weather set in.

-Angela came to see me about a year ago for something called Bell’s palsy, which is a loss of nerve and muscle function in one side of her face, causing it to droop.  Most people with Bell’s palsy recover after a couple of months, but Angela’s symptoms had been dragging on for years.  In talking with Angela about her lifestyle and environment, she shared that she worked in a drafty and cold office in the basement of an older building—essentially that she was always cold. 

-Joel, a man in his mid sixties came to me for relief from arthritis pain in his hands.  Interestingly, his arthritis always bothers him the most in the colder winter months.

I instructed Jane, Angela, and Joel to keep warm, stay covered up when going outside, and to apply warmth at home, especially when their pain is acting up.

The ancient Chinese have used heat therapy in the form of moxabustion (or moxa) for thousands of years.  Moxa is a way of warming parts of your body by applying burning herbs (artemesia) near the painful areas.  This actually feels really good–the heat is very penetrating and therapeutic.  Unfortunately, the downside of moxa is that it smells remarkably like…um, marijuana, so it can be problematic using it in a busy business office.  In the clinic, a good substitute is a far infrared lamp, which offers the same penetrating heat of moxabustion.

Many health care providers will tell you to apply ice to any painful area, which is good advice for the first day or two of a traumatic injury to keep the swelling down.  But after that, if there are no visible signs of inflammation, I’ll go with the heat

While a number of conditions may be the cause of dizziness, not all dizziness is the same.  The severity of symptoms can run the whole gamut from disabling to mildly annoying.  People who suffer from vestibular (inner ear) problems may describe their dizziness as the sensation of the whole room spinning, or vertigo, with severe balance problems.  In contrast, someone who has low blood pressure may feel temporarily light headed when they stand up. To make things worse, dizziness may be accompanied by nausea, vomiting, sweating, and even fainting.

In Chinese medicine, dizziness is usually classified as some kind of wind.  Wind is a tricky pathogen, in that it tends to move around (making you dizzy).  It usually affects the upper part of your body, much like the wind outdoors, and it comes and goes, just like strong gusts on a windy day.  In Chinese medicine, wind is frequently the diagnosis not only in cases of dizziness, but also with tremors, some headaches, numbness, high or low blood pressure, and even itchy skin conditions.

The root cause of wind is almost always a deficiency of some vital substance in your body, such as Qi, Blood, or Yin.  For example, anemia is considered a Blood deficiency in Chinese medicine and is a common cause of mild dizziness or light-headedness. Another example is a depletion of your body’s moistening and nourishing Yin, which can cause dizziness.  In this case, your body is like a farmer’s field that has dried out to the point where the smallest breeze will make the dust rise.

Whatever the root cause or depletion, Chinese medicine has a lot to offer to effectively treat dizziness.  The best known treatment is acupuncture, which involves the insertion of tiny needles into your body to stimulate healing.  Also effective for dizziness is scalp acupuncture, Like it sounds, scalp acupuncture entails needling acupuncture points on your scalp to affect brain function, and can be used for neurological conditions.  In many cases, Chinese herbal medicine—the use of a specific formula for a specific condition—can be effective, too. 

Some dietary and lifestyle changes that you may try to help your dizziness include:

-Nix the cocktails.  Alcohol is a neurotoxin, is dehydrating, and can aggravate your symptoms.

-Avoid hot, spicy foods, as the heat can actually make your dizziness worse.

-Ditto for caffeine.

-Drink this not that.  While you’re avoiding alcoholic drinks, be sure to drink enough water, especially in hot and dry climates or in dry indoor heating.

-Try mild physical activity to relieve your symptoms.

-When you’re dizzy, focus on a fixed point.  This gives your brain more visual information to calm the dizziness and help you keep your balance.

-Get up slowly.  This is helpful for those of you with low blood pressure, as well as those who suffer from inner ear problems.  By rising slowly, you give your body and brain time to catch up with your change of position

-Check out your medications.  Dizziness or light headedness can be a side effect of a wide variety of drugs.  Talk with your doctor or pharmacist to see if any of the meds you’re taking could be causing your dizziness.

-In all cases, see your doctor if your dizziness is accompanied by chest pain, rapid heart beat, numbness, or blurred vision.

In our search for the fountain of youth, the simplest way to age well is often overlooked—possibly because it is so simple, low tech, and not a pill or potion.  That key to longevity is exercise.

In Chinese medicine, moderation is one of the tenets of living well, and this is true for exercise.  You don’t need to run a marathon, bench press 200 pounds, or do a triathlon to get the benefits of exercise.  I have seen dramatic results in my clinic with patients who simply began a modest walking program.

The benefits of walking are that it is easy to do, can be done almost anywhere, and demands very little in the way of equipment.  In addition, the physical benefits are huge.  Walking, and exercise in general, can relieve stress, help you control your weight, lower blood pressure, strengthen your heart, build muscle, and help you sleep better. In addition, the saying “Use it or lose it” applies here. If you don’t move your body regularly, you will lose the ability to do so as you age.

In terms of Chinese medicine, movement is essential to the smooth flow of energy.  The flip side of smooth flow is stagnation, which is the source of an endless list of symptoms and illnesses from pain to depression.

Knowing how good walking is for you doesn’t necessarily mean it will happen.  If you’re like many people, it takes a lot of momentum to get started and even more commitment to stick with it.  Here are a few tips for you couch spuds who are ready to start walking to live longer, feel better, and be healthier:

-Start slowly.  Any kind of change to your routine can be tough to implement, so begin with a plan that you can sustain.  It may be just getting around your neighborhood for 15 minutes three days a week.  That’s good enough to start; bump up your distance when you feel ready (your 15 minutes feels too easy).

-Move along.  You will get the most benefits from walking if you keep up a good pace rather than strolling along.  Swing your arms and move like you’re in a little bit of a hurry.

-Dress for success.  Here in Minnesota, winter can be a huge deterrent to starting any kind of outdoor activity.  However, by dressing in layers, you can be comfortable during the warmest days of summer or the coldest days of hinterland winter.  In cold weather, the layering system traps a little air in between each layer, which ultimately keeps you warmer.  In hot climates, layering allows you to protect yourself from the sun, and clothes can be peeled off if you get too hot.

-Buddy up.  Walk with a friend, neighbor, or family member. Doing so will help you stay motivated.  It’s hard to wimp out if you know your pal is waiting at the corner to walk with you.

-Get the right shoes.  A comfortable pair of walking shoes is the only equipment you need to get started walking.  You will need a pair of shoes that fit you well with good arch support.  If you’re walking where it gets icy, get a pair of ice-biters; they’re stretchy rubber bands with metal cleats that attach to your shoes.  They will dramatically cut down your chances of slipping on the ice.

-Take it inside.  If it gets too cold, rainy, snowy, hot, etc. where you live, go to a large shopping mall and walk.  Also, many cities open their sports arenas to walkers.  If you have access to a treadmill, that’s a good indoor option as well.

-Cheers!  Make sure you drink enough water, especially if you’re walking in hot weather, walking long distances, or if you work up a sweat.

-Keep it going.  You’ll know that you’ve turned your walking program into a habit when you feel disappointed if you’re sidelined by really bad weather, illness, or injury.

Do something really nice for yourself today—go take a walk!

In Chinese medicine, your internal body can become too dry—not just your skin.  Your acupuncturist may call it damage to the body’s fluids or a dryness pathogen, and it simply means that your body is lacking moisture.

The moisture in your body is considered a Yin substance in that it’s cooling, nourishing, and…well, moisturizing.  Your body needs this moisture for every aspect of good health, from moistening your lungs to lubricating your joints and smoothing the passage of food through your digestive system.

As a pathogen (something that can make you sick), dryness can manifest with a variety of symptoms, including constipation; a dry sore throat; dry mouth, nose or eyes; cough; joint problems; indigestion; and fever.

While being well-hydrated helps, the solution to damaged fluids goes beyond drinking more water.  For example, if someone has constipation from dryness, drinking more water will help a little.  However that person will need to eat more moisturizing foods too, to moisten their intestines and relieve the constipation.  This is similar to the difference between putting water on your dry skin (it briefly moistens) and applying a lotion or oil, which nourishes and moisturizes your skin in the long term.

To gently moisten overall dryness, try some of the following tips:

-Your body needs a certain amount of fat to be healthy.  Some good fats include flax seed oil, olive oil and canola oil.  Aim for eating more plant based fats, such as avocadoes, olives, and nuts.

-Seeds and nuts are especially moisturizing.  Walnuts are commonly used in Chinese medicine to relieve constipation due to dryness.  Choose a variety, and try to avoid those nuts and seeds that have been processed with other oils.

-Most fruits moisten dryness.  For dry lungs, choose apples and pears.  In general, the darkly colored fruits and vegetables nourish Yin and build up fluids in your body.

-Make sure you’re getting enough water.  While water can’t really undo damage caused by dryness, becoming dehydrated will only make the problem worse.

-Make sure your house is hydrated, too.  If you live in a dry climate or have the heat on in the winter, your surroundings are dry.  Get some plants, set up an indoor fountain, boil water, or get a humidifier to put some moisture in the air.

The underlying premise behind acupuncture is that it’s an energetic form of healing.  While that may leave you thinking about your old mood ring and Earth shoes, the reality is that every cell in your body produces energy.  Practitioners of Chinese acupuncture believe that this energy moves in pathways throughout your body.  In addition, that energy rises to the surface in various places, and where it does, the energy can be manipulated through acupuncture or acupressure to improve your health.  For you to be healthy, there must be enough energy, and it must be flowing freely. 

In Chinese medicine, blood is similar to energy in that it moves throughout your body.  In fact, blood needs the moving power of your energy to flow smoothly.  When your blood gets sluggish or stagnates, you may experience bruises, varicose veins, and menstrual cramps. 

For you to have a normal, uneventful period, two things must be in place:  there must be enough blood and it must move freely.  When either of these conditions is absent, you may experience a variety of symptoms, but more often than not, it will show up as some kind of discomfort during your period.

Most women who experience menstrual cramps do so because there is some kind of energetic impediment, or stagnation, which inhibits the free flow of blood during their period. Signs that your cramps are caused by stagnation include:

• The pain is stabbing, fixed, or distending, i.e. it’s really bad!
• The cramping is worse with pressure (you don’t want your lower abdomen to be touched)
• The cramps occur before your period or during the first day or two of flow
• The cramps are better after passing clots
• The cramps are better with heat
• They seem to be worse when you’re stressed, emotional, or upset

Sometimes menstrual cramps are caused by not enough blood or not enough energy to move the blood. While there is some element of stagnation in these cases too, the underlying problem is a deficiency—not enough blood to move freely. This is more frequent among older women, and one sign that this is the case is that the cramping occurs later on in your period as you become more depleted of blood.  Other signs of cramping from a deficiency include:

• The pain is milder
• The nature of the pain is dull and diffuse
• The flow is lighter
• You are tired, fatigued, wiped out during your period.  (Remember, not enough blood or energy to move the blood.)

Whether your cramps are the result of not enough blood (and energy) or blood not moving freely, acupuncture and Chinese medicine can help you in a couple of ways.  First, your practitioner can use acupuncture to get things moving.  This doesn’t mean that you period will be heavier; just that it will move a little smoother without the torment of monthly pain.  This especially true if you suffer from the stagnation type of cramps.  Secondly, your acupuncturist can also work with you using such things as heat, Chinese herbs, food therapy, and some tweaks to your lifestyle to help things move a little better and to alleviate any deficiencies you may have. 

The bottom line is that you don’t have to suffer every month—get some acupuncture and go with the flow.