Acupuncture for Anxiety

Anxiety – Is Acupuncture Helpful?

If you have ever suffered from anxiety, you know it can be a crippling experience. In traditional Chinese medicine, we speak of anxiety with fear and anxiety without fear. When I am speaking to a patient about their problem with anxiety, the first question I ask is, “does your anxiety occur when you are in a situation that causes apprehension and fear, or is it something that comes on when you are relaxed, possibly even waking from sleep?

The cornerstone of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is what we call “pattern differentiation.” We don’t treat diseases, we treat patterns.” Patterns are groups of signs and symptoms, and the patterns identified in Chinese medicine have been used for thousands of years. Often, patients exhibit several patterns at once. Our job is to determine those that need to be addressed to mitigate the condition the patient has come to us for help with, and to try and unravel how these patterns fit together.

There are several patterns of imbalance that relate to anxiety, often related to what we call Yin deficiency. We are all familiar with the terms Yin and Yang, but do we know what they mean?

Yang is fire, energy and exhuberance. It tends to move upward. Yin is cooling, more tangible and sinking. When looking at the human body, yang is the energy that gives us life; Yin is the physical, tangible self that gives the energy, or yang a place to thrive. Yin is the nourishment, tissue and blood. One cannot exist without the other. In the physical world, everything in existence has some elements of both; some more yang, some more yin. The moon is yin, the sun is yang, although both have elements of both yin and yang. When the moon is rising it becomes more yang; when the sun sets, its yin attributes become stronger.

In the body, yin helps to control and stabilize the yang. There needs to be a balance between the two. When yang is too exuberant it tends to rise up and cause dizziness, headaches, and other excesses of the upper body. When yin is weak, the same can happen – it can’t control and stabilize the yang so it rises up and causes a variety of conditions. But the same can happen when yin is weak. It can’t control the yang.

When yin is weak not only can the yang become to excessive (relative to yin) but there will be an absence of cooling and nourishment, resulting often in dryness and hot flashes.

Anxiety is often secondary to hot flashes, or vice versa. But not always. Whether or not anxiety is caused by fear, or by inbalance will determine the course of treatment. Whether or not a patient’s anxiety is related to fear or not does not determine whether or not we can treat it. Either way, acupuncture, and especially when combined with Chinese herbal