Addressing Anxiety with Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine
Everyone experiences anxiety from time to time, but when anxiety is striking repeatedly, it can start to affect a person’s ability to enjoy life and even function. This is when many people seek treatments like therapy, medication, or alternative approaches such as mindfulness.
The primary Western medicine treatments for anxiety are psychotherapy or psychotropic medications. Both are valid approaches. Psychotherapy in the form of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy might even be necessary to see a true reduction in symptoms. Occasionally psychotropic medications will be unavoidable. However, many people are increasingly reluctant to use this approach.
Watch any television commercial about the latest and greatest psychotropic medication for anxiety and you will hear warnings about a litany of potential side effects. Some of these can be risky, intimidating, and may seem even worse than the anxiety itself. Even if you are not concerned about side effects, you might prefer a more natural and holistic approach to anxiety management.
If you have not yet read my article on Chinese medicine and its benefits for mind-body wellness, you may want to check it out. To recap, research shows that traditional Chinese approaches- including acupuncture- are being studied for a range of health concerns, with evidence that varies by condition. Anxiety is just one among them and we are excited to present you with the research on it!
treating anxiety with acupuncture makes sense
As noted, psychotherapy and medications are the most common approaches for treating anxiety. Medications may be less than desirable due to their potential side effects. Psychotherapy is generally found to be effective, but results can take time and sometimes people need immediate relief. This is where the use of traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture may become a helpful approach.
As covered in a previous article, acupuncture is often misunderstood. Traditional Chinese medicine describes acupuncture in terms of qi and meridians; modern researchers are studying whether it works partly by stimulating nerves and the parasympathetic nervous system, which may help calm the body’s stress response.
Modern life is full of ongoing, vague stressors like finances, work projects, and overly busy schedules, all of which can trigger our sympathetic nervous system and the “fight or flight” stress response. Because these chronic stressors don’t go away, the parasympathetic nervous system never gets triggered, and we cannot get back to the “rest and digest” of homeostasis. We stay in this state of heightened alert, stress hormones like cortisol continue to be produced, and after awhile the body becomes worn out. Eventually, the stress we experience in our body turns into anxiety in the mind.
Given how chronic stress operates in the body, it makes sense that acupuncture would be helpful. If the parasympathetic system needs to do its job of restoring homeostasis and a sense of calm throughout the body and mind, then it is reasonable to study whether stimulating it with acupuncture could help.
Being around people in social circumstances can be anxiety inducing if you suffer from social anxiety.
Evidence for Acupuncture as Anxiety Treatment
A recent study from Amorim and colleagues (2018) conducted a systematic search for all the recent research on the use of acupuncture for anxiety. While the authors found that there were over 1000 research articles published in the last 10 years, the authors pared these down to 13 studies (that met specific criteria) for further consideration. We will highlight here a few of their findings.
Interestingly, not all of the studies used traditional acupuncture. Some used auricular (ear) acupuncture and one used electroacupuncture. Targeted acupoints included: relaxation, shenmen, lung, kidney, subcortex, and the adrenal glands. All 13 studies showed some decrease in anxiety among treatment groups, compared to control groups. However, the authors described the evidence as promising but limited, as many of the studies were small and of low quality.
As with most mental health research, more studies are needed to further understand all the benefits that acupuncture may have for anxiety, the mechanisms by which it works, and the exact methods to elicit the best outcomes. In the meantime, early studies suggest acupuncture may reduce anxiety for some people, but the research is small and of mixed quality. When performed by a licensed practitioner it is generally low-risk, and it is best used as an add-on to other approaches rather than a replacement for them.
Conclusions and Recommendations
If you are looking for additional options to reduce and manage your anxiety, acupuncture may be worth discussing with your clinician, keeping in mind that the evidence is still early. Acupuncture is just one of the many tools we have to treat the whole person, mind and body and one that can be added to a comprehensive treatment plan for anxiety.
