Anxiety and stress are severe disorders that affect your physical and mental health. They result in issues such as digestive problems, insomnia, fatigue, heart problems, and concentration difficulties. They are also among the leading causes of social withdrawal, depression, poor work performance, and substance abuse. Untreated anxiety and stress can result in more alarming everyday symptoms, which can affect all aspects of your life.

While there is medication for anxiety and stress, medical experts recommend combining it with a natural and effective treatment like acupuncture. Acupuncture focuses on the underlying cause of your anxiety and stress to give you relief that can last for a while. It also increases the effectiveness of modern treatment.

How Acupuncture Works

Acupuncture is part of the Traditional Chinese Medicine that is gaining so much popularity in the modern world. Although it originated in China, acupuncture has become increasingly popular worldwide due to its effectiveness, safety, and numerous benefits. Acupuncture stimulates your body’s natural healing abilities to create a balance of energy within the body, promote blood flow, and promote healing and general health in all parts of the body. Since it is a natural treatment, you typically experience minimal side effects with acupuncture. Treatment results also last longer because the treatment focuses on the underlying cause of your illness or symptoms.

A trained acupuncturist performs acupuncture. They are specially trained to identify the right treatment sites, based on the symptoms you experience. They also skillfully insert thin, sterilized needles at those treatment points and manipulate them to restore balance in the body, improve blood circulation, and alleviate symptoms. You can use this treatment for various types of ailments, including stress and anxiety.

Remember that acupuncture stimulates your body’s natural healing processes. These are triggered by the thin needles a specialist inserts in specific acupuncture points within your body. The stimulation activates the body’s neurochemical pathways, increasing the production of favorable hormones, such as endorphins. This is how the body naturally and quickly manages common symptoms, such as pain. Endorphins also calm the nervous system, which is critical in reducing inflammation.

Acupuncture also helps balance the body's energy flow. A balance in the vital energy, known as qi, is essential for improving your mood and reducing stress and anxiety.

Here are common ways through which acupuncture promotes your general health:

  • It stimulates the nervous system as the tiny needles stimulate your nerves to trigger a healing response that activates the body’s pain-relief mechanisms

  • It promotes the release of more endorphins in the body, which are natural pain relievers and hormones that make you feel good

  • The needles inserted in your body interact with your connective tissues, nerves, and soft tissues at the insertion point, triggering the body’s natural healing abilities

  • Acupuncture naturally helps your body calm down as it activates your rest and digest state

When you choose this treatment, you need to prepare for the following:

  • Tiny needles, which are the only tools acupuncturists use to treat the underlying cause of your symptoms. The specialist will insert and leave the needles in your body for about 30 minutes.

  • You may feel a minor sensation as the acupuncturist inserts the needles into your skin, although some people do not feel it. Other people feel an electrical or tingling sensation as the treatment takes effect.

  • You may require one or more treatment sessions to achieve the desired results. The acupuncturist develops a personalized treatment plan tailored to your specific needs and expectations. Generally, there are three to six treatment sessions, tailored according to your unique needs.

Acupuncture for Anxiety and Stress

Anxiety and stress are some of the conditions that you can treat with acupuncture. If you are already taking medication to manage your anxiety or stress, combining it with acupuncture can produce excellent and timely results. Remember that acupuncture focuses on your general health, which helps fight the symptoms of anxiety and stress. It creates a balance of hormones in the body and promotes blood flow to relieve you of your stressors and other factors that cause your anxiety. Acupuncture also improves your general health, so you can fight your symptoms and prevent them from coming back soon.

There are various ways acupuncturists manage anxiety and stress with acupuncture. Some of the common ways include the following:

Regulating the Nervous System

The nervous system is your body’s command center. It uses chemicals and electrical signals to receive sensory input, integrate or process information, and coordinate responses. The nervous system is responsible for your emotions, movement, thought, and automatic functions, such as digestion, breathing, and heartbeat. It is a complex network, comprising the brain, nerves, and the spine, all of which manage various bodily functions, such as cognition, mobility, and survival. If the nervous system becomes unregulated due to an imbalance within the body, your body’s communication highway for external and internal interactions is severely disrupted. This could be the cause of your stress or anxiety.

Acupuncturists can use specific techniques to regulate the nervous system. They use tiny needles to achieve this effect, allowing your body to transition from a state of stress to one of calmness. These techniques can also reduce blood pressure and heart rate, which are key symptoms of stress and anxiety.

Releasing Neurotransmitters

Neurotransmitters are critical in the body because they control all your bodily functions. They are chemical messengers that send signals from the nerves to glands or muscles, to control such functions as memory, mood, movement, and breathing. They trigger quick responses in the nervous system, ensuring that the body’s response is as fast as it should, mainly in the way you think, feel, and do.

However, your body must release neurotransmitters in a timely fashion. An unhealthy body may not release the transmitter as quickly as it should, or in correct levels. This may affect your body’s function, particularly in how you respond to external or internal factors, and can cause stress or anxiety.

Acupuncturists are skilled enough to trigger the release of transmitters to improve your well-being. Examples of neurotransmitters they will focus on triggering when treating anxiety and stress are dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine is responsible for movement, pleasure, and motivation, while serotonin is responsible for your appetite, sleep, and mood. Acupuncture can also trigger the release of GABA, which helps calm the nervous system. It can deal with the imbalance that causes disruptions in the levels of neurotransmitters in the body, which causes anxiety and depression.

Balancing Energy

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, qi is the vital energy or force within the body. It is the energy that animates all living things. It flows through different pathways within the body, known as meridians, to regulate various bodily functions. Qi also provides the energy your body needs to balance emotions and maintain good health. An imbalance or disruption in the flow of this energy through various meridians can affect your health.

Acupuncturists believe that if the energy flow is blocked, you will experience symptoms like pain, fatigue, and stress. They can offer treatment to restore the harmony within your body and relieve you of your symptoms. Thus, an acupuncturist can use tiny needles on specific acupoints in your body to unblock or balance the energy flow. This restores harmony within the body, relieving you of your stress and anxiety.

Regulating Hormones

Hormones travel through your bloodstream to regulate various bodily functions like mood, reproduction, growth, metabolism, stress response, and sleep. They are critical chemical messengers that the body naturally releases in the right amounts for a balanced response. An imbalance in the release of hormones can lead to various health problems.

Hormones naturally bind to a particular cell in the body, controlling the cell’s growth and function. An imbalance in the release of hormones can cause significant confusion within the body, affecting overall health. When you overstress about a matter or are anxious, you trigger your body to release more of the stress hormone than it should. This may create an imbalance, which can affect your emotional stability.

Acupuncture can help restore this balance, ensuring that your body releases just the right amount of hormones for various bodily functions. An acupuncturist can even trigger the release of favorable hormones like dopamine or serotonin to improve your mood and reduce your stress and anxiety.

Improved Relaxation and Sleep

Fatigue and insomnia could be the cause of your stress and anxiety. Every time you do not sleep well or enough, you impair your brain’s ability to regulate emotions naturally. This makes you irritable and overwhelmed. Overstressing or worrying can disrupt your sleep, leaving you even more exhausted as the days pass. All these increase your anxiety. Eventually, you experience mood swings, concentration issues, reduced resilience, and higher mental and physical tension. This puts you at risk of anxiety disorders.

Fortunately, you can start feeling better once you start treatments with an acupuncturist. An acupuncturist can target acupoints to release tight muscles throughout the body, promoting physical relaxation. In most cases, tension is typically felt in the shoulders, neck, and back. Once you can relax, you can rest and sleep better.

An acupuncturist can recommend additional treatment to improve your sleep. They may recommend treatment strategies that address restless sleep and insomnia, to break the cycle where your poor sleep worsens when you are stressed or anxious.

Reasons to Consider Acupuncture for Anxiety and Stress

If you have struggled with stress and anxiety for some time now, and have tried treatment without success, or are on medication, combining treatment with acupuncture is an excellent idea. Medical experts today believe that this combination will likely offer better and quicker results than modern medication alone. Additionally, you benefit a lot more from acupuncture because it focuses on your general health, not just the specific condition that is causing your symptoms. Here are some of the reasons you should give this a try:

Acupuncture is Natural

Modern medications can sometimes be effective in treating specific conditions or symptoms. However, they are made from harmful chemicals that have side effects, mainly when medication is used for an extended period. This puts you at risk of additional health issues. Acupuncture uses a more natural approach to treatment that does not cause any side effects. Acupuncturists use sterile needles on your skin to trigger the body’s natural healing abilities. Thus, what works is not the medication, but the body heals itself by fighting the pain, or stress, and its underlying cause.

Combining acupuncture with your treatment for anxiety or stress gives you better results within a short period, reducing the impact of modern medication on your health. Additionally, the results from acupuncture last longer, minimizing your reliance on harmful medicines.

Acupuncture Focuses on Your General Health

Remember that acupuncture offers holistic health benefits. This means that by triggering your body’s natural healing abilities, the treatment focuses not only on your current symptoms but also on all bodily imbalances. It can reduce your pain and treat its underlying cause, ensuring that the pain does not recur in the near future.

You feel better even in other areas within your body that you had not sought treatment for. Its effects can last for a while after completing your acupuncture sessions.

For example, when treating anxiety and stress, you may experience additional benefits, including improved sleep, enhanced immune function, and better digestion.

Find a Competent Acupuncturist Near Me

Stress and anxiety can significantly impact your general health, productivity, and social life. However, medication can make you feel better over time. Combining treatment and acupuncture is even better for more effective, quicker, and longer-lasting results. For this, you have to partner with a skilled acupuncturist who has experience treating anxiety and stress.

At Art of Chinese Healing, we know how difficult it can be to achieve excellent results from anxiety and stress medication in Los Angeles. We can help you manage your symptoms, achieve better results more quickly, and improve your overall health. We offer tailored treatment programs according to your needs and symptoms. Call us at 310-405-1610 to discuss more about your treatment needs and our services in more detail.