Attack Anxiety with Herbs

Image Gallery Lemon balm makes a pleasant-tasting, relaxing tea. Christopher Hobbs

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I noticed Billie glancing nervously at the clock and then back to me as we sat in a treatment room during our first visit. Her eyes were not still but constantly roving around the room, finally settling on me after a question or comment had sunk in.

Billie liked her job, had a supportive circle of friends, a loving family, a good diet, exercised regularly and had a satisfying spiritual practice. But she suffered from regular anxiety attacks that really made life unpleasant. The symptom profile on her intake form was blank — no symptoms to report in any body system. Her sleep was good, and she didn’t drink coffee or other caffeine-containing drinks.

Billie had seen many doctors over the 15 years she’d been experiencing anxiety attacks. They mostly told her she had a chemical imbalance, and that the processes in the brain and nervous system that produced anxiety weren’t well understood.

Understanding Anxiety

Although modern medicine doesn’t understand why some people have anxiety attacks, several medicines are effective in treating it. The standard group of medicines, first discovered in the early 1960s, is called benzodiazepines. These drugs include Valium, Xanax and Ativan, plus the often-prescribed sleep medication Restoril.

These medications all fit into binding sites in the central nervous system, producing a strong sedative effect. The problem with benzodiazepines is they are too effective. They bind so tightly to our receptors that our natural “feel-good” calming hormones can’t bind. Some people are helped, but these drugs very often lead to a host of unpleasant symptoms such as dry mouth, constipation, loss of memory, worsened anxiety (in some people) and, most insidious, addiction.

Newer drugs, called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, increasingly are prescribed because they often have fewer side effects and sometimes will help patients live comfortably with psychological symptoms such as anxiety and depression.

In many cases, anxiety is a product of one’s life and environment. If you take an unhealthy person and add a good measure of stress, poor family relationships, loneliness (which is often the case with the elderly, a group to which benzodiazepines are often over-prescribed), some caffeine and lots of refined foods rich in sugar, you have a case where nervousness, anxiety and depression are almost guaranteed.

Matters of the Heart

Billie had none of these factors, yet she was regularly experiencing anxiety. When faced with a case that is medically unfathomable, I’m grateful that the tools of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) help me understand health and disease on an individual basis.

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