Anxiety can be characterized by many factors. It typically coincides with symptoms such as difficulty with sleep, heart palpitations, racing thoughts, fatigue, lack of control, nausea, digestive issues, headaches, muscle tension and restlessness. Anxiety is frequently treated with therapy, medication, or a combination of both. There are also several alternative treatments, including acupuncture and home care practices such as acupressure, that can help or compliment your existing routine for management of symptoms.
Systemic reviews are the highest quality of evidence produced. Research from systemic reviews demonstrate acupuncture for the treatment of anxiety yields moderate effectiveness.
“While there are ethical and methodological challenges to designing studies that compare the effectiveness of acupuncture to the conventional treatment of anxiety, the best available evidence demonstrates that acupuncture has moderate benefits in the treatment of anxiety. Studies show that acupuncture is more effective than pharmacotherapy and comparable to talking therapy, making it a helpful referral choice. Moreover, research has revealed several known biochemical and biophysical mechanisms that may offer an explanation of how this ancient modality works.” (K. Junghans, MPH, Acupuncture as a Therapeutic Treatment for Anxiety.)
Read more on the physiological changes acupuncture can make to facilitate beneficial changes in the brain.
https://www.evidencebasedacupuncture.org/present-research/acupuncture-anxiety/
Tips for Anxiety
Try a meditative practice such as yoga, walking or daily meditation
Assess diet and lifestyle factors
Work/Life Balance: prioritize your schedule to prevent from constantly being “over-booked” or overworked.
Talk to your Chinese Medicine practitioner about frequency of treatments recommended needed to meet goals
Try Acupressure at specific points on the body as prescribed by your acupuncturist
