Is Xanax the Only Way to Deal with Anxiety?

Hi guys, I want to talk to you about a very popular drug today which is called Xanax and I want to talk to you about a huge problem for many many people and that’s they have problems with anxiety. They don’t feel well, they feel anxious, they wake up anxious or they go through their day anxious and they don’t feel well and they’re looking for a solution. You can’t blame someone for not feeling well and looking for a solution. The easy prescription for the doctor is, here take Xanax. It used to be take valium. Okay and these drugs are quite effective in the short term but when I worked in the emergency room Xanax was my least favorite drug because it was so addicting to people. They could take a few doses it would calm their anxiety and then if they stopped taking Xanax, their anxiety came back with such a vengeance that it was worse than before they took the drug and so I my own idea on it is that it’s a very dangerous drug for that reason, okay. So you have to really be careful with it. Now what is happening with anxiety? There’s a problem with what we call sympathetic versus parasympathetic okay. Sympathetic is the gas pedals on. It’s fight or flight. It’s move it or lose it, that’s sympathetic. Parasympathetic is the break, it’s rest, it’s recuperate, it’s heal, it’s digest, it’s sleep, it’s relaxation okay. When you and you can’t do both at once. You can’t get the car to drive if the thing is the gas pedals push down and the brake pedal is pushed down, it doesn’t go. With anxiety it’s the sympathetic is on too much and it’s not shutting off. Now in a normal day the sympathetic should be up because we’re out, we’re working, we’re moving and at the end of the day when we go to sleep, it should be parasympathetic up, it should be rest, it should be digest, it should be recuperating, it should be heal and the sympathetic should be down. If you do things at night that get your sympathetic up then you may have trouble or your body may have trouble getting it down so that you can sleep. So if you watch violent movies or go on the internet or have an argument with your spouse or do stimulating things, drink a cup of coffee before you go to sleep, you may have trouble getting your parasympathetic to come back up the way it’s supposed to and be high at night okay.

Now one of the problems with anxiety is most of the people with anxiety don’t sleep very well and that makes them more anxious. Now there is a lot that goes into it and there isn’t a simple problem.

Nutrition is really important what you eat okay. If you are eating foods that mess with your blood sugar or rev you up or too much stimulants nicotine or coffee or sometimes alcohol in some people, you are gonna get an imbalance. In the body the neurotransmitters that sedate, that calm are called serotonin and Gaba and the ones that rev up are called dopamine and adrenaline and these need to be balanced. In the body on its own when there is good nutrition and good environment will keep a balance of these things so that when you’re up and you’re working your dominant by dopamine and adrenaline and when you’re resting or you’re digesting these go down and serotonin and Gaba come up okay. Many drugs affect the balance of these things and I think you have to watch out. If you’re now anxious it might be a problem with drugs that you’ve been put on, so watch the drugs. Exercise tends to help people who are anxious because it gets them moving, they can burn off some of the energy, it will allow them to be tired enough to then relax and then to sleep. So I like exercise for this. We know that the bugs in your gut, your microbiome have more to do with mood than practically anything else. Most of the receptors for serotonin and many of them for Gaba are in your intestines. They are cells in your intestine, they’re called neuro endocrine cells and these cells make these neurotransmitters which then are transported to the brain and they cause us to feel different ways, feel calm or feel anxious or feel hyper because it’s related to these neuro endocrine cells in our intestines, so if you have good intestinal health okay your digestion is good, you go to the bathroom every day, you don’t have a leaky gut, you’re gonna be better. It also depends on the bacteria that are in your gut because there’s actually a cooperative signal between the bacteria in your gut and these neuro endocrine cells and if you have the wrong bacteria the cells don’t make the neurotransmitters and if you have the right bacteria they do. I heard from another physician not too long ago, he’s actually the doctor that invented restore, his name’s Dr. Zach Bush and he told me about a case where a person was suffering from severe severe anxiety and depression which doctors were unable to handle naturally and there was not good response to medication, sent that patient for a stool transplant. They went out of the country to get a stool transplant and this particular group of doctors that is off shore actually has stool samples collected from 20 very healthy people and they are able to take the stool samples, do stool fecal implants in this person, dehydrate the stool, make capsules out of it and give it to him orally and this was his patient and what he told me was that 48 hours after the stool implant the guy’s anxiety and depression evaporated as if he’d taken a shower and the dirt had washed off. So your bacteria in your gut are that significant. So you want to nurture them and that’s really important okay. The other thing on this is many people, anxiety is a should I or shouldn’t I or can I or can’t I or or it’s it’s a it’s a it’s what have to go but can’t go or want to go but don’t know okay. So sometimes if you look at what issue is this, should I ask her out or shouldn’t I okay. Should I do this or shouldn’t I do this. That if you look at it you can figure it out and get more data on it and decide no I shouldn’t or yes I should. Being stuck in a maybe causes people to be anxious and usually if they get more information about it they actually look at what is this thing, should I go to grad school or not, should I eat this cream puff or not whatever, is get the information, look at it cold hard okay what is it what are these things. Oh here’s the two things, now what makes the most sense, what’s the best for my survival, what does my spouse think, what are my opinion leader my best friends think. Get the information and then okay I’m going with that one and then you’ll be rid of it and that makes things better. Okay there’s gobs of supplements for anxiety, some of these come packaged, some of them are separate things like chamomile tea, threonine’s an amino acid, valerian is an herb, GABA or pre GABA are supplements that you can take, lavender oil helps, ashwagandha is an adaptogenic herb, sometimes progesterone really helps. So these are all options and you can work these out with your practitioner or you can experiment with some of these things on your own. Sometimes homeopathics work and some people are very sensitive to homeopathics and they really work on their bodies. So there’s a whole group of homeopathics and if you look up homeopathics for anxiety you can see if your anxiety is like panic attacks then Aconitum napellus would be a remedy to try. If your anxiety is apprehension and agitation then argentum nitricum, there should be an R in here, is what you take. If you’re anxious about your health all the time arsenicum album okay. If your apprehension because you got stage fright gelsemium. Okay these are all herbs or herbs extracts these are. Okay and if you have nighttime anxiety and you can’t sleep natrum muriaticum okay. There’s all these things and you can go on the internet and say okay I got anxiety and I want to try a homeopathic and you can go through this list and you can buy most of the stuff at health food stores, you could try it, it won’t hurt you, it’s very safe. Sometimes the reaction is like boom it really helps okay. So what we’re talking about anxiety there are solutions, there are solutions that are safer and better than long-term medication which is a problem okay and don’t go down the medication way. Fix your diet, get some exercise, take your supplements, look into some of these natural remedies for anxiety whether the herbals or homeopathics or essential oils and you can get better and your anxiety can go away and then you’re not taking a drug which can really ultimately hurt you okay. I hope this helps.