Anxious About What’s in Your Anxiety Medication?

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RadioMD Presents: The Dr. Holly Lucille Show | Original Air Date: Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Host: Holly Lucille, ND, RN
Guest: Jacob Teitelbaum, MD

Dr. Holly: Hi folks, thank you so much for coming back. This is going to be such an incredible segment because I have, again, Jacob Teitelbaum with me. Dr.. Jacob Teitelbaum and we’re going to be talking about anxiety medications and anxiety. You know, Jacob, I’m so happy that we’re talking about this because, honestly, this is an issue I struggle with myself. I think there are a couple of different reasons because I’m always looking for the multitude of contributing factors when I’m working with myself or anybody else. I know that many times when we’re look at anxiety, and certainly medications have saved peoples live when they are trying to work through either behavioral, cognitive, past issues where their quality of life is poor because of their anxiety. For the most part, in my opinion, the risk/benefit ratio and efficacy just isn’t there. At times they are addictive and they can make things worse because you quality of life starts to tank due to the addictive quality and some of the side affects as well. There are other things we can do aren’t there?

Dr. Teitelbaum: Absolutely, and let me start by saying that severe anxiety can be more toxic than the medications. If somebody really needs them, it’s okay to use them. But it’s so much more effective to go after the root causes of the anxiety and choose the natural remedies that don’t have the side effects. For starters, anxiety is not a valium deficiency. The most common causes include hormonal problems, high thyroid or low can do it, adrenal fatigue can do it, perimenopause, low progesterone, and ‘manopause’, with testosterone dropping. As men and women get into their 40s and 50s optimizing hormone function makes a big difference.

There are various feeling. Some people out there are going to have an experience like numbness/tingling in the fingers or in the mouth, you can’t get enough breath and you think you are going to die. That is called hyperventilation. It’s not going to kill you; it’s just feels like that’s going to happen. That usually happens from buried feelings. You’ll notice when you have a hyperventilation attack, they’re not hitting when you see a policeman’s lights in your rearview mirror. They happen during periods of relative calm, watching I Love Lucy or taking a ride down the road. These buried feelings bubble to the surface during those calm times and they trigger the hyperventilation attack. Depression can go along with it. Nutritional deficiencies: Excess sugar, excess caffeine, not enough B vitamins, magnesium, or chromium. And of course, the most important nutritional deficiency to me, not getting enough chocolate. There are all these different things that can contribute to people having anxiety.

Dr. Holly: That’s the thing. I think those contributing factors and a lot of people, you know, sometimes I get worried when people get “diagnosed” with anxiety because they walk around saying: “I have anxiety. I have anxiety.” But no, it’s actually that you have 7 or 8 different things, and guess what? Mostly they are fixable. We can talk through things. We can process through things. We can certainly, I don’t know if this is a word, but I always say ‘repleate’ nutrients that are depleted. We can take a look at that multitude of contributing factors.

Dr. Teitelbaum: Absolutely. Let’s take a look at a couple of quick things, outside of optimizing the hormones and the things we talked about. First of all, in the middle of an anxiety attack, especially if it’s a really severe one, people often feel like they’re powerless; like they have no control over the situation. There’s a simple technique one can learn called centering. If you learn to center, I like to center on the heart center but there’s all sorts of places to do it, what happens is this. You’ve seen movies of cyclones or people that are in tornados. If you are in the eye of the cyclone, the center, you can have winds of over 200mph but in the center of the cyclone it is totally still. When you look to center, you can be in the midst of winds in your life blowing all over the place. By simply centering, all of a sudden, you are in the eye of the cyclone and a period of calm. You will find that that tool, and again, you want to learn it when you’re calm so you can use it during periods of anxiety, is very powerful. Progressive relaxation, a host of meditation and mindfulness techniques.

Also, for those of you that have emotional traumas or severe feelings that are very difficult there is a technique called the emotional freedom technique. It is magic. Go to www.eft.mercola.com, you’ll see a video on how to do it. People who have horrible post traumatic stress disorder, traumas from all kinds of horrible events, they will find that the feeling melt away in literally seconds. You’ll see people laughing and giggling. It’s like; “What just happened?” Doing the emotional freedom technique and it’s best to work with somebody who knows how to do it and there are people all over the world who are trained in it. It’s amazing for getting rid of stresses and motional feelings. People should take a look and know that they do have power; there are things they can do.

Dr. Holly: Absolutely. I have seen people hunkering with that modality and there have been literally incredible results.

Dr. Teitelbaum: Let me give that web address again. Write it down if you have problems with unknown (6:07). www.eft.mercola.com It will take you through it. A lot of it you can even do on your own, watching the videos and stuff. Know that you can be in control.

Dr. Holly:That’s absolutely amazing. What about any natural supplements? I know that there are a couple out there that have some good research behind them and are effective.

Dr. Teitelbaum: Number one, if you have depression, use the special form of curcumin called Curamed. Take 750mg, twice a day. It’s amazing stuff. In head on studies with anti-depressants after 6 weeks it’s more effective. Get your nutritional support. There’s a vitamin product called the Energy Revitalization System. You can find it at www.EndFatigue.com or most health food stores. Unknown (7:03) replaces 35 vitamin supplements. It gives you magnesium to B vitamins. Most people are going to find that, within a week or two, they’re going to feel so much calmer overall. The smell of lavender. Get some lavender flowers or put a drop of lavender oil on your upper lip. You can even get it in capsules. There’s a product called CalmAid. It’s on par with taking the valium type medications in effectiveness. Unknown (7:34). In South America when somebody is nervous their friends say: “Go get a passion flower drink.” You can take passion flower, 100mg twice a day. You can take theanine, a couple of hundred milligrams. You can take some theanine, you can take passion flower, you can take the lavender and they will calm you right down. Here are a couple of other things. Chromium. If you have irritable depression, your claws come out, take chromium 600mcg a day and take a product called Adrenal Stress End for adrenal support. You’ll find that in 6 weeks, very often, the anxiety settles right down.

Holly, I’m going to give a shameless plug. One of my books called Three Step to Happiness, you can find it as an eBook on Amazon, it’s a short, simple book. It will teach you how to get passed anxiety, get past depression, and how to get a life you love. It has a money-back guarantee.

Dr. Holly: That’s not shameless, I’ve got to tell you something, you’re very prolific in all of the work that you do. You’re books are amazing, they’re helpful. For me, you can plug yourself all the way to the next year. Jacob, I think what your number 1 mission is, is to help people. I think you do it so effectively. I appreciate you being here every single week.

Folks, listen, if you have anxiety one of the most important things is to keep on listening to our show and understand the multitude of factors. There is Cures A-Z, which is Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum’s free app that you can get that sort of covers this stuff. Also check out his website at www.EndFatigue.com. Jacob, thank you so much. Folks, this is Dr. Holly Lucille on Mindful Medicine, RadioMD. You can follow us on Facebook and Twitter @YourRadioMD. Stay tuned.