Naperville Integrated Wellness

NAPERVILLE'S TOP RATED LOCAL® FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE FACILITY

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Many individuals have suffered intense, excessive, and persistent worry and fear about everyday situations. This may be accompanied by fast heart rate, rapid breathing, sweating, and fatigue. These emotions and symptoms are often referred to as anxiety.  If you are someone who has experienced these symptoms, I imagine you would do just about anything to make them go away.  There is an anxiety treatment Naperville can look to alleviate these symptoms: functional medicine.

Chronic anxiety can be very hard to live with, it interferes with your social life, work and just about every other aspect of your life. Most of the time you don’t even know WHY you’re anxious…which makes it even more frustrating. You even try to reason with it and try to be rational about what is really happening in your life at that moment. All you know is that you feel it…it’s very real to you and fighting against it can be utterly exhausting.

Categories Of Anxiety

The 5 general categories of anxiety include: Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), phobias and panic attacks.  These categories will not be discussed in detail and are beyond the scope of this article. Most of the discussion will be focused on generalized anxiety, however, the impact of chronic anxiety discussed below will apply to other categories as well.  

It is significant to point out that the physiological processes that contribute to, and lead to a chronic anxiety state are numerous and complicated. The impact of this state on the body includes respiratory problems, gastrointestinal disorders, immune system problems, heart problems, muscle tension and chronic pain, memory loss and weight gain. I will touch on several of these problems below.

Gastrointestinal problems

Anxiety can lead to chronic digestion problems, such as stomach pains, excessing bloating or abdominal cramping, diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), vomiting, and so on.  

Immune system problems

Anxiety leads to persistent release of stress hormones. Coping with the fight or flight response may not allow your body to return to its normal resting state, leaving your immune system vulnerable to illness and viral infections.

Muscle tension and chronic pain

Frequent distress signals (caused by anxiety) from your amy

gdala to your central nervous system to prepare for a stress response can cause your muscles to contract or tighten frequently. Constant muscle tension can lead to muscle cramps, stiffness, as well as aches and pains that can tend to spread throughout the body. This may result in chronic pain conditions such as joint pains, arthritis, fibromyalgia, and so on.

Memory loss or ‘brain fog’

Anxiety may also impact your short-term or working memory. Therefore, you may find yourself making frequent mistakes, forgetting important appointments, and unable to cope with hectic schedules. When this happens regularly, it is difficult to take important decisions at work or at home; performance at school or office environments may be severely compromised. This leads you to be more anxious and may cause you to enter a state of depression.

 

So, you can see here how chronic low-level persistent stressors can trigger disruptions in body systems that the body was not meant to deal with. 

Anxiety…you would do just about anything to make it go away. It can be very hard to live with, it interferes with your social life, work and just about e

very other aspect of your life. Most of the time you don’t even know why you’re anxious…which makes it all the more frustrating. You even try to reason with it and try to be rational about what is really happening in your life at that moment. All you know is that you feel it…it’s very real to you and fighting against it can be utterly exhausting.

If any of these symptoms resonate with you, anxiety may be at the root of your symptoms:

Dr. Borkowski - Functional Medicine Anxiety Doctor

3 Anxiety Solutions

You basically have 3 options available for alleviating or stopping anxiety

  • Utilize natural treatments for anxiety: meditation, relaxation techniques, talk to a therapist, exercise…etc.
  • Take prescription medication
  • Adopt a functional medicine approach to identify chemical imbalances in your body that are causing anxiety and correct them. See “chemistry” section below

Option #1 does work for some people, and this may be a good place to start if you have not tried any of these approaches. Option #1 may provide additional benefit to those using Option #2 or #3

Option #2 is another possibility and is effective for some people and necessary for others. This is an allopathic approach, one that treats symptoms and diseases using drugs, radiation, or surgery. This model of treatment may require continued use to keep your anxiety under control.

Option #3 is the approach I will explain in more detail. With the help of a functional medicine doctor, you may be able to isolate imbalances in your body’s chemistry that are the root cause of your anxiety.

When I say “chemistry” I am talking about:

  1. Hormonal imbalances, for example: cortisol, DHEA, estrogen, progesterone and testosterone
  2. Thyroid function and thyroid hormone levels.  Thyroid hormones are used by every cell in the body. Hashimoto’s disease is a condition that is characterized by destruction of the thyroid gland.
  3. Chronic, low-grade inflammation in the body and brain
  4. Chronic infections in the digestive tract or the nervous system (primarily viruses in the nerves)
  5. Food sensitivities or allergies, which create inflammation and impaired gut function
  6. Insufficient nutrient building blocks to make enough of the chemicals in your brain that prevent chronic anxiety
  7. Poor digestive system health creating a variety of other problems including but not limited to the above mentioned problems

Functional medicine doctors are looking for the root cause of your anxiety. Treating anxiety solely with medications does not help you discover why you have anxiety.  Our goal is to find out want to find out WHY you have anxiety. Does everyone with anxiety respond to this functional approach?  I wish I could assure you that it does.  The truth is that there is nothing known to science or medicine that works 100% of the time when it come to the human body. However, many individuals who suffer from anxiety do very well with this functional medicine approach.

How Can This Stop My Anxiety?

  1. Anxiety is an imbalance that is occurring in your brain.
  2. Your brain needs to make chemicals that help suppress anxiety and keep it in balance.

All of the variables I listed under “chemistry” can have a significant impact on your brain and its ability to make and use the brain-chemicals that prevent anxiety. These brain-chemicals are called neurotransmitters. These neurotransmitters permit the different regions of your brain to talk to each other and keep the whole organ balanced.

If you have one or more of the imbalances in the “chemistry” list, then your brain will not function optimally. Your brain is a very complex and sensitive organ. In fact, there are millions of chemical reactions occurring every second. Chemical balance in what your brain is attempting to achieve; when this occurs you feel good and you do not suffer with anxiety. The goal of functional medicine is to help it get back into balance again.

Your brain chemical chemicals are not meant to cause you to suffer with chronic anxiety; that is not normal.  Certainly, we all experience some anxiety from time to time, but when it starts to become a chronic problem, when it begins to erode your quality of life…that’s when it becomes something that should be addressed.

If you are ready to take a functional medicine approach, contact my office and talk our functional medicine consultant. Is our program a good fit for everyone? No, it is not, but our consultant can help you make the choice that is best for you and your particular needs and circumstances.

If you are looking for a functional medicine doctor in Plainfield, Lisle, Chicago or surrounding areas, give us a call!

I wish you health, happiness and a better quality of life!

If you would like more information about functional medicine and integrative medicine or Dr. Borkowski go to napervilleintegratedwellness.com

Do your own research, inform yourself and ask lots of questions. When collecting information, you MUST consider the source. There is no shortage of false, misleading, outdated, profit-driven and utterly biased information in healthcare today; even from the most respected sources and organizations.

This approach to healthcare is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, mitigate, or prevent any disease. Why? The FDA enforces its position that these words can only be used with drugs. This approach does not use drugs.

CONTACT

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