4 Steps to Overcoming Anxiety for The Millennial
When Therapy and Meds Aren't Working
The worst thing about having anxiety is when you are doing ALL the things right and you still aren’t feeling well.
You are taking the meds and going to therapy, but you feel like there is a deeper issue at play in your body that you can’t quite figure out.
What’s missing when your doctor prescribes a pill is that there is no investigation into the root cause of your anxiety.
Anxiety is simply a symptom, or an indicator light for a deeper imbalance.
This is why many women notice they are struggling with digestive issues and hormone imbalances at the same time.
They are all intimately connected.
It’s usually never just ONE thing, but a combination of many. Which is why a comprehensive approach is effective, while myopic oversimplified one size fits all approaches aren’t.
There are 4 key things at play when it comes to addressing anxiety at its root.
1. BIOINDIVIDUALITY
The personalization of your protocol based on your body’s unique needs-this looks different for everyone. This is determined through labs that assess your how your genetics are being expressed, what minerals and vitamins your body needs, your unique hormonal balance etc.
In the past, when you’ve gone to the doctor, they have likely prescribed you medication without doing any blood work first. Did you know that your genetics influence what particular drugs and supplements can either be helpful or harmful for you?
When we test to see what your body needs, we are addressing the root cause.
If you are taking things like L-theanine and passionflower for your anxiety, while there is nothing wrong with that, you aren’t addressing the root of the issue but merely palliating your symptoms. You don’t have herbal or medication deficiencies, you have vitamin and mineral deficiencies that can be clearly detected through the correct lab testing.
Labs and your constitutional type give us imperative information about what specific interventions you need to bring your body back into balance, from supplements, nutrition and lifestyle shifts.
In the women that I work with, no two plans are the same because of bioindividuality.
2. Nervous system regulation
Maybe you’ve tried therapy or meditation and feel like it’s not helping. This is because these interventions work on the level of your conscious mind. Your nervous system overrides your conscious mind and determines how you automatically respond to stress. Your response to stress will influence your hormones and anxiety.
When I work with my clients, they learn how to repattern and reprogram their nervous system for resiliency to get out of constant fight or flight so that stress doesn’t affect them as much and overall anxiety levels reduce.
3. Hormone Balancing
(AND NOT WITH BIRTH CONTROL!)
Has your doctor ever offered you birth control as a solution to debilitating mood swings and energy dips around your period? They are essentially shutting off your hormones with this method and not addressing the root cause.
While that is one way to do it, it can come with unwanted side effects like weight gain, loss of libido and more anxiety. The better way is to test and see what hormones need balancing and we can do this with blood work!
Typically, testing thyroid hormones, estrogen, progesterone and blood sugar hormones like insulin all inform the root cause of your energy levels, anxiety and overall health.
When we test hormones, we can see a clear picture painted of what’s going on in your body and develop a plan using lifestyle, nutrition and supplements to bring it back into balance.
4. Gut Health
Last but not least, we have to address the gut. The gut is where your body does most of its detox. It’s where hormones get excreted. It’s where inflammation begins. When your gut is inflamed, you can’t absorb the nutrients from your food or even your supplements well. We have to start by addressing the gut if we truly want to get anywhere in addressing your anxiety.
Taking a probiotic, a greens powder or digestive enzymes and cutting out foods is not addressing the root cause.
As soon as you stop taking the probiotics and digestive enzymes and greens powder, your symptoms will return. Or it’s likely that your symptoms never improved with these therapeutics in the first place.
This is because what you were doing was symptom management.
To truly heal your gut to experience improved energy and balanced moods, you need testing and comprehensive assessment so you can have a personalized roadmap to a healthy gut.
I work with women on these 4 areas to get results like this:
Minimal to no anxiety
No more bloating or constipation or GI pain
Increased energy and libido
Balanced moods
You’ve been down the road of your doctor throwing SSRIs and birth control at all of your symptoms. You’ve maybe even started to journal, go to therapy and meditate and take supplements that are supposed to help like probiotics, L-theanine and CBD.
And while you may get some momentary symptom relief, they aren’t working on a deeper, more permanent level because you haven’t done the investigation to see what your body specifically needs so they aren’t targeting your unique imbalances.
Hi, I’m Dr. Allie Mclane
I’m a Naturopathic Doctor and Women’s Health Expert.
I’ve worked with hundreds of women to resolve the root cause of their symptoms such as PMS, fatigue, anxiety, depression, digestive problems and more. Over the years, I discovered that women struggling with REAL hormonal and mental health symptoms were missing the vital emphasis of the BODY in their care and were instead being brushed off by the system, told it’s all in their head and handed a pill.
But truly, what we think is a phenomenon of the mind is actually quite often rooted in the body-in a trauma, in a deficiency, in a toxicity, in an inflammatory state or in a hormonal miscommunication.
A holistic approach means addressing your whole body’s physiology from toxins to nutrient status to gut health to hormones, but also addressing nervous system dysregulation, so that your body can have a felt sense of safety while you heal.
When I seek to understand the body, I can best support the body in doing what it already knows how to do. I’ve helped hundreds of women using my body first methodology. This is what led me to create Mind Body Freedom
Mind Body Freedom
is an all encompassing 1:1 health membership designed to bring you symptom resolution and a felt sense of balance and calm in your body, using methods that address BOTH the body and the mind. You’ll receive education, continuous support, comprehensive lab testing, and personalized nutrient and lifestyle recommendations to address the body based root cause of your Anxiety, hormone and gut symptoms.