The real reason you're anxious (it's not what you think)

Over 2,000 years ago, there was an emperor in China who had everything. Power, wealth, protection, control over an entire empire. And yet there was one thing he didn't have. He couldn't sleep. Because every night he tried sleeping, his mind would race, his heart would pound. He felt restless, agitated, unable to calm down. Even there, there was no real threat around him. So he did what any emperor would do. He called in the best physicians in all the land. But instead of telling him just to relax, they did something very different. They didn't focus on his thoughts or his nightmares. They studied his body. They felt his pulse. They observed his tongue. And they asked about his digestion, his energy, his emotions, and sleep. And what they told him was this. Your heart is not being nourished. Your liver is not forming properly. Your qi is rising upward with nowhere to go. In other words, his anxiety wasn't coming from his mind. It was coming from an imbalance within his body. And when they treated the body, the anxiety disappeared. Now in this video, you'll learn the four most common root patterns behind anxiety from an East and West perspective. And how they map directly to what we understand in modern physiology. We'll show you the difference between anxiety that comes from stress and stagnation, or from blood sugar, or from depletion, or from anxiety that comes from a deeper burnout of the system. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hine. Board licensed doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. And author of the health book, Master of the Day. Let's dive in. Now anxiety is one of the most common things I see in my practice. Because people come in saying, I know I should relax. I know I should meditate. I know I should stop worrying. But I can't. And usually they've already tried all of the obvious things. They've tried the breathing exercises, the therapy, journaling, supplements, magnesium, cutting caffeine, and sometimes even medication. Now all of those things can help. But the problem is that most people are still treating anxiety like it lives only in the mind. From the Western scientific point of view, anxiety is often explained through neurotransmitters, stress hormones, trauma, nervous system dysregulation, and genetics. And that is true. But traditional Chinese medicine offers another lens. It tends to ask a deeper question. Which is, what is the internal terrain that makes the body feel so unsafe? So let me explain it in another way. Imagine your body is like a house. And your mind is the person living inside the house. If the lights are flickering, the alarms are going off, the heater is broken, and the foundation is shaking, the person inside the house is going to feel anxious. Not because they're mentally irrational, but because the actual environment feels unstable and unsafe. And in Chinese medicine, anxiety often happens when the internal environment becomes unstable. The heart is not properly nourished. The liver and the emotions don't smoothly flow. The pancreas is not transforming food into usable energy. And the kidneys and the adrenals are too depleted to actually anchor the nervous system. So for many people, the anxiety is not just too many thoughts. It's the mind reacting to a body that no longer feels grounded. And that's why for so many people, you can't always think your way out of it. Because if the terrain is unstable, positive thoughts are not enough. You have to stabilize the terrain. Now pattern number one is more of the stress-related cause of anxiety. What we call liver qi stagnation. This pattern of liver qi stagnation is the anxiety that comes from pressure, frustration, and emotional suppression. And basically the feeling that life is moving faster than your body can process. So in Chinese medicine, we see the liver is responsible for the smooth physiological flow. It keeps emotions moving, blood moving, qi moving, digestion moving, even the menstrual cycle moving. But when stress builds up and you don't have a way to discharge it in a healthy way, the flow gets stuck. And when that flow gets stuck, the body starts to feel tight. So this is the person that comes in and says, I'm anxious, but I also feel agitated or irritable. They feel tension in their neck and shoulders. Tightness in the chest, a lump in the throat, shallow breathing, PMS, bloating, or sighing all day long. And the sighing is important. The body is literally trying to move what we call stuck qi, right? Stuck physiology. From a Western perspective, this looks a lot like sympathetic nervous system activation. So the body is stuck in like a low-grade fight or flight state. Not because there's an immediate threat, but because there's unresolved pressure in the system. And that's why the anxiety feels agitated. It's not the same as fear. It's like pressure with nowhere to go. Like when you're in Los Angeles or New York City traffic. So we say in Chinese medicine, the liver lost its ability to sort of course and discharge. So that's the restless, wired, intense feeling. The solution for this kind of anxiety is not to think it's mental. It's to restore movement. That's why walking in the gym are excellent. That's why stretching helps. Crying helps. Any emotional expression helps. The liver doesn't need like a mental exercise. It needs movement. Pattern number two is what we call gut-mediated anxiety or spleen qi deficiency. The second pattern is one of the most common that people never associate with anxiety. It's what we call spleen qi deficiency, which is often digestive problems, gut dysfunction, causing neurotransmitter and brain chemistry dysfunction. So this is the anxiety that comes from overthinking, poor digestion, and really people who don't have enough energy to start feeling rounded. So we say in Chinese medicine, the spleen organ network, including the pancreas, stomach, and small intestine, it's like your digestive and metabolic engine. It takes food, turns that food into energy, which your brain, heart, muscles, and nervous system all depend on. But when digestion is weak, the body doesn't make enough usable energy in a proper way. And when the body doesn't make that clean energy, the mind becomes unstable. This is the person who's anxious but also tired. They overthink. They overworry. They're bloated after eating. They crave sugar. They feel heavy in their body. And they often feel worse when they skip meals. So from a scientific point of view, this maps really well into blood sugar dysregulation. When your blood sugar drops, body releases stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline to bring it back up. And what do those hormones feel like? They feel like anxiety, a racing heart, shaky hands, irritability, panic, dread, feeling that something is wrong even though nothing actually happened. So for this person, the first step is often not a more advanced breathing technique. It's good dietetics like warm food, regular meals, enough protein, stable blood sugar, and rebuilding the digestive system. Because a grounded mind comes from a properly nourished body. So one of the biggest problems I see is that people don't actually know which pattern they're in. They just feel anxious, tired, wired, off, or they're trying random solutions like magnesium and random things they hear about that don't actually match the root cause. So if you're listening to this and think, okay, this sounds like me, but I don't know if I'm a stress related, liver cheese stagnation, gut related, spleen chi deficiency, or something deeper, I made a quiz for you to figure out exactly what it is. So it's a short root cause quiz that will map exactly to your proper original type of what's causing your anxiety. You can go to dralexheim.com forward slash quiz or click the link right below this video to download that and actually figure out right now what's causing the anxiety. Now this third pattern is more neurotransmitter related anxiety and it's what we call heart blood deficiency. It's not the anxiety people usually talk about and it's not always obvious on standard lab work, but it's one of the most important anxiety patterns in traditional Chinese medicine. So there's an ancient idea that the heart houses the spirit in Chinese medicine. What does that mean? The shen is like your mind, your spirit, your consciousness, your awareness, your alertness. And for your mental status to be calm, it needs a place to rest. And we say that that place to rest is the blood. Again, the blood is a concept, right? It's not just your physical blood. So when blood is abundant, the mind feels settled. But when blood is deficient, the mind is restless, unanchored, and easily disturbed. So these people feel anxious at night. They could feel tired all day, but when it's time to sleep, the mind suddenly becomes active. They replay conversations. They worry about the future. They feel emotionally sensitive, easily startled, and sometimes have palpitations or light sleep. And this pattern shows up a lot after childbirth, heavy periods, chronic stress, under eating, overworking, or long-term digestive weakness, like people who have GI problems and anemia. So for these kinds of people, you have to rebuild your deeper resources. You need to rebuild the body. You need to have animal protein, those dark leafy greens to build blood, traditional blood builders, restore minerals, eat warm, nutrient-dense foods, and stop living like your body has unlimited reserves. Because the chronic depletion needs time to restore itself. And we say, when the blood stores return, the shen, the spirit, the consciousness, starts to settle. Now here's a perfect case study. Look at one of my patients, Shirley. During the pandemic, and while being a caretaker for her ailing mother, she basically completely exhausted herself and began developing panic attacks and anxiety to the point where when she saw me as a patient, she was only sleeping three hours a night. She had panic attacks on a weekly basis, felt anxious all the time, and wasn't sure if she'd ever be able to be her old self again or if it would go away without medication. Now after treating her, not only was she able to sleep through the night again, seven to eight hours versus three, pretty damn good, the panic attacks and anxiety stopped 100%. Now the fourth pattern is more hormone-related anxiety. What we call this is kidney deficiency. This is the anxiety that usually comes from long-term depletion or burnout, or the feeling that your body sort of no longer has the deep reserves it used to. So we say in Chinese medicine, your kidney is like the battery of the body. They store your essence, your hormones, they regulate growth and aging, and they provide sort of a deep root that anchors the whole system. And when that kidney network is depleted, you can't handle stress anymore. Those little things feel like a lot. Your normal responsibilities are too much, and you no longer have the inner reserves to meet life. These are the people that come and they say, I don't just feel anxious, I feel fragile. They may have frequent urination, night sweats, tinnitus, hormonal changes, kind of adrenal type exhaustion, or a deep sense of just, I'm severely exhausted. And this is why burnout anxiety feels a lot different from stress anxiety. Stress anxiety is like, I have too much to do. Burnout anxiety is like, I don't have enough resources to allow myself to do it. So what this kind of person needs is restoration. The restoration of deep sleep, warmth, trace minerals, steady meals, massively decreased work, herbs and formulas, and really a life approach that stops spending tomorrow's energy today. So to get to the root cause of it, Chinese medicine thinks not what pill treats anxiety, but what pattern is creating anxiety. Because once you know the pattern, you stop fighting the symptom and start fixing the actual terrain. Because anxiety is not always what you think it is. Sometimes it is a mindset problem, and sometimes it's not a weakness, and it's not even primarily emotional. Sometimes anxiety is the signal your body gives when it's stuck, depleted, undernourished, or no longer able to regulate itself. So that means the goal is not to try to silence the signal, it's to understand what it's pointing to. Is your stress response stuck? Is digestion weak? Are your resources exhausted? Because when you answer that question, anxiety becomes less mysterious, and it becomes a message. And when you listen to the message correctly, the body finally has a chance to come back into balance. So what's always really important is to figure out what is that root pattern behind everything here in your anxiety. So that's why I created the root cause quiz I've linked up below this video. You can also go to dralexheing.com forward slash quiz. So it walks you through your symptoms, shows you which Chinese medicine pattern you're most likely have. So download it right below this video. It's quick, it's free, gives you a really good starting point to know what's coming up. Now, if you're trying to figure out what's the best diet for anxiety, I have a great related video on the Chinese medicine diet exactly for anxiety here.