Is this the right doc?
Help anxiety, find the right doctor to add to your health care team. There are some of the important tests to have your doctor run to help determine what’s going on in your body that might be causing anxiety. But first it’s important to find a doctor who is on the same page as you. Even when I had worked with doctors who were supposedly holistic and not as likely to prescribe drugs, they did not know what tests to run to find the root causes of my relentless panic attacks and anxiety.
In hindsight, here are 5 simple questions that I wish knew to ask could have been:
1. Do you do 12 hour cortisol tests? Answer should be YES.
2. What do you find the causes of your patients anxiety to mostly be? Answer should be things like hormone imbalance, thyroid disfunction, hypoglycemia, vitamin/mineral/amino/fatty acid acid deficiency, candida overgrowth, damaged digestive tract, and /or insomnia.
3. How do you go about treating anxiety, panic attacks, depression, etc? Answer should be nutritional changes, nutritional supplementation, hormonal balancing, detoxification, and medication only if absolutely necessary.
4. If you prescribe a medication for me, what is your approach to get me off of it? Answer should be that as your body gets stronger, you will feel better. They should closely monitor your progress and wean you off medication properly when the time is appropriate.
5. What is the most important item you address first with your patients? Answer should be getting you to feel like a human being again ASAP!
Relief from your symptoms is your #1 priority. It can be achieved fast if your doctor knows what tests to run based on your symptoms. I floundered around with incompetent doctors for over 6 months. When I found a doctor who knew what tests to run and was given the appropriate amino acid formula for my deficiencies, I experienced almost 80% symptom relief OVERNIGHT! Of course it takes time to really heal the my core issues which were be lifestyle, digestion, nutritional deficiency, food allergies, toxicity, etc. But feeling like a sane person was my first priority, I was at my wits end. Asking the right questions to your physician is the most important part of your anxiety therapy.
What kind of doctor would you recommend? Internist, endocrinologist, GP? I’ve been looking for a doc but find all the different categories of docs confusing!
The docs that I have found to be most helpful are practicing under the anti-aging, longevity, orthomolecular, or functional medicine titles. I found my doc the backwards way, kind of! I contacted the company that does the testing and had them do a local search for docs in my area. The website for them is http://www.neurorelief.com. They can search for you, they are great.
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