Most anxiety treatment stops at the surface: take this pill, breathe through it, wait it out. That can quiet the symptoms for a while. Dr. Bryn Kanuck, LAc, DAcCHM at Austin Transformational Health, looks further. Anxiety is a signal, not a standalone diagnosis. It shows up when something underneath, the gut, the hormones, the nervous system, is out of balance. Correct the underlying imbalance, and the anxiety often eases along with it. Ignore it, and the anxiety tends to return, sometimes with new symptoms alongside it.
Anxiety Isn’t Just Mental
Anxiety lives in the body as much as the mind. A racing heart, chest tightness, shortness of breath, and a knotted stomach are how anxiety manifests itself through the nervous system, though they are commonly labeled as side effects.
This overlap can be frightening on its own. Chest tightness from anxiety can feel enough like a heart attack that people end up in the ER trying to tell the two apart. Research on anxiety’s physical effects confirms the symptoms genuinely can mimic more serious cardiac events. Digestive symptoms are just as common. The nerves that regulate digestion are highly sensitive to stress signals. In fact, close to a third of adults dealing with irritable bowel syndrome or chronic upset stomach also carry an anxiety or depressive disorder.
If you’ve been dealing with chest tightness, GI flare-ups, or both, alongside anxious thoughts, you’re not imagining a connection. Your body is actually telling you something.
Where Standard Anxiety Medications Fall Short
Beta blockers and buspirone are two of the most commonly prescribed options for anxiety, and both come with real limitations worth understanding before deciding they’re the whole answer.
Beta blockers like propranolol were built for the heart, not the brain. They work by blunting the physical symptoms of the stress response: the racing pulse, the trembling, the sweating. What they don’t touch is the underlying anxious thought pattern. Clinical reviewers have raised concerns that propranolol can mask symptoms without treating the psychological root of the problem. It may even worsen depressive symptoms in some people. A 2023 systematic review went further, finding no significant benefit for beta blockers over placebo for conditions like social anxiety and panic disorder.
Buspirone works differently, targeting serotonin activity in the brain rather than the physical stress response. It’s generally considered gentler than older anti-anxiety medications, but it isn’t free of drawbacks. Documented side effects include dizziness, nausea, headache, fatigue, and in some cases, a worsening of the very anxiety symptoms it’s meant to treat. It also typically takes several weeks to reach full effect, which can be a difficult wait for someone in the middle of a hard stretch.
None of this means medication has no place. For some people, especially during an acute crisis, it’s an important bridge. But a bridge isn’t a destination. If you’re taking one of these medications and still feel anxious underneath it, that’s usually a sign the root cause hasn’t been addressed yet. Please don’t stop or adjust any prescribed medication without talking to the doctor who prescribed it.
Why Getting to the Root Matters
Anxiety that goes unaddressed long-term doesn’t stay contained to mood. The stress hormones behind it, cortisol and adrenaline, are meant for short bursts. When they stay elevated for months or years, they affect more than how you feel in the moment.
Over time, chronic anxiety tends to raise resting heart rate and blood pressure, increase the odds of digestive disorders like IBS, and wear down immune resilience. None of this is meant to alarm you. It simply makes the case for treating anxiety as a whole-body pattern worth addressing early, rather than a mood to push through. Address the root cause sooner, and the body has less to compensate for down the road.
The Root-Cause Approach: What’s Actually Driving Anxiety
Functional medicine starts from a different question than “which medication controls this symptom.” It asks what’s driving the nervous system into overdrive in the first place. For many people, the answer involves one or more of these systems.
The HPA axis and cortisol. Your hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis is the body’s central stress-response system. Under chronic stress, this system can become dysregulated, keeping cortisol either too high or unpredictably erratic. That dysregulation affects energy, sleep, and it directly disrupts the neurotransmitters, including serotonin and GABA, that keep mood stable.
The thyroid. Thyroid hormones have a direct hand in regulating the same neurotransmitter systems involved in anxiety. Standard bloodwork often checks only TSH, which can miss the fuller picture. Subclinical thyroid issues can drive anxiety symptoms even when TSH looks normal. This includes impaired conversion of T4 to active T3 and undetected thyroid autoimmunity. Chronic stress and thyroid function also feed each other in both directions. Sustained cortisol elevation can impair the body’s ability to convert thyroid hormone into its active form.
The gut-brain axis. The gut and the brain stay in constant two-way communication, largely through the vagus nerve and the metabolic byproducts of gut bacteria. A growing body of research on the microbiota-gut-brain axis shows that gut-derived signals can directly influence brain activity, endocrine balance, and neuroinflammation tied to anxiety. Because the gut and the brain are so closely linked, GI-MAP testing and gut-focused protocols are a routine part of how ATH approaches anxiety, right alongside digestive concerns.
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How Acupuncture, Herbs, and Reiki Fit In
Acupuncture’s effect on anxiety is measurable in the nervous system, affirming traditional theory. Acupuncture points connected to the vagus nerve can shift the autonomic nervous system toward parasympathetic dominance, the “rest and digest” state. This shift shows up as increased heart rate variability and lower physiological markers of a stuck fight-or-flight response. A case-series study on generalized anxiety disorder found that acupuncture treatment improved heart-rate variability and heart-rhythm coherence, both linked to reduced anxiety and stress symptoms.
At Austin Transformational Health, Dr. Bryn typically approaches anxiety from several directions at once:
- Acupuncture to help calm an overactive nervous system and support healthier vagal tone, alongside identifying and addressing what’s driving the pattern
- Custom herbal formulas to support the specific pattern behind your anxiety, whether that’s more agitation-based or more depleted and fatigued
- Reiki to support deeper nervous system regulation alongside acupuncture
- Functional lab testing, such as cortisol and HPA axis panels, thyroid panels beyond TSH, and GI-MAP stool testing, to help identify what’s actually driving the pattern
What a First Visit Looks Like
A first visit starts with listening. Dr. Bryn asks about more than anxious thoughts. Sleep, digestion, energy, cycles, and stress history all matter, since anxiety rarely shows up in isolation. From there, she may recommend testing based on what your case points toward. That might mean an Evexia wellness panel, a dedicated thyroid workup, a DUTCH hormone test, or GI-MAP stool testing. She builds your treatment plan, acupuncture frequency, herbal formula, and any supplement support, around what the testing actually shows. It’s never a one-size-fits-all protocol.
