Does Ketamine Help Anxiety?

How Does Ketamine Help Anxiety?

Ketamine IV treatment affects a neurotransmitter called glutamate, as well as a receptor called the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor. Both play an important role in the management of mental disorders like anxiety and PTSD.

Ongoing stress and anxiety can lead to negative changes in specific parts of the brain, including the amygdala, which is responsible for processing fear and anxiety.

Glutamate is an excitatory neurotransmitter that can help encourage synaptic plasticity (the flexibility of synapses to strengthen or weaken depending on changes in activity) as well as increase synaptic connections. Ketamine increases the activity of glutamate in the brain to provide relief from anxiety symptoms.

Ketamine Therapy acts directly on glutamate which often leads to immediate results (patient experiences may vary). Antidepressants and anxiety medications perform a similar function, but take much longer to take effect, and sometimes don’t work effectively in cases of treatment-resistant mental conditions. Ketamine has shown promise in treating conditions when other prescription medications have failed.

Ketamine Therapy also impacts the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor, which plays a part in many mental disorders. Ketamine is an NMDA receptor antagonist, which means it inhibits the receptor, thereby producing anti-anxiety effects and relief from depression and PTSD symptoms.

What are Anxiety Disorders?

It’s natural to feel anxiety from to time. However, if anxiety doesn’t fade or change with your circumstances, and if the symptoms of anxiety disrupt your ability to live normally, then it may be a more serious condition.

There are several types of anxiety disorders, and patients may experience one or more. Ketamine for Anxiety can ease many of the symptoms associated with these disorders.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

This condition is categorized by experiencing extreme worry or anxiety more days than not for more than six months. You may experience this anxiety because of social interactions, health concerns, financial or disaster related fears, and others.

Symptoms include:

• A general sense of dread
• Fatigue
• Irritability
• Inability to find happiness or relief in hobbies
• Sleepless nights spent worried about negative possibilities
• Rapid or spiraling thoughts

Panic Disorders

This condition is categorized by frequent panic attacks. During a panic attack, a wave of intense fear will hit suddenly, sometimes because of a trigger but not always. You may be able to pinpoint what causes a panic attack, like fighting with a spouse or being in a large crowd, but they can also happen unexpectedly in otherwise calm moments.

Symptoms of a panic attack often include:

• Hyperventilation or difficulty breathing
• Fast heartbeat and heart palpitations (skipped beats or an extreme awareness of your heartbeat)
• Shaking
• Sobbing uncontrollably
• Profusive sweating

Because of its symptoms, panic attacks are often confused with physical conditions like heart attacks.

During a panic attack, your body essentially goes into a fear response with adrenaline pumped into your system to prepare for the impending danger – except often there is no impending physical danger.

People with Generalized Anxiety Disorder or other types of anxiety disorders may experience panic attacks, as well. The medical community does not totally understand what causes these attacks, especially when they are not due to a situational trigger. Ketamine for anxiety can help ease panic attack symptoms as it decreases levels of anxiety.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is sometimes considered an anxiety disorder due to similarities in the symptoms and episodes it causes. Experiencing a severe traumatic experience or set of experiences can cause PTSD to develop.

PTSD symptoms may present as soon as the first month after a traumatic event, or they may take years to manifest. Symptoms include:

• Intrusive memories of the traumatic event, including flashbacks and dreams.
• A severe emotional response if something reminds you of the traumatic event, which may include flashbacks or sudden, vivid memories paired with panic and fear similar to a panic attack.
• Avoiding places, people, and events that can trigger these responses.
• Ongoing anxiety, worry, depression and/or a negative or burdened outlook.
• Difficulty maintaining close relationships and becoming distant from your family and friends.
• A lack of interest in hobbies that used to make you happy.
• Feeling constantly on-guard or in danger, as though something could go wrong at any moment.

PTSD is a serious mental illness that can drastically decrease quality of life. Fortunately, it’s one of the conditions Ketamine Therapy has shown success in treating.

Phobias

A phobia is an extreme fear response to a specific trigger. These fear responses are typically excessive and outsized in relation to the cause of the phobia.

Common phobias can focus on:

• Animals and insects
• Spatial triggers like heights or crowds
• Medical procedures including injections, needles, IVs, and surgery
• Social anxieties and fear of being around other people

It’s important to note that you can be afraid of or averse to something without having a diagnosed phobia. A fear becomes a potential clinical condition when it interrupts your daily life and makes it difficult to maintain quality of life. In these cases, utilizing Ketamine for anxiety may help reduce the disruptive symptoms.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or OCD, is an anxiety disorder that can cause people to fixate on certain situations or objects and feel compelled to perform repeated behaviors.

OCD may lead to symptoms like:

• Intrusive and obsessive thoughts with a specific focus. These can include germs and cleanliness, pollution, organization and order, religious concerns, and others. The thoughts may occur repeatedly and lead to obsessive behaviors.
• Feeling compelled to do specific actions, sometimes over and over again, to provide a sense of order and control. These actions may be repeatedly washing hands, shutting and locking the door multiple times, repeating routines, rereading specific passages, arranging objects until they feel “correct” and others. These behaviors may repeat at regular intervals, such as three or six times.
• The above symptoms are often accompanied by a sense of doom or danger if the repetitious thoughts and actions are not performed – as though the world depends on these behaviors.

Other Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety is a complex mental disorder that comes in many forms. People who experience anxiety may experience one or more of the above conditions, or others not listed here. It is always important to work with a mental health professional to accurately diagnose your condition and come up with a treatment plan.

A multi-pronged treatment plan that includes talk therapy, medication, and Ketamine for anxiety is often more effective than any of these therapies alone.