Anxiety and Panic Attacks
Anxiety and Panic Attacks
Do you suffer from anxiety and panic attacks? Do you find yourself overcome with worry, fear and uneasiness and you are not sure why? Do you feel nervous and irritable? Do you often feel scared for no reason?
Dr. Hotze explains how low progesterone levels can cause estrogen dominance, leading to anxiety and panic attacks. This can safely be treated with bioidentical progesterone.
Video Transcription:
Brenda Teele: If you suffer with massive anxiety or panic attacks, it could be a symptom of a hormonal imbalance. And the good news is it can be treated naturally.
Dr. Steven Hotze is the founder of the Hotze Health & Wellness Center and he is here to tell us more about this natural solution. Let’s start off by talking about what is an anxiety attack.
Dr. Steven Hotze: An anxiety attack is a chronic agitation, a restlessness or apprehensiveness that can’t really be described. It’s this feeling that you have of apprehension. That something’s not right.
As opposed to a panic attack which is an acute sense of overwhelming fear for no apparent reason. And these commonly happen to individuals as they mature and march through their lives. Women particularly, as they march through their menstrual life. This is a very common complaint that we see.
Brenda Teele: See now I have never experienced a panic attack, but I hear about women and men, quite frankly, who have.
Dr. Steven Hotze: They’ll be driving in a car and all of the sudden they will have this overwhelming sense of fear for no apparent reason.
Brenda Teele: So what causes it?
Dr. Steven Hotze: Well, the common cause of this is the decline and imbalance in our natural occurring hormones, which are simply chemical messengers which are secreted by specific glands. The thyroid gland, the sex glands. Ovaries in females and testicles in males. And the adrenal glands.
The hormones that are secreted instruct ourselves what to do. And as our hormone levels decline or become imbalanced, it affects the cellular functioning in our bodies, most particularly the brain function. So it affects our ability to produce the natural occurring neuro-endocrine hormones that help us think well and feel well and be calm.
Brenda Teele: So anybody could experience this at any point.
Dr. Steven Hotze: Well, that’s right. Anybody can experience it and sometimes anxiety is real. You know, we’re worried about finances, worried about kids, worried about jobs, and those sort of things.
The common treatment of this when people go for treatment is, unfortunately, they’re often placed on drugs. They’re placed on anti-anxiety drugs like Ativan, or Xanax or they get antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft and Effexor which simply mask the underlying problem.
It doesn’t get rid of your financial problems when you take drugs. It doesn’t get rid of the problems you might have with your husband or problems with the kids. It simply masks the problems.
But it surely doesn’t correct the underlying hormonal imbalances which so often occur in individuals in mid-life.
Brenda Teele: So let’s back up a little bit here, because I want everybody to understand when an anxiety attack becomes a real concern. Because as you mentioned there are times, holidays, when you do feel a little more anxiety and stress.
So how do we distinguish between what’s normal and expected and when we need to seek further help.
Dr Steven Hotze: Well, if it’s something that’s acute and you get over it once the holidays are over and you feel like “whew”. Glad that’s over, I feel great again. But if it doesn’t go away and you’re having this on a recurring basis, then that’s something that you need to consider. Could it be an underlying hormonal imbalance that’s causing this.
Never are anxiety attacks caused by low levels of drugs in our body.
Brenda Teele: Right, because that’s not a naturally occurring…
Dr. Steven Hotze: Those aren’t naturally occurring. So if you have this chronic and recurring feeling of agitation or stress. Or let’s say it’s cyclical. Let’s say in a woman you notice that this happens cyclically before my menstrual cycles. Well, it’s got to be hormonal.
Brenda Teele: So, here we go again. We have a decline in the progesterone.
Dr. Steven Hotze: Progesterone is the hormone that most dramatically declines as women mature. They make two hormones primarily. Estrogen hormones and progesterone. In a 28 day cycle. All month long you’re making estrogen, you ovulate, then you make progesterone. The progesterone balances the estrogen. As a woman matures the progesterone levels decline. In fact, women as they mature don’t ovulate every month. When they don’t ovulate they make no progesterone. So often times women will say some months I feel much more agitated, much more restless. My mood swings are much worse than other months and that’s due to progesterone decline. And that could be easily treated with natural occurring progesterone.
Brenda Teele: But if it goes untreated, then you can have other hormonal imbalances as a result.
Dr. Steven Hotze: Well, absolutely. What does that lead to. When you have estrogen dominance and low progesterone, then all the sudden you get changes in your menstrual cycles, and you get the clotting, the bleeding. The menstrual cramps and irregularities, fibroids and these sort of things can lead to a whole other problem. And that can lead to hysterectomies and that doesn’t correct the underlying problem. The underlying problem as we age is a decline in our natural occurring hormones which are those chemical messengers that instruct ourselves what to do.
Brenda Teele: And how to respond.
Dr. Steven Hotze: And how to respond. As we lose those hormones then our bodies don’t function as well.
Brenda Teele: Interesting, interesting. But it’s wise to have it treated sooner than later because then you avoid that domino effect of everything now becoming unbalanced in the body.
All right, Dr. Hotze always so good to see you.
Dr. Steven Hotze: Thank you so much, you too.
Brenda Teele: You can find out more about the Hotze Health & Wellness Center by calling 877-698-8698. Or by logging onto hotzehwc.com.
