What is anxiety?

While everyone experiences stress and anxious feelings from time to time, anxiety disorders involve excessive fear and stress about typically benign situations. In its simplest form, anxiety is an extreme and irrational fear of a future event that causes symptoms like tension and avoidance behaviors.

There are several classifications of anxiety disorders. The most common is generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). If you have GAD, you live with persistent worries and fears that disrupt your regular daily activities, along with symptoms that include:

·       Muscle tension

·       Feeling on edge

·       Poor concentration

·       Fatigue

·       Insomnia

Other common forms of anxiety include panic disorder, social anxiety, and specific phobias. 

How is anxiety treated?

Vancouver Ketamine Infusions uses ketamine infusion therapy to treat anxiety. Your experiences with anxiety may be quite different from others, and it’s sometimes challenging to find the right treatment to relieve your symptoms. Many of the medications used to treat anxiety are slow-acting and must build up in your body to adjust any chemical imbalances contributing to your condition.  

Ketamine infusion therapy works differently than traditional anti-anxiety medications. While most antidepressants help your brain slowly produce more serotonin, one of the “feel-good” chemicals in your brain, ketamine stimulates your brain’s overall functional capacity. 

What should I expect during ketamine IV therapy for anxiety?

The team at Vancouver Ketamine Infusions will conduct a thorough consultation to determine if ketamine infusion therapy is right for you. In most cases, you will begin with a series of six infusion sessions around 3 times a week. You will spend 40 minutes relaxing while the medication is administered and 20 minutes recovering. You may experience a relaxed or floating sensation or mild hallucinations that subside quickly when your session is over. 

They may suggest additional maintenance sessions depending on how you respond to treatment and your symptoms' severity. Maintenance ketamine infusions take place every 3-5 weeks to provide long-lasting relief of your symptoms. Eventually, you work with the team at Vancouver Ketamine Infusions to increase the time between your treatments. 

The CRNA will carefully monitor you during your infusions to ensure all protocols and best practice standards are followed, keeping you both comfortable and safe.  The ketamine infusions should help resolve your symptoms and create mental clarity enabling you to focus your energy on additional therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy, learning to recognize your thoughts and control your behavioral responses. 

If you want to learn more about ketamine infusion therapy and how it can help control your anxiety, call 360-360-2244, email Info@VancouverKetamineInfusions.com to make an appointment today.