Stress
report feeling extreme stress
experience stress that affects
their physical health
have mental health impacts
Sometimes the grind of daily life is eats away at our physical and mental well being and we may not even realize it. The upcoming deadlines, that awful commute, getting the kids fed and to school on time, skipping the gym and feeling judged for it, shoving fast food down because you don’t have the time, a global pandemic. These are just a few of the common things that bring stress into your life. It is not always easy to ensure you are properly taking care of yourself and often you may not even realize that our routines are slowly taking away what it means to be alive. Stress can take your ability to look forward to your favorite things and diminish your gratitude for things you worked so hard for and actually achieved. Often we fall into the routines of eat, work, sleep, repeat and forget to take a look at who we have become and what type of life we want to live. Have you been putting so much care into others happiness and well-being that you don’t even recognize or remember what it is to make yourself happy?
Stress is a normal part of life, but not being able to manage stress properly can affect our emotions, body, and how we behave in many different ways. We all know that eating well, sleeping an appropriate amount, exercising and spending time with friends and family are ways to reduce stress. But what if you are unable to get out of your own thoughts and find peace and happiness in those places of relief? You may already have a diagnosed mental health condition, or maybe the constant stimulation of our modern daily lives is stressing you out so much you are just existing rather than living.
A simple ketamine infusion can help break you of that negative routine, those negative thoughts and feelings, and give a glimmer of insight into yourself and show you what you have been missing. Maybe what has been missing all along has been right in front of you. Maybe you just needed some perspective on how well you are living your life, or maybe your stress isn’t letting you recognize the appreciation your family has for you, or the appreciation you should have for your own successes.
Mental health treatments and wellness care is not always about treating what has gone wrong. Often, mental health care is most useful as a preventative measure to give perspective on life, its difficulties, and the beauty it holds. Ketamine treatments allow you to have perspective on yourself and give clarity to what is happening in your life. The introspective state that ketamine induces allows you to fully view your life free of the worries that come with having to “live up to expectations” put on by work, society, and yourself. This relaxing, introspective, and transformative experience can allow you to practice gratitude, feel relief, put your worries in perspective, and find an inspirational place within yourself you may not have recognized for far too long.
When plagued by chronic stress, the body stores the stress hormones that are meant to keep up on our toes, engaged with what needs to be done, and back to our ancestors, keep up alive. The day to day lives we lead can cause a build up of these hormones that can lead to anxiety, depression, and other physical ailments.
Common symptoms of Stress
If you are stressed you may feel:
- Angry, impatient, or wound up
- Over-burdened or overwhelmed
- Sad or depressed
- Nervous or restless
- Worried or tense
- Like you’ve lost your sense of humor
- Lost interest in things you used to enjoy
- Neglected or lonely
- Racing thoughts
- Forgetful
- Existing mental health problems getting worse
Physical signs of Stress
Stress hormones produced by our bodies when responding to stressful situations have many physical effects. They tend to worsen with the frequency of stress.
- Difficulty breathing
- Panic Attacks
- Difficulty sleeping
- Fatigue
- Sexual Problems
- Teeth grinding
- Muscle Aches and Headaches
- Chest pains and high blood pressure
- Indigestion, acid reflux
- constipation and diarrhea
- Sudden weight gain or loss
- Rashes or Itchy kin
- Sweating
- Changes to your period or menstrual cycle
- Existing physical health problems getting worse
How Ketamine Can Help
Ketamine Infusions work by directly impacting the brain chemicals involved in stress. When receiving a ketamine infusion, the medication temporarily blocks the glutamate receptors in the brain thereby increasing the production of glutamate. Glutamate is the most abundant amino acid in the brain and is responsible for the optimization of chemicals that enable clear thinking and stable emotions. Ketamine triggers neurogenesis, a process where new neurons are created and existing neural pathways are re-activated in healthy ways that can reduce anxiety and reinvigorate your mind. Neurogenesis is most prevalent in a growing child’s brain but continues at a diminished rate throughout your life. Age, stress, poor habits, and other factors contribute to an actual physical reduction of your brain to experience these effects and therefore influence how you act, feel and move about with your life. Ketamine can help re-invigorate your mind to get you to a better place to accept, handle, and succeed at dealing with the stressors that impact you. Ketamine has an almost immediate relaxing effect and when used for mental health disorders, some ketamine infusion patients experience immense relief within hours of their treatment. With continued treatment for severe mental health disorders, others see improvement within weeks following their second or third infusion. Mismanaged daily stress can result in much more debilitating mental and physical conditions and it is our mission to provide relief to our patients so they can experience a reprieve from stress in one of the quickest and effective ways possible, while also giving them the tools and perspective to handle whatever comes at them in the most comprehensive ways possible. A single ketamine infusion can be one of the best forms of self-care you ever find for yourself.
We aren’t all conditioned, trained, or taught how to manage this stress, it is typically something we just have to “figure out”. The space that ketamine can bring you to is much like the space that practiced meditators, yogis, athletes, and religious practices can provide. Not everyone is able to invest their time or energy into those valuable parts of life and may find other resources such as massage, acupuncture, or a spa day to help relieve their stress. While these methods are all valuable, they work primarily on a physical level and as a temporary mental break from life’s stressors. When receiving a ketamine infusion, the medicine goes to work almost instantly and relaxes your body far beyond what those other methods can do. You may know ketamine as an anesthetic used before surgery or given to children in an ambulance with a broken bone. This is the same medicine, just administered at a significantly smaller does. Patients dealing with chronic pain have reported they receive almost instant relieve from many of their symptoms. When an “average” stressed out person comes to our clinic they are instantly brought into to our relaxing, spa-like environment where they can start forgetting their worries. Once in our incredibly comfortable treatment rooms, the medicine is administered and your body will feel relaxed, many report feeling like they are floating on a cloud!
Once in this relaxing environment, safe from all the daily worries and stresses, you can have a deep and meaningful conversation with yourself about what it is you miss most about being YOU, and you can set positive intentions during your session on how to integrate your thoughts to being a better version of yourself. Many people get ketamine infusions simply to practice gratitude, to recognize what they have done well in their lives, who has helped them get to where they are, or see where they can improve on their self-care. Many more experience ketamine simply to enrich their thinking, the medicine actives parts of the brain that have laid dormant or uninterested in growth. Being “stuck in a rut” is a common place to start when beginning your treatment process. But with some positive intention setting, your experience can be filled with epiphanies with will bring you closer to your best self.
To achieve the highest levels of benefit, our patients complete treatment based on specific guidelines established by researchers, approved by our Medical Director and tested over years of treatment. Your individual needs, symptoms, and goals of care will be addressed to determine your course of treatment.
To schedule a free consultation with the experts at NeuConnections to learn about ketamine for stress disorders, call the office or click the Registration button below.
