Alpha Stim As A Tool For Anxiety Management
This device is an excellent tool to help manage anxiety when used alongside deeper neurological rewiring programs.
There are endless treatment options for chronic anxiety, but many of them either don’t work, take months to years to work, or they come with unwanted side effects. The Alpha Stim device is an effective tool to assist in the management of anxiety for post-traumatic, acute and chronic anxiety, and when paired with deeper neurological training techniques, can help with significant shifts in the quality of your life.
A quick search online of "how to treat anxiety" will produce an endless list of results ranging from pharmaceutical medication, to meditation techniques, to supplements and beyond. While many of these treatments are effective, some come with unwanted side effects, while others take weeks to months to work.
The Alpha Stim is a unique option for anxiety treatment that works almost immediately and produces long-term gains.
In this article, you'll learn:
What is the Alpha Stim?
How does Alpha Stim relieve anxiety?
Is Alpha Stim enough to treat your anxious brain?
How to gain optimal benefits from Alpha Stim
What Is The Alpha Stim?
Alpha Stim is a medical device that generates a unique patented waveform. This electromedical technology is clinically proven to relieve anxiety, depression, and insomnia.
Unlike medications that you take for these conditions, this fascinating device works by allowing your cells to return to their natural, functioning state by introducing alpha waves to your body, working directly at a cellular level. A huge benefit of this is that you get to cut out all of those unwanted side effects that often come with pills.
The results of using Alpha Stim are long-lasting and cumulative, and you don't run the risk of developing addiction or tolerance as you may with oral medications.
It's also incredibly easy to use. Simply apply the ear clips to your ears for 20-60 minutes several times a week, and enjoy the benefits of relaxation and well-being.
Equally exciting is that Alpha Stim also has an upgrade with an Alpha Stim M. This has all the benefits of the original but it has additional probes and options to treat pain as well as anxiety and mood.
How Does Alpha Stim Work For Anxiety?
Most people find that their anxiety improves in just one session with Alpha Stim, but how does it work?
As mentioned, the Alpha Stim device emits a unique waveform that reaches your cells on an electrical level. Yes, your body is both chemical and electrical. And many people don't realize that your brain actually produces its own electrical currents. These currents can be balanced or imbalanced. When you experience conditions like anxiety and depression, part of the story behind the scenes is that your brain is producing electrical currents that are out of balance.
While most medications work by modifying the chemical makeup of your body (leading to side effects and potential addiction), Alpha Stim is able to modulate the electrical activity of your cells, leaving no trace of imbalance in its wake.
When you place the clips on your earlobes and turn on the device, a natural level of microcurrent is sent through your brain to stimulate and modulate specific groups of nerve cells. As a result, you feel more relaxed, calm, and experience an overall enhancement in your state of well-being.
From a neurological perspective, the use of the Alpha Stim device enhances alpha brain wave activity. There are currently five recognized brain waves: alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and theta, which we go into detail on in our blog post on brain waves.
The alpha wave state is most active during downtime and in meditative states when your mind and body are relaxed. This frequency helps you feel more grounded and present, and research shows it may also help to enhance your ability to pay attention.
Alpha waves are also known to assist in mind-body coordination and are present during creative activities and thinking. They slow your sensory input and allow you to quiet your active brain, also known as the "monkey mind."
Research also suggests that low alpha brain wave activity may be correlated with states of depression and social withdrawal.
Is Alpha Stim Enough To Treat Your Anxious Brain?
Alpha Stim is an excellent device to have on hand if you tend towards anxiety, and it can make a huge difference in the way you feel day to day.
With that being said, at Brain Harmony, we've worked with thousands of clients and found that the most effective way to utilize this tool is in conjunction with deeper neurological work and natural cellular support. While Alpha Stim can train your brain over time to reach a more relaxed state, there is an underlying reason why your brain tends toward anxiety in the first place -- and for lasting peace, this must be addressed.
While everyone experiences anxiety from time to time, chronic anxiety is most often the result of faulty wiring in the brain and nervous system. How and why this happens can depend on the person and their life experiences, but it generally stems from your brain's survival centers.
In fact, at its core, anxiety is a survival instinct. That feeling of vigilance and fear that comes with anxiety is likely what kept your ancient ancestors alive when they were living out in the wild. However, it's also likely that they experienced short bouts of fear and then resolved them rather quickly as they hadn't yet developed the centers in the brain that allow for analytical thinking.
Today, you experience an event (either in adulthood or childhood) that scares you, makes you uncomfortable, or that you don't know how to process, and it becomes woven into the architecture of your brain. There are several ways that the world we live in today creates stress and anxiety beyond what most humans should have to handle, and as a result, our neurological architecture can become disorganized, leading to chronic states of anxiety and fear.
Your fear response is controlled by a branch of your nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system. Alternatively, your rest and relaxation response is controlled by the parasympathetic nervous system. This is where unraveling anxiousness must start -- by enhancing parasympathetic tone and reducing sympathetic activation.
When the Alpha Stim was introduced to Carol, she began using it with anxious and sleep-deprived parents in the waiting room of her clinics while the Brain Harmony therapists provided treatment to their children. When clearance was obtained to use Alpha Stim with children, the tool became a trusted and reliable intervention, equally effective with children and adults. It was using Alpha Stim with children where the causal link between feeling safe and having access to language was illuminated.
Carol was caring for a 2 year old twin who was recently diagnosed on the autism spectrum, with poor sensory processing and no words, just tears. You can imagine what it was like as a therapist to try and provide therapy to a little bitty who needed to run the perimeter of the room while inconsolably crying.
To make matters worse, she was scheduled to see a Speech and Language Pathologist (SLP) after her 60 minute OT sessions, to try and facilitate speech development. It was a mess. This little friend’s brain and nervous system was so disorganized that she was a flat line in development for OT and SLP skills for months, until Alpha Stim was added to her OT sessions.
Our little bitty friend had a ladybug backpack that she would wear to OT so the Alpha Stim was placed in the backpack with the small electrodes quickly attached to her ear lobes (like clip-on earrings) and off she went, running the perimeter like usual. With the Alpha waves flowing and once around the room, all of a sudden she stopped running. Then she stopped crying! She climbed into the sensory swing and she let the therapist provide her with sensory organizing techniques that her nervous system was desperately seeking.
Little bitty quietly walked from OT to SLP. After the session, the therapist came rushing out and in excitement she said “I don't know what you did, but do it again. That was the most speech I have gotten from her EVER!”
Little bitty couldn't access her words because her dysregulated sensory system kept her in a flight response that limited her access to calm, learning and language. It is the reason Alpha Stim is a mainstay in the vagal regulating aspect of our 5 Step Plan of Care and why we always provide safety first!
At Brain Harmony, it is not just the tools that allow for unbelievable gains. It is the therapist’s experience of modifying and combining interventions over decades that allow us to achieve what families are desperately seeking. Part of that process is using devices like Alpha Stim, but equally important are tools and techniques to calm the brain into parasympathetic mode as well as reorganize neural architecture.
By following our 5-step plan of care, we see incredible improvements in post traumatic, acute and chronic anxiety in a short time, with lasting results.
Here are some reviews from our clients about their Alpha Stim.
“If I am upset, I use my Alpha Stim to keep me from crying at work.”
“Alpha Stim feels like carbohydrates!”
“Alpha Stim really helped us at the funeral for our son.”
“I use my Alpha Stim at night to help me sleep and when I wake up; I don't have a hangover from sleeping pills or lack of sleep.”
There may not be a magic "pill" for anxiety, but our process has proven over and over again to bring peace and relief to those who are struggling with an anxious brain and nervous system.
Even Carol’s dog Bubby uses the Alpha Stim.
Nancy's Brain Harmony Success Story
Nancy is a nurse in an intensive care unit and was suffering from anxiety, brain fog, and depression. She was having trouble with processing, getting her thoughts down on paper, word retrieval, and memory. She had tried pharmaceuticals and lifestyle changes to address these issues, but they just weren't working, so she went on the hunt for another solution. After a short time using Brain Harmony's therapies, like the Safe and Sound Protocol and the Alpha Stim, Nancy's anxiety dissipated, she started enjoying life, sleeping better, her brain fog went away, and her cognitive function improved tremendously. She feels like Brain Harmony was the missing key in her health journey.
"It's easy to use, you're expertly guided, you can do it on your own at your own pace, and it can have a profound impact on your life. I really feel that this was the missing piece to help my overall quality of life."
Struggling with anxiety can be incredibly debilitating and may lead to other conditions like depression and insomnia. But finding the right treatment can quite literally change your life. At Brain Harmony, we work with each client to learn about their needs and create a unique, individualized plan of care. To learn more about our approach, schedule a Free Consultation today.