Wearable Tech

Over the years, I have seen many patients in my practice who suffer from anxiety symptoms that just won't quit, and, unfortunately, the onset of anxiety can happen in a single heartbeat.

You lie in bed waiting, waiting for the thoughts to slow down so you can finally fall asleep. Upon waking up in the morning, there's a pit in the stomach: you will be facing another day of grief. When will it end? Will it ever end? You try meditation which helps for an hour, and the same for yoga. You finally end up on medication, which is miraculous, but as you become more dependent on medication, it becomes an increasing burden. This is not what you want. This is not what I want.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy was promising, but you couldn't remove yourself from the dependence on medication although you used it less.

You searched the internet for devices that regulate your autonomic system in such a way as to decrease your stress. You wonder if these devices are placebo devices where you believe they are working to mitigate your anxiety, and so they do. The placebo effect is very effective, and drug companies have had a tough time duplicating the effect of placebos, let alone being more effective than them. You learn that the placebo effect works because it is powered by your brain and quite different from a drug effect.

So you are willing to try one of these new wearable devices ignoring whether they operate just by placebo. You gain the placebo effect and the direct effect of the vibrations that resonate with your autonomic nervous system. You end up a few months later off medication and functioning very well with the help of your new device.

This is the experience some of my patients are having with these "med-tech" or "biotech" devices. They are helping my patients. They report decreased anxiety and feel more in control of their stress through this tech-driven whole-person approach to the mind-body connection. This med-tech device increases your heart-rate variability and is designed to regulate your autonomic response so that a stressful moment is effortlessly managed and leads to calm. I call this autonomic intervention awareness, and it is just another aspect of the role of the integrative psychiatrist, a physician who identifies the underlying medical factors, coupled with understanding the patient's physiology, and then takes a carefully nuanced approach to helping the patient achieve fully integrated mind/body wellness.