Anxiety in pets and humans is fairly common placed. It is completely normal to be anxious on occasion. New environments or changes can cause anxiety in humans and pets. As well as past memories or bad experiences. A lot of times if the pet parent is fearful or anxious the pet will pick up on that and act accordingly. Anxiety can take many forms :
Anxiety is the anticipation of future dangers from unknown or imagined origins that result in normal body reactions (known as physiologic reactions) associated with fear; most common visible behaviors are elimination (i.e., urination and/or passage of bowel movements), destruction, and excessive vocalization (i.e.,barking crying). Separation anxiety is the most common specific anxiety in companion dogs. When alone, the animal exhibits anxiety or excessive distress behaviors.
This article is human based but does a very detailed job on explaining how and why they these particular points work in the body. What is so interesting to me is how these organ systems are connected to each other based on TCM principals; and it makes sense physically and emotionally.
The researchers have discovered that a combination of acupuncture points LU7 (Lieque) and KI6 (Zhaohai) are potent clinical tools in the fight against generalized anxiety disorder. The translated text notes that:
Lieque (LU7) is the intersection point of lung meridian and Ren meridian. Lung plays an important role in movement of qi, blood and body liquid of the whole body, because (L)ung governs physical qi, distributes the essence of water and grain, helps heart promote blood circulation, regulates water metabolism with (K)idney. (Zhaohai) KI6 is the intersection point of (K)idney meridian and Yinqiao meridian. Yang of (H)eart descends to kidney and warms and nourishes yang of Kidney, while yin of (K)idney ascends to nourish yin of (H)eart, so that yin and yang are coordinated to make the viscera functions normally. Yinqiao meridian has the functions of nourishing eyes, governing the open and close of eyelid, nourishing skin, communicating yin and yang. Therefore, we select LU7 and KI6 of the eight confluent points to treat generalized anxiety disorder in clinical practice.
If your pup is constantly anxious these points can help lessen the severity and the length of the episode, and may save a couch or two 🙂
(For the full study click below )