In recent years, drugs have been developed for the purpose of blocking the effects of adrenaline and noradrenalin on the body. These drugs are used by physicians to treat high blood pressure, rapid and irregular pulse, symptoms of over-activity of the thyroid gland and other conditions where too much adrenaline is circulating in the body.
These drugs have been found useful also for treating the body symptoms of anxiety.
If you refer back to the anxiety equation, you will note that these adrenaline blocking, or beta-blocking drugs (they block the beta-receptors which respond to adrenaline), do not prevent the warning feeling of unease of the anxiety response, while they do block some of the unpleasant body symptoms due to the body’s arousal for fight or flight.
The beta-blocking drugs may therefore be useful in treating anxiety symptoms from unavoidable stress because they do not prevent the warning function of the anxiety response. Theoretically these drugs should not make the person more likely to cross the thresholds to stage two or stage three breakdown because the warning function of the anxiety response is preserved. The most useful of the beta-blocking drugs for this purpose is propranolol (‘Inderal’). However, before we all run off to the doctor for prescriptions of propranolol for our stress-related headaches, muscle tension and tremor, we need to be reminded that all drugs have unwanted side effects, this drug included. The decision to use drugs at all for anxiety symptoms due to stress breakdown must be considered very carefully.
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