Ep 195: Acupuncture for Kids with Anxiety: A Conversation with Dr. Tara McCannel

In this episode of Your Child is Normal, Dr. Jessica Hochman is joined by Dr. Tara McCannel—retinal surgeon, ocular oncologist, and co-founder of Seyhart Acupuncture in Santa Monica, California. They discuss how acupuncture can be a powerful, evidence-informed, and low-risk option to support anxiety—especially in children who present with physical symptoms like headaches, stomach aches, or sleep disturbances. Whether you're a parent seeking alternatives to medication, or simply curious about the science behind acupuncture, this episode is full of practical insights and thoughtful reflection.

Dr Jessica Hochman is a board certified pediatrician, mom to three children, and she is very passionate about the health and well being of children. Most of her educational videos are targeted towards general pediatric topics and presented in an easy to understand manner.

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Transcript

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Hi everyone, and welcome back to your child is normal. I'm your host. Dr Jessica Hochman, so anxiety is one of the most common concerns that I see in kids, and parents often ask me about options beyond medication or traditional therapy. So that's why I'm excited to talk today about a gentle evidence, informed tool that might not be on your radar, acupuncture. My guest today is Dr Tara McConnell. She's a retinal surgeon who made a thoughtful pivot into holistic healing. She and her husband now co run say heart acupuncture in Santa Monica, California, where they help both kids and adults manage their anxiety through Mind Body Care. Today, we're going to talk about the science behind how acupuncture is thought to work, what a session looks like for children, and why it can be especially helpful for kids who struggle with sleep, stomach aches, headaches or any other physical symptoms that are tied to anxiety. Thank you so much for listening, and if you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and leave a five star review wherever it is you listen to podcasts now, let's get started. Dr Taryn mccannel, thank you so much for being here to have this conversation. I'm so looking forward to learning from you and talking with you. Thank you, Jessica, this has been awesome. So tell everybody you're a doctor. Your husband's a doctor. You guys are very highly trained ophthalmologists dealing with cancer, dealing with neurologic issues and dealing with the eye. And now you also have a new side hobby, correct? Yes. So you know, when you're in medicine and years go by, you start to really focus much less so on the technical things and the procedures. And it's really for myself anyway, it's more about getting connected with patients and understanding how we're really helping them. And when you are in a field of oncology and you're talking life and death with your patients. The real key things of what's important about how our doctors really came out, for me, and what I've learned is that it's how we help our patients that allow them to thrive and do really well. And one of the things that I've learned and had some exposure to is sort of this approach of incorporating complementary medicine, because I've realized that, you know, we know so very little in western medicine. We don't understand why certain diseases happen. We have a good understanding of what we've looked at in the body, but there's so much that we're missing. I've learned that it's important to really embrace everything, especially mental and emotional health and this mind body connection, which I feel as an ophthalmologist, we don't really look beyond the eyeball. Sometimes we look in the body, because there's some connections, but we don't think about mental, emotional health as important things that we can guide patients in to really do their best. And so a few years ago, my husband and I decided to open an acupuncture, holistic healing studio. And so a lot of this is is taken time to curate, but it's very important if we're going to offer something to help people, it needs to be vetted, it needs to be trusted, it needs to be backed in science. So that's what say. Heart acupuncture for anxiety is all about and definitely, you know, in our journey as business owners and understanding this area, it has become more apparent than ever that mental and emotional health is behind most of our problems. And so you know, this is a way to harness the whole body and help support mental emotional health to improve physical ailments and many other conditions that acupuncture can help. I love that you're combining eastern and western medicine. I think there's a desire to learn more about Eastern medicine. It's been around for 1000s of years, and clearly it's persisted for a reason. But I think that you and your husband are so interesting to me. You seem like such unicorns because the stereotype of surgeons is that, you know, if you give someone a nail, they have a hammer that you're looking at the one body part, and you've been trained to think about so I find it so commendable, to be honest, that you're able to step back and look at the bigger picture. Yeah, thank you so much. You know, I think it's as we go through our careers, we always have to stop and reassess and say what's happening. And you know, once you've finished learning the voluminous amount of information and become skilled at what you're doing, I think it's really important to keep asking questions and being able to really reflect on what are we doing in life, and how are we helping people? I mean, I think we all want to do things that are meaningful, and I've had a chance to do a lot of reflection and thinking about what I really want to do, and I think it's important for all of us who are busy to pause, reflect and ask those questions, to make sure that you're yourself fulfilled. I completely agree. I think when you're doing something to help somebody else in life, whatever that may be, I think that's when you feel your best. So I think that's such a noble mission that you have, I agree. How did you get exposed to acupuncture in the first place? The very first time I had acupuncture was when my first born was not turned properly towards the end of pregnancy, and he was sort of upside down. And they said, well. You can just sort of monitor. You can sit on a ball for a while, or you can try acupuncture. And I was thinking, Well, yeah, I'm going to try everything, because I don't want to breach delivery. I want things to be as smooth as possible. So, like, I'll lay down on a table and you put needles and do whatever. So that's my first time having acupuncture. It's funny, the acupuncturist has become a dear friend, and she's somebody that has we've reached out to to give us a lot of advice on our mission with our own acupuncture studio. I mean, you just it's so relaxing. I had no idea you lay there, needles go in, and lights are dimmed, you can't go anywhere, and can't really move your body, and you just let everything happen. And I remember feeling incredibly relaxed. I didn't really have any concept of what was happening inside, but I was just so relaxed. It was a wonderful thing. And I looked forward to going, because I have had this complete relaxation. And that was the very beginning. After that, I did not go regularly to acupuncture, but I stumbled across acupuncture in my workplace, and got a chance to do some programs with the Center for East West Medicine at UCLA, and I met acupuncturist there, and I started to be involved in some programs. And really was impressed with how helpful acupuncture was for my own patients. So I suddenly thought we got to do all these things because we think we understand in western medicine, and just because we think we understand everything, we kind of don't look for other possibilities. And I think being curious and noticing how people are benefiting, we have to do this. And so that's kind of how acupuncture came into my life. I think this is really fascinating, what you're exploring, and I'm so happy for people to know more about this, because I have to say, as a pediatrician, anxiety is by far and away one of the most common concerns that parents experience with their own kids, and they want to help their kids, and they don't necessarily want to put them on a medication, they don't necessarily want to send them to therapy. Maybe it's too expensive, maybe it's too time consuming, whatever the reason may be. So I think it's really nice for people to know that there are other options out there. Yeah, I think, you know, when we think of whole body approaches, acupuncture is one of those things that can be incorporated into your daily life. And certainly when we we see a lot of adults, and when people come regularly, like, you know, once every couple weeks or once a month, and they just have a standing session where they just have everything reset. I mean, these are the people who have the most benefit in our children that we see. A lot of kids come in for anxiety, and I think anxiety presents itself in physical manifestations, for example, kids that are having trouble sleeping or have a lot of stomach aches or have persistent headaches, yet nothing is really wrong. And I think these are important signs for parents to be aware of, because it might not necessarily mean that they need to be put on antibiotics or treated with medications for the headache, they need to be aware of the possibility that this could be manifestations of anxiety and feeling overwhelmed. I find that for children, I don't think it's it's natural to think that they're, they're going to actually tell us that they're feeling anxious. We have to look carefully in their behaviors. And you know, when the pediatrician feels that the patient is physically healthy, but these symptoms persist. You know, this is the perfect opportunity to introduce another therapy that is very safe, that doesn't involve pharmaceuticals. You know, acupuncture is actually becoming more popular, and I think a lot of that is because people are understanding the benefit of complementary approaches. And you know, I think more and more we know people are learning about their health conditions looking at other options. It's certainly not a replacement for your regular medical care, but once everything has been addressed and you still have symptoms, it's a great way to supplement healing and recovery. I completely agree. I think there are definitely a lot of parents that feel torn between wanting to jump straight to therapy or medication, and they're looking for a gentler bridge. They want to be proactive, but they don't want to be too invasive, and so acupuncture seems like a really nice avenue to be aware of. And I completely agree with you that I've met countless children where they've had persistent headaches, they're having difficulty sleeping, they have chronic stomach aches, they have physical symptoms that the parents can't point their finger to. What is the root cause of these chronic symptoms? And it's interesting that kids often can't verbalize why they're feeling what they're feeling. And then, as they get older, they look back and reflect, and they go, Oh, I was just really anxious. You know, I was really nervous about starting middle school, and I had terrible stomach aches, and it was anxiety. And I think I appreciate you bringing up the point that anxiety in children can manifest as physical symptoms, so I think that's a very important thing for parents to be aware of absolutely and you. Know When parents sort of understand that acupuncture really helps, because it does stimulate and encourage the parasympathetic nervous system. It works great. Parents want to combine therapies. We have patients who have a therapist and have acupuncture. You know, as a parent myself, I want to figure out all the avenues that I can help them. Certainly, if you're in a very severe state, you need to see a psychiatrist, and probably medications would be helpful to temporize things. But I find that most children and adolescents have very low levels that sort of are in the background that don't necessarily qualify for heavy handed treatment and as a preventive method, acupuncture is a very gentle, consistent treatment that is accepted now that I think most kids and families don't feel hesitant about incorporating a complementary approach. And, you know, I'm all for Western medicine, but a lot of kids get put on medications very fast before really looking at underlying causes. And I really believe that acupuncture can help people in this way, because it's very gentle, it's very holistic, we often find children have a faster response to acupuncture than grown ups do. And whether that's because they're just a little more neuroplastic, they're in a transition. There's a lot of growth happening, whereas adults were very kind of set and settled, and there's slower growth. Children respond very well to acupuncture, and we often see things that are indirect signs of improvement. Parents will say that their child is sleeping better and seems more focused since they've been doing the acupuncture. So there's a lot of other benefits that can happen when we go to the root of the problem. So for people that are listening and they think, okay, acupuncture, this sounds like something that I'm interested in trying. Can you explain for people that aren't familiar, what is acupuncture exactly, and how do we think it works on the body? Yeah, that's a great question, and a question I think it's important for people to understand. So, you know, there's two ways to look at how acupuncture works. One is sort of the traditional Chinese medicine approach, where you know, for 1000s of years, acupuncture, the meridians that are used sort of the connections in the body, how the brain is connected to the liver and how the organs are connected along these energy channels. In traditional Chinese medicine, everything your body, life, the universe is all connected by energy, and this energy is called Chi, which is spelled Q, I, but it means life force. And there's all this energy flowing all around us, in our environment, in us and through us. And how Chinese medicine believes acupuncture works, is by moving that energy so it enhances energy flow. And a lot of times in Chinese medicine, when people have ailments, it's because of energy stagnation and people are stuck. I can relate when I think about if you feel kind of stuck and you're going nowhere, and you're kind of like, down, and you have acupuncture kind of helps move the energy stimulate. And in Chinese medicine, a lot of physical ailments are because of stagnation. If you have stiffness and soreness, you want to move that energy to have it flow more freely and sort of relieve you of some of the physical effects of what's happening in your body. And so Chinese medicine is very different than Western medicine, because it believes that this is at the core of everything. In western medicine, we have all of our separate organs. We each organ has its own set of diseases, and we don't really think of everything working together. And a lot of times in western medicine, a person will have a doctor for every organ, body part. And in Chinese medicine, it's sort of more blended. And so Chinese medicine really addresses sort of the root of issues, and because it's energy affecting the whole body, there's a lot of Mind Body connections. And in Chinese medicine, a lot of physical ailments originate with blockages in your mind, in mental health. Now, as a Western physician trained in conservative approaches, I also want to understand how that may work in, you know, sort of more contemporary Western ideology. And so what happens in acupuncture? And there's been a lot of research on how this works, but when the needles are inserted into specific points, it stimulates our peripheral nerves, which then sends signals to the brain, the brain starts to activate areas involved in neurotransmitter release, and we see hormones, different endorphins, Serotonins, get released in the body as a result of needle stimulation. And there have been functional MRI studies. So you have acupuncture, and they do a scan of parts of your brain, and they have found that areas where emotional regulation occur light up with acupuncture. We know that acupuncture also helps to support our parasympathetic nervous system, and as you know, our autonomic nervous system is sort of the background of how. Our bodies are regulated. It happens subconsciously, but it's primarily made up of our sympathetics, which is the fight, flight, freeze response, and the opposite, which is the parasympathetics, more rest and digest. The effect of acupuncture needles actually stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system and it encourages more sort of calming, it releases chemicals that are involved in sort of reducing and regulating our cortisol. So when people have acupuncture, their cortisol levels, which is one of the key stress hormones, there's actually reduced levels of this in the body. So when we're stressed, the hormone cortisol actually increases in our bodies. Persistently elevated cortisol over time, can be harmful for our immune systems. So in the setting of anxiety, acupuncture is really helpful because it actually can help reset this background nervous system response by encouraging parasympathetics and resulting in more calming symptoms. A lot of treatments for anxiety don't necessarily go that deep, and I feel that when you include acupuncture as a treatment modality for anxiety, we also are helping to reset these chronic stress responses, where kids may have chronic sympathetic overdrive and they're constantly anxious. Acupuncture helps undo some of that and shift to the more rest and digest nervous system. And I think if we think of improving anxiety through resetting our nervous systems, that is really the key to help kids and adults function better. As you're talking, I'm interested. I'm thinking, I would love to do something where, without taking a medication, I could train my nervous system to reduce my cortisol levels or my stress hormone it really sounds like a fantastic experience. It is truly a wonderful experience, and it's just a very relaxing and calming experience. Can you describe what a typical acupuncture session for a child would look like? What is the setting like? How long does it take? How many needles are involved? Can you paint a picture of what it would look like? Yes, definitely. And before going into sort of what the physical experience is like, I just want to touch on a fear that a lot of people have with needles. And I do believe that one of the barriers to having a lot of children benefit from acupuncture for anxiety is this idea that, Oh, my child is not going to they're not going to tolerate the needles. Needles are painful. I don't like needles. So a couple years ago, there was a self reported study out of University of Southern California at USC, where they because they knew that this was a problem that a lot of parents wouldn't even consider acupuncture for children. So they looked at a group of over 200 children between the ages of eight and 21 and did self reported surveys on what their experience was like with the needles. And they found that the pain score, and we talk about pain, one through 10, on average was 1.3 so that means most of the people had barely any noticeable pain with the needles. And they also asked the kids, did you have any discomfort? Almost 60% of the kids said they didn't really feel anything with the needles. So to me, that's like, Okay, this is how really comfortable it is. There's really nothing to be afraid of, and knowing that it is going to be very comfortable. And not only that, the children felt that their anxiety improved, they felt relaxed. And the majority of the kids in the study looked forward to coming back and having a session. So I want to paint that as the start, because I feel like a lot of people just don't go past even coming into the doors of an acupuncture place because of these ideas. So this actually has been studied, and it's really a wonderful experience for kids. You know, one way that we start just because of this needle idea, we can start with acupressure, and Acupressure is really intense pressure, instead of the needles at acupuncture points, so you're still stimulating those meridians and still having an effect. But it's a little less scary for children, and oftentimes we start with acupressure techniques. Also, children can have ear seating, which is putting little stickers and pressure points on the ears to complement other acupuncture and ear seating helps stimulate the vagus nerve, which is the largest parasympathetic nerve in the body. So it's an amazing adjunct to having acupuncture because it also prolongs the effect of the needles. So just a session for a child, usually, children don't need as long sessions as adults. Most of our children's sessions are 25 minutes, and our acupuncturists at our center are highly trained. They are very used to children and pediatrics, so that's really important as well. So there's various types of needles, but we use the finest needles on the children and. We actually don't have to go very deep. When we think of needles, we think, Oh, they're going deep into my body. They might even go in like, a quarter of an inch, maybe the thickness of your fingernail. So they don't have to go very deep. And the needles don't have to be in for very long. And for children, we don't actually have to use as many needles. So a person might have five to 10 needles, for example, and the experience is a lot less than when you think about if you've ever had acupuncture as an adult, children don't need as much, and we see benefit and turnaround much faster as well. So kids, even after one session, may notice some improvements. What we found, and certainly in the literature, the more times people come, the better the effect. And we often recommend starting off with maybe four to six sessions, and then depending on the child, sometimes just maintenance sessions, maybe once or twice a month might be all that kids need. Is there a certain type of anxiety that you find acupuncture to benefit the most. For example, kids with sleep issues, social anxiety, generalized anxiety. Is there a certain candidate that you think would benefit the most from acupuncture? Well, you know, you mentioned all those conditions, and all of those would really benefit from acupuncture, because they're all tied together. Acupuncture can really help. We talked about resetting the nervous system. All of those conditions have some root in anxiety. Do you tell a child why they're going? In other words, does it help to go in with intention? Well, I feel like it would be similar to say, if you're taking your child to a therapist or you're going to a doctor, you can say, you know, we really want to help you, and we want to help you sort of feel better, and we want to figure out all sorts of ways that we can help your body improve so that you can do better. And I feel like just sort of being open about we're going to take all these different approaches. You've seen the doctor, we have someone you could talk to, and then we're bringing you to a place where we're going to help, kind of help your nervous system. And I think it's a good idea to just, you know, talk about this is helping your nervous system. It helps you relax. And even if you don't say that, children will often feel very relaxed after so just pointing out that it's part of the package of things that we're going to do to help you be your best. I think that really helps. Are there any side effects that parents should be aware of? The side effects of acupuncture are very minimal. Rarely, we might get a little bruising at a needle site. Sometimes the skin might look a little red after and just so that you know your audience knows when we do acupuncture, all the needles are disposable. Once a needle is used, it's tossed. I mean, there have been very rare reports of people getting infections with acupuncture, but it is incredibly safe, and the risks of getting a little bit of bruising or even a little bleeding, like they almost never happen. So we just don't see that in people. One of my favorite aspects of acupuncture is that the side effect profile is so so so low, because there are so many things that we do in medicine that do have side effects. So I'm so in favor of considering acupuncture for whatever modality it may benefit, because the side effect profile is so favorable. And that's the beauty of this is not only does it have so few side effects, you can use it together with whatever you're working on to try to be in a better place. Yeah, it seems to me, it's one of these situations where there's really nothing to lose, especially if you're looking for a way to feel better, why not give acupuncture a try? Yeah, totally agree. Now you may not have an answer to this, but have there been any studies that have shown that acupuncture benefits kids with anxiety. Yes, probably the best study was published in 2018 and it was performed out of the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. They looked at children and adolescents who had a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder. It was a randomized pilot, which means that it wasn't like hundreds and hundreds of patients. There's only 20 patients that they did this study on, and they found significant improvement in anxiety. They did a lot of scores to see how people felt afterwards, and it significantly improved symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder. There have been other studies that have there have been some meta analysis looking at reviews, and as you can imagine, there's not a lot of data and literature in the area of Pediatrics, anxiety and acupuncture use. But indirectly, there have been studies looking at children and ways to resolve headache in children. A lot of times, the headache may not have a physiologic source. In this study, a significant portion of patients were under the age of 24 and they noticed that with acupuncture for headaches, it actually reduced anxiety symptoms as well. There's also a study that came out of China that looked at children who bite their nails when they combined action. Acupuncture with the habit reversing tips that they used, it resulted in a significant reduction in nail biting. So this is, I mean, these are sort of indirect studies that have been performed in children and adolescents that show benefit. And I think that, you know, there's definitely the reduction in anxiety, in treating chronic pain in children. We have those that data doesn't it looks like chronic pain, but maybe not necessarily anxiety directly, but there's a lot of overlap in these studies, and I think that to me, that's plenty to convince me that this is a great modality to add when we're trying to help our kids with anxiety. Absolutely. And in preparation for this, I was actually looking up the studies to see if there's anything supporting acupuncture, and I also found a lot of smaller trials that showed really promising results for kids that do acupuncture in conjunction with CBT or therapy. Oh, that looks very favorable, yeah. And it's just like we talked about before, like there's no one way to help your kid with anxiety. And you know, I totally, I think CBT is fantastic, and I think that's a real cornerstone in helping kids with anxiety, especially higher levels of anxiety. But I you know, all these approaches are necessary to help our kids. Now, what is the youngest age kid that you will see at your center? We actually see neonates. We've had some really little kids. And of course, our acupuncturists tend not to use needles in kids that are like less than four or five. They use more of the deep kneading and little kids. I mean, you're probably wondering, why would an almost newborn come in. But, you know, sometimes parents bring in their babies because of really excessive crying. They seem really fussy in it maybe making the parent feel anxious, and they're looking at what sort of body work techniques can help. And so tuina and a little Gua Sha, which is like a gentle scraping over the limbs that can be very calming on babies. And so we have seen parents bringing kids who just cry a lot and just seem fussy. And so we see that the very little end of the spectrum. So there's definitely a range amazing. And in your experience, are you getting good feedback from families where they've noticed that the acupuncture has lessened the child's anxiety? Oh yes. I mean, kids will come for a regular period of time, and then we'll see them not need to come in that much. There's a boy, actually, who had panic attacks, and after three or four sessions, significant reduction in his panic attacks and and sometimes when I'm at our center and just chatting with clients and people who are waiting to go in. I mean, I hear stories like acupuncture turned my life around. I'm so grateful for what you do here, and it just really inspires me to keep going with this. We need people to learn that there are incredible avenues that are very safe, that can really support your mind, body health. Yeah, no, I highly encourage people who've never tried it to just be really open minded and think of it as a body reset, relaxation. And you gotta come in. You gotta return like the people who have the best responses and do best, they consistently come on a regular basis and they see the improvement. And can you tell us, what is the cost of getting acupuncture? I think the, you know, there's most of the acupuncturists that I know and collaborate with are all out of network, which means it's out of pocket. It's not covered by insurance. However, we do provide a super bill, and we find that most of our clients get about, you know, depends on your insurance, but you can get about 80% back. Most health insurance has allowances for a certain number of acupuncture sessions per year, as well as chiropractic and so, you know, in terms of cost, it can be, you know, our very young children, where our our fees are less than$100 it's much less when you have a baby, and we're just doing a very short session. And then, depending on how long the sessions are, usually it's around like $150 give or take, depending on if you want to have additional things like ear seating treatment or some Gua Sha together with it. But I think that the take home is that a lot of flexible health spending, accounts and health insurance will reimburse. So just make sure that you ask for the super bill up front when you can submit that to your health insurance. For people that are interested and they want to come see you and they want to go to your center, where can they find you? So our center, it's say, heart acupuncture for anxiety. That's S, E, y, H, A, R T. We are in Santa Monica at the corner of 26 in Wilshire Boulevard. We the best way to book appointments is actually online on our website, which is say heart.com and we would love to help your children, Help yourselves. That. That's what our mission is. We want to help people, mind, body and spirit. Thank you for your time. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much. Dr, Jessica, really appreciate it. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of your child is normal. Also, if you could take a moment and leave a five star review wherever it is you listen to podcasts, I would greatly appreciate it. It really makes a difference to help this podcast grow. You can also follow me on Instagram at ask Dr Jessica, see you next month.