Anxiety is just your brain’s intelligent response to perceived danger. I will tell you that the amlodipine and carvedilol that I take absolutely change my heartbeat and reduce my heart rate. What the net effect of that is is that I used to get a spike of adrenaline and an increase in heart rate in the presence of some perceived threat in response to it, but now I don’t. Now with those medications, that response is dampened and that is in congruent with what my brain is expecting. It gets over time. You learn to respond more calmly because that’s all your body will permit. Again, unless you happen to have a thoracic surgeon who has been on these meds themselves or had an aortic dissection corrected by surgery themselves, most doctors just cannot genuinely understand the impact of the medication. Like Dean Acheson liked to say, “Don’t just do something. Stand there!” A lot of people who have an aortic aneurysm may have gotten there by having high blood pressure and being used to overreacting to all of the perceived threats in their world. That has taken a toll on their aortas and now they have to learn how to do the opposite in order to save themselves. Peace.