Winnie Lim

• link Havard Health Publishing

  Understanding the stress response

  A stressful situation — whether something environmental, such as a looming work deadline, or psychological, such as persistent worry about losing a job — can trigger a cascade of stress hormones that produce well-orchestrated physiological changes.

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  The Body Keeps the Score

  by Bessel A. van der Kolk completed: 11 Apr 2018

  Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manage perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think.

  This is the book to read on the paralysing effects of trauma.

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  Spark

  by John J. Ratey, Eric Hagerman completed: 12 Jun 2016

  They don’t know that toxic levels of stress erode the connections between the billions of nerve cells in the brain or that chronic depression shrinks certain areas of the brain. And they don’t know that, conversely, exercise unleashes a cascade of neurochemicals and growth factors that can reverse this process, physically bolstering the brain’s infrastructure. In fact, the brain responds like muscles do, growing with use, withering with inactivity. The neurons in the brain connect to one another through “leaves” on treelike branches, and exercise causes those branches to grow and bloom with new buds, thus enhancing brain function at a fundamental level.

  I didn't consider incorporating exercise into my routine until I read this book.

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  The brain changes itself

  by Norman Doidge completed: 25 Jul 2017

  For people, postmortem examinations have shown that education increases the number of branches among neurons. An increased number of branches drives the neurons farther apart, leading to an increase in the volume and thickness of the brain. The idea that the brain is like a muscle that grows with exercise is not just a metaphor.

  It taught me that it is never too late to change the structure of our brains.

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• link ScienceDaily

  Potential Cause Of Arthritis Discovered: Carbohydrate Activates Body’s Defenses, Causing Inflammation

  by Brigham And Women's Hospital

  Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) have shown that certain types of naturally occurring carbohydrates in the body may cause rheumatoid arthritis, a debilitating, painful disease affecting hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

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  How stress influences disease: Study reveals inflammation as the culprit

  by Carnegie Mellon University

  researchers have found that chronic psychological stress is associated with the body losing its ability to regulate the inflammatory response. The research shows for the first time that the effects of psychological stress on the body’s ability to regulate inflammation can promote the development and progression of disease.

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  Healing Developmental Trauma

  by Laurence Heller, Aline LaPierre completed: 17 Dec 2017

  “It is now understood that one of the most significant consequences of early relational and shock trauma is the resulting lack of capacity for emotional and autonomic self-regulation. Shock and developmental trauma compromise our ability to regulate our emotions and disrupt autonomic functions such as breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, and sleep.”

  "How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship"

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  Complex PTSD

  by Pete Walker completed: 08 Jul 2018

  Emotional flashbacks are sudden and often prolonged regressions to the overwhelming feeling-states of being an abused/abandoned child. These feeling states can include overwhelming fear, shame, alienation, rage, grief and depression. They also include unnecessary triggering of our fight/flight instincts…In an emotional flashback you can regress instantly into feeling and thinking that you are as worthless and contemptible as your family perceived you. When you are stranded in a flashback, toxic shame devolves into the intensely painful alienation of the abandonment mélange — a roiling morass of shame, fear and depression…While the origin of Cptsd is most often associated with extended periods of physical and/or sexual abuse in childhood, my observations convince me that ongoing verbal and emotional abuse also causes it. Many dysfunctional parents react contemptuously to a baby or toddler’s plaintive call for connection and attachment. Contempt is extremely traumatizing to a child, and at best, extremely noxious to an adult. 

  "If you felt unwanted, unliked, rejected, hated and/or despised for a lengthy portion of your childhood, trauma may be deeply engrained in your mind, soul and body."

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  Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine

  by Candace B. Pert completed: 11 Dec 2015

  Amino acids are the letters. Peptides, including polypeptides and proteins, are the words made from these letters. And they all come together to make up a language that composes and directs every cell, organ, and system in your body.

  She was the scientist who discovered the opiate receptor. This book is partially a memoir and partially a breakdown on how emotions can affect our physical health. You'll have to read this with an open mind, as she goes into new-agey stuff. I discovered this book through reading "My Age of Anxiety."

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  My Age of Anxiety

  by Scott Stossel completed: 24 Nov 2015

  But the amygdala, operating with lightning-fast acuity beneath the level of conscious awareness, perceives the distressing faces and flares in the fMRI. Some subjects report feeling anxiety at these moments—but they can’t identify its source. This would seem to be neuroscientific evidence that Freud was right about the existence of the unconscious: the brain reacts powerfully to stimuli that we are not explicitly aware of.

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  The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions

  by Esther M. Sternberg completed: 09 Oct 2015

  “we can begin to understand why it is that many patients with inflammatory diseases may also experience depression at different times in their lives. Thus, the psychosomatic notion that inflammatory and allergic diseases originate in a disordered upbringing and repressed emotions can now be reexamined in more precise physiological terms.”

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referenced in

• improving hormonal imbalances with cardiac data
• Running as an experiment to reduce anxiety and facilitate healing
• On running, fitness and the narrative of sadness

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