negotiating peace within me
I reworded the introduction on my homepage yesterday to better reflect who I currently am as a person now. I wanted to acknowledge my ongoing struggles with my chronic health issues. It…
tags /chronic-disorders /
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on the effects of being sick
I missed publishing a post last Sunday, because I was down with a cold turned migraine. I haven’t been sick for this amount of time since a long while ago, and it…
However, if our emotions are blocked
However, if our emotions are blocked due to denial, repression, or trauma, then blood flow can become chronically constricted, depriving the frontal cortex, as well as other organs, of vital nourishment. This can leave you foggy and less alert, limited in your awareness and thus your ability to intervene into the conversation of your bodymind, to make decisions that change physiology or behavior. As a result, you may become stuck—unable to respond freshly to the world around you, repeating old patterns of behavior and feeling that are responses to an outdated knowledge base.
But they were cured—the stress symptoms reversed
But they were cured—the stress symptoms reversed—when researchers brought in what they called a ‘monkey hug therapist,’ an older monkey who constantly hugged and cuddled the stressed-out baby monkeys. So what was going on? The hugging broke the feedback loop, sending the message ‘No more steroids needed,’ damage over and done with! The chronically elevated CRF levels came down.
stress increases with increased steroid production
...stress increases with increased steroid production. Depressed people typically have high levels of these stress steroids. In fact, depressed people are in a chronic state of ACTH activation because of a disrupted feedback loop that fails to signal when there are sufficient levels of steroid in the blood. So the CRF-ACTH axis just keeps pumping out more and more steroids. Autopsies almost always show a tenfold higher level of CRF in the cerebrospinal fluid of those who killed themselves compared to those who died from other causes.
happiness is what we feel when our biochemicals of emotion
...happiness is what we feel when our biochemicals of emotion, the neuropeptides and their receptors, are open and flowing freely throughout the psychosomatic network, integrating and coordinating our systems, organs, and cells in a smooth and rhythmic movement. Health and happiness are often mentioned in the same breath, and maybe this is why: Physiology and emotions are inseparable. I believe that happiness is our natural state, that bliss is hardwired. Only when our systems get blocked, shut down, and disarrayed do we experience the mood disorders that add up to unhappiness in the extreme.
all emotions are healthy
...all emotions are healthy, because emotions are what unite the mind and the body. Anger, fear, and sadness, the so-called negative emotions, are as healthy as peace, courage, and joy. To repress these emotions and not let them flow freely is to set up a dis-integrity in the system, causing it to act at cross-purposes rather than as a unified whole. The stress this creates, which takes the form of blockages and insufficient flow of peptide signals to maintain function at the cellular level, is what sets up the weakened conditions that can lead to disease. All honest emotions are positive emotions.
While chronic stress is bullying the hippocampus
While chronic stress is bullying the hippocampus—pruning its dendrites, killing its neurons, and preventing neurogenesis—the amygdala is having a field day. The stress overload creates more connections in the amygdala, which keeps firing and calling for cortisol, even though there’s plenty of the hormone available, and the negative situation feeds on itself. The more the amygdala fires, the stronger it gets. Eventually the amygdala takes control of its partnership with the hippocampus, repressing the context—and thus the connection to reality—and branding the memory with fear. The stress becomes generalized, and the feeling becomes a free-floating sense of fear that morphs into anxiety. It’s as if everything is a stressor, and this colors perception and leads to even more stress.
hippocampal shrinkage and memory loss
The scientific name for the disorder speaks volumes: hypercortisolism. Its symptoms are eerily similar to those of chronic stress: weight gain around the midsection; breaking down muscle tissue to produce unnecessary glucose and then fat; insulin resistance and possibly diabetes; panic attacks, anxiety, depression, and increased risk of heart disease. One of the many correlations Starkman has shown is that the extent of hippocampal shrinkage and memory loss is directly proportional to elevations in cortisol.
Excitotoxic stress occurs
Excitotoxic stress occurs when there is so much glutamate activity that there isn’t enough ATP to keep up with the energy demand of the increased information flow. If this continues for too long without recovery, there’s a problem. The cell is on a death march—forced to work without food or resources to repair the damage. The dendrites begin to shrink back and eventually cause the cell to die.