Why Do I Feel Like This?

To be completed:

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Reminder: Not medical advice, consult doctor before, etc.

Fear, frustration with lack of control (Zen and the Art of Making a Living)

• Fear of failure
• Fear of rejection
• Fear of reality
• Fear of losing identity (face)
• Fear of pain (and sacrifice)
• Fear of commitment
• Fear of making the wrong choice
• Fear of not being in control
• Fear that it will never work

Seven A’s of Healing (Gabor – When the Body Says No)

• Acceptance
• Awareness
• Anger
• Autonomy
• Attachment
• Assertion
• Affirmation

Mental Health Basics and Neurotransmitters

Current broken (Westernized cause and effect/diagnostic) mental health system

Why we feel like this:

• Never ending chronic stress
• Lack of eustress
• Trauma and broken family/communal systems
• Environmental toxins
• Nutrition issues
• Gut and brain health
• Exercise instead of movement
• Isolation
• Loss of light cues
• Loss of purpose and misaligned motivation

Note on pharmaceuticals (link to pharma page)

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When the Body Says No (Gabor notes)

Stress and Emotional Competence

For those habituated to high levels of internal stress since early childhood, it is the absence of stress that creates unease, evoking boredom and a sense of meaninglessness. People may become addicted to their own stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, Hans Selye observed. To such persons, stress feels desirable, while the absence of it feels like something to be avoided.

Stress consists of the internal alterations that occur when the organism perceives a threat to its existence or well-being. While nervous tension may be a component of stress, one can be stressed without feeling tension. On the other hand, it is possible to feel tension without activating the physiological mechanisms of stress.

Excessive stress occurs when the demands made on an organism exceed that organism’s reasonable capacities to fulfill them. The stress response can be set off by physical damage, either infection or injury. It can also be triggered by emotional trauma or the threat of it.

Excessive acid production due to stress and disordered neural input from the autonomic nervous system play a role in reflux.

The experience of stress has three components:

• An event, physical or emotional, that the organism interprets as threatening. This is the stress stimulus, also called the stressor.
• The processing system that experiences and interprets the meaning of the stressor. In the case of human beings, this processing system is the nervous system, in particular the brain.
• The stress response, which consists of the various physiological and behavioral adjustments made as a reaction to a perceived threat.

Selye discovered that the biology of stress predominantly affected the adrenal glands, the spleen, the thymus and lymph glands, and the intestinal lining.

On the perception of a threat, the hypothalamus in the brain stem releases corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), which travels a short distance to the pituitary. Stimulated by CRH, the pituitary releases adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH).

ACTH is in turn carried by the blood to the adrenals. Here ACTH acts on the adrenal cortex. Stimulated by ACTH, this gland now secretes the corticoid hormones, the chief among them being cortisol.

Cortisol acts on almost every tissue in the body one way or another—from the brain to the immune system, from the bones to the intestines. The immediate effects of cortisol are to dampen the stress reaction, decreasing immune activity to keep it within safe bounds.

Selye’s triad of adrenal enlargement, lymphoid tissue shrinkage and intestinal ulcerations are due, then, to the enhancing effect of ACTH on the adrenal, the inhibiting effect of cortisol on the immune system and the ulcerating effect of cortisol on the intestines.

• People who are prescribed cortisol-type drugs in treatment for, say, asthma, colitis, arthritis or cancer are at risk for intestinal bleeding.
• Cortisol also has powerful bone-thinning actions. Depressed people secrete high levels of cortisol, which is why stressed and depressed postmenopausal women are more likely to develop osteoporosis and hip fractures.

To facilitate fight or flight, blood needs to be diverted from the internal organs to the muscles, and the heart needs to pump faster. The brain needs to focus on the threat, forgetting about hunger or sexual drive. Stored energy supplies need to be mobilized, in the form of sugar molecules. The immune cells must be activated. Adrenaline, cortisol and the other stress substances fulfill those tasks.

All stressors represent the absence of something that the organism perceives as necessary for survival—or its threatened loss. The threatened loss of food supply is a major stressor and for humans there is also the threatened loss of love.

Three factors universally lead to stress:

• Uncertainty
• The lack of information
• The loss of control.

All three are present in the lives of individuals with chronic illness. For some people, it is disease that finally shatters the illusion of control.

Stress responses, triggered chronically and without resolution, produce harm and even permanent damage. Chronically high cortisol levels destroy tissue. Chronically elevated adrenalin levels raise the blood pressure and damage the heart.

• Stressed Alzheimer’s caregiver’s levels of NK cells were suppressed as well as the efficacy of immunization to influenza. There is also a delay in tissue repair.

Emotion III: Subjective experience from within oneself.

Emotion II: Emotional displays as seen by others. Nonverbal signals.

• A child’s displays of Emotion II are also what parents are least able to tolerate if the feelings being manifested trigger too much anxiety in them. As Dr. Buck points out, a child whose parents punish or inhibit this acting-out of emotion will be conditioned to respond to similar emotions in the future by repression. The self-shutdown serves to prevent shame and rejection. Under such conditions, Buck writes, “emotional competence will be compromised…. The individual will not in the future know how to effectively handle the feelings and desires involved. The result will be a kind of helplessness.
• Learned helplessness is a psychological state in which subjects do not extricate themselves from stressful situations even when they have the physical opportunity to do so. People often find themselves in situations of learned helplessness—for example, someone who feels stuck in a dysfunctional or even abusive relationship, in a stressful job or in a lifestyle that robs him or her of true freedom.

Emotion I: Physiological changes triggered by emotional stimuli, such as nervous system discharges, hormonal output, and immune changes that make up fight or flight reaction. Not under conscious control or externally visible.

Emotional competence requires:

• The capacity to feel our emotions, so that we are aware when we are experiencing stress
• The ability to express our emotions effectively and thereby to assert our needs and to maintain the integrity of our emotional boundaries
• The facility to distinguish between psychological reactions that are pertinent to the present situation and those that represent residue from the past. What we want and demand from the world needs to conform to our present needs, not to unconscious, unsatisfied needs from childhood. If distinctions between past and present blur, we will perceive loss or the threat of loss where none exists;
• The awareness of those genuine needs that do require satisfaction, rather than their repression for the sake of gaining the acceptance or approval of others.

Stress occurs in the absence of these criteria, and it leads to the disruption of homeostasis. Chronic disruption results in ill health.

Genes alone cannot possibly account for the complex psychological characteristics, the behaviors, health or illness of human beings. Genes are merely codes. They act as a set of rules and as a biological template for the synthesis of the proteins that give each particular cell its characteristic structure and functions. They are, as it were, alive and dynamic architectural and mechanical plans. Whether the plan becomes realized depends on far more than the gene itself. Genes exist and function in the context of living organisms. The activities of cells are defined not simply by the genes in their nuclei but by the requirements of the entire organism—and by the interaction of that organism with the environment in which it must survive. Genes are turned on or off by the environment.

If “science” enables us to ignore poverty or man-made toxins or a frenetic and stressful social culture as contributors to disease, we can look only to simple answers: pharmacological and biological. Such an approach helps to justify and preserve prevailing social values and structures. It may also be profitable.

The milieu of the individual cell is the cell’s immediate surroundings, from which it receives messenger substances that originate in nearby cells, in nerve endings controlled from afar and in distant organs that secrete chemicals into the circulatory system. The information substances attach to receptors on the cell surface. Then, in the cell membrane—depending on how receptive the cell is at that moment—effector substances are produced that go to the nucleus, instructing genes to synthesize particular proteins to carry out specific functions. These receptor-effector protein complexes are called perception proteins. They act as switches that integrate the function of the cell with its environment.

When early environmental influences are chronically stressful, the developing nervous system and the other organs of the PNI super-system repeatedly receive the electric, hormonal and chemical message that the world is unsafe or even hostile. Those perceptions are programmed in our cells on the molecular level. Early experiences condition the body’s stance toward the world and determine the person’s unconscious beliefs about herself in relationship to the world. Dr. Lipton calls that process the biology of belief.

1. I Have to be Strong

The core belief in having to be strong enough, characteristic of many people who develop chronic illness, is a defense. The child who perceives that her parents cannot support her emotionally had better develop an attitude of “I can handle everything myself.” Otherwise, she may feel rejected. One way not to feel rejected is never to ask for help, never to admit “weakness”—to believe that I am strong enough to withstand all my vicissitudes alone.

2. It’s Not Right for me to be Angry

Emotional distancing as a means of survival.

3. If I’m Angry, I Will Not be Lovable

The desire to be liked often makes one repress anger because it’s believed that people don’t like angry people.

4. I’m Responsible for the Whole World

Conflict is believed to be an indicator of a bad relationship so it is avoided and the sufferer sucks it up, taking responsibility for the other. A failure to acknowledge vulnerability and obsession with perfectionism. It helps to say, “I should be a guide, not a god.”

The person in this example associated his clients’ failure as his own. Meaning he had to work harder, learn more, and go to more workshops.

5. I Can Handle Anything

Taking pride in being able to handle obscene workloads.

6. I’m Not Wanted – I’m Not Lovable

7. I Don’t Exist Unless I do Something. I Must Justify My Existence

8. I Have to be Very Ill to Deserve Being Taken Care Of

Accepting punishing roles in life until sickness rescues them from it.

Whichever modality of treatment people choose—conventional medicine with or without complementary healing; alternative approaches like energy medicine or various mind-body techniques; ancient Eastern practices like Ayurvedic medicine or yoga or Chinese acupuncture; the universal practice of meditation techniques; psychotherapy; nutritional healing—the key to healing is the individual’s active, free and informed choice.

No disease has a single cause. Even where significant risks can be identified—such as biological heredity in some autoimmune diseases or smoking in lung cancer—these vulnerabilities do not exist in isolation. Personality also does not by itself cause disease: one does not get cancer simply from repressing anger or ALS just from being too nice. A systems model recognizes that many processes and factors work together in the formation of disease or in the creation of health.

Disease is disharmony. It is an expression of an internal disharmony. If illness is seen as foreign and external, we may end up waging war against ourselves.

As soon as we qualify the word thinking with the adjective positive, we exclude those parts of reality that strike us as “negative.” That is how most people who espouse positive thinking seem to operate. Genuine positive thinking begins by including all our reality. It is guided by the confidence that we can trust ourselves to face the full truth, whatever that full truth may turn out to be.

• As Dr. Michael Kerr points out; compulsive optimism is one of the ways we bind our anxiety to avoid confronting it. That form of positive thinking is the coping mechanism of the hurt child. The adult who remains hurt without being aware of it makes this residual defense of the child into a life principle.
• “Positive thinking” is based on an unconscious belief that we are not strong enough to handle reality. Allowing this fear to dominate engenders a state of childhood apprehension. Whether or not the apprehension is conscious, it is a state of stress.
• Lack of essential information about ourselves and our situation is one of the major sources of stress and one of the potent activators of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) stress response.
• Stress wanes as independent, autonomous control increases.

Negative thinking is not a doleful, pessimistic view that masquerades as “realism.” Rather, it is a willingness to consider what is not working. What is not in balance? What have I ignored? What is my body saying no to? Without these questions, the stresses responsible for our lack of balance will remain hidden.

One cannot be autonomous as long as one is driven by relationship dynamics, by guilt or attachment needs, by hunger for success, by the fear of the boss or by the fear of boredom. The reason is simple: autonomy is impossible as long as one is driven by anything.

While it is true that genuine joy and satisfaction enhance physical well-being, “positive” states of mind generated to tune out psychic discomfort lower resistance to illness.

Emotional scars are most often invisible. But scars of any type are less strong and less resilient than the tissue they replace: they remain potential sites of future pain and disruption, unless they are recognized and tended to.

Tuning out by daydreaming, for example, enables the child to endure experiences that otherwise may trigger reactions that would land him in trouble. This kind of dissociation is in play when a person retains conscious recall for events in the past but not for their traumatic emotional resonance. It explains many “happy childhoods.”

If an infant is uncomfortable or unhappy, she’ll cry, show sadness, show anger. Anything that we do to hide pain or sadness is an acquired response. It may make sense to hide negative emotion in some circumstances, but so many of us do it all the time, and we do it automatically.

Developing the courage to think negatively allows us to look at ourselves as we really are.

There is a remarkable consistency in people’s coping styles across the many diseases they have considered:

• The repression of anger, the denial of vulnerability, the “compensatory hyper-independence.”
• No one chooses these traits deliberately or develops them consciously. Negative thinking helps us to understand just what the conditions were in our lives and how these traits were shaped by our perceptions of our environment.

Emotionally draining family relationships have been identified as risk factors in virtually every category of major illness, from degenerative neurological conditions to cancer and autoimmune disease. The purpose is not to blame parents or previous generations or spouses but to enable us to discard beliefs that have proved dangerous to our health.

“The power of negative thinking” requires the removal of rose-colored glasses. Not blame of others but owning responsibility for one’s relationships is the key.

The power of negative thinking requires the strength to accept that we are not as strong as we would like to believe. Our insistently strong self-image was generated to hide a weakness—the relative weakness of the child. Our fragility is nothing to be ashamed of. A person can be strong and still need help, can be powerful in some areas of life and helpless and confused in others. We cannot do all that we thought we could.

If a refusal saddles you with guilt, while consent leaves resentment in its wake, opt for the guilt. Resentment is soul suicide.

Negative thinking allows us to gaze unflinchingly on our own behalf at what does not work. We have seen in study after study that compulsive positive thinkers are more likely to develop disease and less likely to survive. Genuine positive thinking—or, more deeply, positive being—empowers us to know that we have nothing to fear from truth.

Although it accounts for only 1% of all cancers, malignant melanoma provides for 11% of spontaneous cancer remissions.

• Spontaneous remission raises two important questions: why, in some people, are such resources not powerful enough to destroy cancerous cells in the first place, before the clinical development of melanoma; and what enables the immune system in some people to overcome this potentially deadly cancer even after it does arise?
• Natural killer cells attack abnormal cells, thus providing a line of defense against cancer. NK cells have a demonstrated capacity to digest melanomas. As in breast cancer, they are less active in emotionally repressed individuals.

Emotional competence is the capacity that enables us to stand in a responsible, non-victimized, and non-self-harming relationship with our environment. It is the required internal ground for facing life’s inevitable stresses, for avoiding the creation of unnecessary ones and for furthering the healing process. Pursuing the seven A’s of healing will help us grow into emotional competence.

1. Acceptance

The willingness to recognize and accept how things are. It is the courage to permit negative thinking to inform our understanding, without allowing it to define our approach to the future.

It challenges the deeply held belief that we are not worthy enough or “good” enough to be whole. Acceptance also implies a compassionate relationship with oneself. It means discarding the double standard that, as we have seen, too often characterizes our relationship with the world.

“You can’t force yourself to say no anymore than you can force someone else to say no, but you can be compassionate toward yourself.”

Compassionate curiosity about the self does not mean liking everything we find out about ourselves, only that we look at ourselves with the same non-judgmental acceptance we would wish to accord anyone else who suffered and who needed help.

2. Awareness

All those seeking to heal—or to remain healthy—need to reclaim the lost capacity for emotional truth-recognition.

Animals and young humans are highly competent at picking up on real emotional cues. If we lose that capacity as we acquire language, it is only because we receive confusing messages from our immediate world. The words we hear tell us one thing, the emotional data say something different. If the two are in conflict, one will be repressed.

We repress our emotional intelligence in order to avoid an ongoing war with the crucial people in our lives, a war we cannot possibly win. And so, we lose our emotional competence even as we gain verbal intelligence. Aphasiacs, it would appear, go through the reverse process. Much as a blind person will develop an extraordinary capacity to hear, the aphasiac develops an enhanced ability to perceive emotional reality.

• The aphasiac learns to notice his internal reactions to words, since the cognitive parts of the brain can no longer tell him what the message is. Those internal reactions, gut feelings, are what we lost as we “grew up.”

Full awareness would mean that we would regain our lost capacity to perceive emotional reality and that we are ready to let go of the paralyzing belief that we are not strong enough to face the truth about our lives.

To develop awareness we have to practice, pay constant attention to our internal states and learn to trust these internal perceptions more than what words—our own or anyone else’s—convey. What is the tone of voice? The pitch? Do the eyes narrow or open? Is the smile relaxed or tight? How do we feel? Where do we feel it?

Awareness also means learning what the signs of stress are in our own bodies, how our bodies telegraph us when our minds have missed the cues.

3. Anger

Not only does the repression of anger predispose to disease but the experience of anger has been shown to promote healing or, at least, to prolong survival. People with cancer who have been able to muster anger at their physicians, for example, have lived longer than their more placid counterparts.

However, not only is the unbridled outpouring of anger harmful to the recipients or bystanders but it can also be deadly to the one who rages. Heart attacks can follow upon outbursts of rage. In general, high blood pressure and heart disease are more likely to happen in persons who harbor hostility.

• The sympathetic nerves are activated in rage states. Narrowing of the blood vessels occurs with excessive sympathetic fight-or-flight activity, increasing the blood pressure and decreasing oxygen supply to the heart. The hormones secreted during the stress response in rage states raise lipid levels, including serum cholesterol. They also activate clotting mechanisms, further heightening the risk of blockages in the arteries.

If in repression the problem is a lack of release, acting out consists of an equally abnormal suppression of release alternating with unregulated and exaggerated venting.

Healthy anger, Allen Kaplin says, is an empowerment and a relaxation. The real experience of anger “is physiologic experience without acting out. The experience is one of a surge of power going through the system, along with a mobilization to attack. There is, simultaneously, a complete disappearance of all anxiety.

Acting out through bursts of rage is a defense against the anxiety that invariably accompanies anger in a child. Anger triggers anxiety because it coexists with positive feelings, with love and the desire for contact. But since anger leads to an attacking energy, it threatens attachment. Thus, there is something basically anxiety provoking about the anger experience, even without external, parental injunctions against anger expression.

• “Aggressive impulses are suppressed because of guilt, and the guilt exists only because of the simultaneous existence of love, of positive feelings,” says Allen Kalpin. “So, the anger doesn’t exist in a vacuum by itself. It is incredibly anxiety-provoking and guilt-producing for a person to experience aggressive feelings toward a loved one.”

Naturally, the more parents discourage or forbid the experience of anger, the more anxiety-producing that experience will be for the child. In all cases where anger is completely repressed or where chronic repression alternates with explosive eruptions of rage, the early childhood history was one in which the parents were unable to accept the child’s natural anger.

• If a person unconsciously fears the power of his aggressive impulses, there are various forms of defense available to him. One category of defense is discharge, by which we regress to an early childhood state when we dealt with the intolerable buildup of anger by acting it out.
• “You see, the acting-out, the yelling, the screaming and even the hitting, all that a person does, serves as a defense against the experience of the anger. It’s a defense against keeping the anger inside where it can be deeply felt. Discharge defends against anger being actually experienced.”
• Repression and discharge both represent fear and anxiety, and for that reason, both trigger physiological stress responses regardless of what we consciously feel or do not feel.

The anxiety of anger and other “negative” emotions like sadness and rejection may become deeply bound in the body. Eventually it is transmuted into biological changes through the multiple and infinitely subtle cross-connections of the PNI apparatus, the unifying nexus of body/mind. This is the route that leads to organic disease. When anger is disarmed, so is the immune system. Or when the aggressive energy of anger is diverted inward, the immune system becomes confused. Our physiological defenses no longer protect us or may even turn mutinous, attacking the body.

People diagnosed with cancer or with autoimmune disease, with chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia, or with potentially debilitating neurological conditions, are often enjoined to relax, to think positively, to lower their stress levels. All that is good advice, but impossible to carry out if one of the major sources of stress is not clearly identified and dealt with: the internalization of anger.

Anger does not require hostile acting out. First and foremost, it is a physiological process to be experienced. Second, it has cognitive value—it provides essential information. Since anger does not exist in a vacuum, if I feel anger, it must be in response to some perception on my part. It may be a response to loss or the threat of it in a personal relationship, or it may signal a real or threatened invasion of my boundaries. I am greatly empowered without harming anyone if I permit myself to experience the anger and to contemplate what may have triggered it. Depending on circumstances, I may choose to manifest the anger in some way or to let go of it. The key is that I have not suppressed the experience of it. I may choose to display my anger as necessary in words or in deeds, but I do not need to act it out in a driven fashion as uncontrolled rage. Healthy anger leaves the individual, not the unbridled emotion, in charge.

“Anger is the energy Mother Nature gives us as little kids to stand forward on our own behalf and say I matter,” says the therapist Joann Peterson, who conducts workshops on Gabriola Island, in British Columbia. “The difference between the healthy energy of anger and the hurtful energy of emotional and physical violence is that anger respects boundaries. Standing forward on your own behalf does not invade anyone else’s boundaries.”

4. Autonomy

Mind and spirit can survive grievous physical injury, but time and again we see that the physical body begins to succumb when psychic integrity and freedom are jeopardized.

When we look at the research that predicts who is likely to become ill, we find that the people at greatest risk are those who experienced the most severe boundary invasions before they were able to construct an autonomous sense of self.

Childhood stressors such as emotional or sexual abuse, violence, drug use or mental illness in the family were correlated with adult risk behaviors, health outcomes and death. There was a “strong graded relationship” between dysfunction in the family of origin and adult health status—that is, the greater the exposure to dysfunction had been in childhood, the worse the health status was in the adult and the greater were the chances of untimely death from cancer, heart disease, injury or other causes.

Most commonly in the lives of children, boundaries are not so much violated as simply not constructed in the first place. Many parents cannot help their child develop boundaries because they themselves were never enabled to do so in their own formative years. We can only do what we know.

• Without a clear boundary between himself and his parent, the child remains enmeshed in the relationship. That enmeshment is later a template for his way of connecting to the rest of the world.

Enmeshment—what Dr. Michael Kerr called a lack of differentiation—comes to dominate one’s intimate relationships. It can take two forms, withdrawal and sullen and self-defeating resistance to authority.

Since the immune confusion that leads to disease reflects a failure to distinguish self from non-self, healing has to involve establishing or reclaiming the boundaries of an autonomous self.

Dr. Peterson (Anger, Boundaries, and Safety): “Boundaries are invisible, the result of a conscious, internal felt sense defining who I am. Asking yourself, ‘In my life and relationships, what do I desire, want more of, or less of, or what don’t I want, what are my stated limits?’ begins the process…. In this self-definition, we define what we value and want in life at this particular time from a place of internal self-reference; the locus of control is from inside ourselves.”

Autonomy, then, is the development of that internal center of control.

5. Attachment

In the earliest attachment relationships, we gain or lose the ability to stay open, self-nurturing and healthy. In those early attachment bonds, we learned to experience anger or to fear it and repress it. There we developed our sense of autonomy or suffered its atrophy. Connection is also vital to healing. Study after study concludes that people without social contact—the lonely ones—are at greatest risk for illness. People who enjoy genuine emotional support face a better prognosis, no matter what the disease.

We sometimes find it easier to feel bitterness or rage than to allow ourselves to experience that aching desire for contact that, when disappointed, originally engendered the anger. Behind all our anger lies a deeply frustrated need for truly intimate contact. Healing both requires and implies regaining the vulnerability that made us shut down emotionally in the first place. We are no longer helplessly dependent children; we no longer need fear emotional vulnerability. We can permit ourselves to honor the universally reciprocal human need for connection and to challenge the ingrained belief that unconsciously burdens so many people with chronic illness: that we are not lovable. Seeking connections is a necessity for healing.

6. Assertion

Beyond acceptance and awareness, beyond the experience of anger and the unfolding of autonomy, along with the celebration of our capacity for attachment and the conscious search for contact, comes assertion: it is the declaration to ourselves and to the world that we are and that we are who we are.

In our fear we falsely equate reality with tumult, being with activity, meaning with achievement. We think autonomy and freedom mean the liberty to do, to act or react as we wish. Assertion in the sense of self-declaration is deeper than the limited autonomy of action. It is the statement of our being, a positive valuation of ourselves independent of our history, personality, abilities or the world’s perceptions of us. Assertion challenges the core belief that we must somehow justify our existence.

It demands neither acting nor reacting. It is being, irrespective of action. Thus, assertion may be the very opposite of action, not only in the narrow sense of refusing to do something we do not wish to do but letting go of the very need to act.

7. Affirmation

When we affirm, we make a positive statement; we move toward something of value. There are two basic values that can assist us to heal and to remain whole, if we honor them.

• Everyone has an urge to create. Its expression may flow through many channels: through writing, art or music, through the inventiveness of work or in any number of ways unique to all of us, whether it be cooking, gardening or the art of social discourse. The point is to honor the urge. To do so is healing for ourselves and for others; not to do so deadens our bodies and our spirits.
• We are a part of the universe with temporary consciousness, but never apart from it. Not by coincidence is the word seeking so frequently employed in relation to spiritual work. Some people seek religion, meditation, nature, or other spiritual practices.

Health rests on three pillars: the body, the psyche and the spiritual connection. To ignore any one of them is to invite imbalance and dis-ease.

Boundless (Ben Greenfield notes) 

A serotonin deficit could compromise synaptic transmission and lead to:

• Depression
• Food cravings
• Brain fog
• Reduced reasoning skills
• Anxiety
• Panic attacks
• Insomnia
• Eating disorders
• Migraines
• Distractibility

The most common neurotransmitters are:

• Dopamine: primary motivating chemical which promotes ambition, drive, and action by influencing brains areas responsible for conscious movement
• Acetylcholine: promotes focus, memory, and cognition, and is necessary for motor neuron function and muscular movement
• Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA): helps you to relax and calm down. You become anxious and tense without it
• Serotonin: gut motility alongside the previously mentioned

Neurotransmitter Dominance

A genetic predisposition for higher levels of certain neurotransmitters (www.bravermantest.com).:

• Dopamine dominance: likely to be strong-willed, fast on your feet and self-confident. Highly rational and comfortable with facts and figures rather than with emotions and feelings. You take pride in achievement, strategic thinking, problem-solving, and inventing. Overly alert, often hyperactive, and may need less sleep than others. Most likely prefer heavy weights and explosive training over cardio. May be tempted to engage in impulsive actions at the risk of physical burnout. A dopamine deficiency may cause fatigue, sluggishness, memory loss, or depression. You can boost levels with amino acids, vitamin B complexes, Rhodiola rosea, Ginkgo biloba, chicken, cheese, eggs, pork, turkey, nuts, wheat germ, oats, milk, and yogurt, and aiming for a moderate intake of caffeine.
• Acetylcholine dominance: tuned into your senses, highly creative, open to new ideas, make the most out of any situation, stickability with the same workout program and routines. You enjoy words, ideas, and communication (many artists are acetylcholine dominant). You can handle high intensity and high volume, but require more rest to recover. Social, charismatic, charming, and you highly value relationships. You love adventure, travel, and learning new information. In acetylcholine excess you may become paranoid, panicky, and anxious. Deficiency can result in poor memory recall, slow reactions to sensory stimuli, and brain sluggishness. It is made of choline, phosphatidylcholine, acetyl-L-carnitine, and may be supported by Ginkgo biloba and ginseng. Eat choline rich sources of fat, eggs, nuts, cold-pressed oils, and avocados. 4g of fish oil per day and Qualia supplements.
• GABA dominance: it is inhibitory so you are probably calm in stressful situations. You love organization and rigid schedules that eliminate uncertainty, loving institutions and tradition. You thrive on creating nurturing and peaceful environments for friends and family. You may find it difficult to motivate yourself to exercise because you are too relaxed and dislike the intense excitement. Prefer laid-back activities and sports. Excess GABA may amplify your tendencies to nurture beyond your own health maintenance. Deficiency may make you feel nervous, irritable, and anxious. Melatonin, phenibut (at night), valerian root, and passionflower.
• Serotonin dominance: reboots the brain while you’re asleep. Delta brain waves are amplified by serotonin and increase your ability to rest and regenerate. You’re probably highly responsive to sensory input and slightly impulsive, thriving on change and novelty (foods, hobbies, travel). You tend to be drawn to excitement and high energy activities. Excess can make you nervous, distracted, and prone to emotional extremes. It can also induce desperation for interpersonal interactions. Deficiency – often brought on by too much excitement or insufficient sleep – can make you feel overtired and out of control. Fish oil, 5-HTP, magnesium, St. John’s wort, and tryptophan.

The blood brain barrier prevents neurotransmitters from crossing (supplemental GABA might be able to). The vagus nerve serves as a primary communication nerve between the gut and brain and can be stimulated and inhibited by neurotransmitters.

Serotonin regulates gut motility. IBS-D is characterized by excessive gut motility and diarrhea, and is modulated by serotonin levels in the gut. 46% of IBS patients exhibit depression, 34% exhibit generalized anxiety disorder, 31% panic disorder, 26% somatization. While neurotransmitter levels in the brain and gut are separate, they still seem to influence each other.

Testing Your Neurotransmitters

Your physician can test it by measuring neurotransmitter (NT) levels in your blood, cerebrospinal fluid, or urine. Including glutamate, norepinephrine, and epinephrine (last two are used to synthesize dopamine). Unfortunately, these tests are not measuring synaptic levels and there is no established relationship between the amount of neurotransmitters in the brain and other places in the body (due to the blood brain barrier filtering levels). NTs are made in the brain, around the body, and by bacteria.

The DUTCH Complete panel looks for markers such as homovanillate (HVA), a metabolite of dopamine metabolism, and vanilmandelate (VMA), a metabolite of norepinephrine and epinephrine metabolism. Low HVA can be due to low dopamine or poor conversion of dopamine to HVA, often caused by insufficient levels of methyl groups, magnesium, and NAD, which are needed to metabolize dopamine (addictions, cravings, pleasure seeking, sleepiness, impulsivity, tremors, low motivation, fatigue, and low mood). Low VMA in the urine may indicate low adrenal hormone output and often a signal of low copper of vitamin C (addictions, craving, fatigue, low blood pressure, low muscle tone, exercise intolerance, depression, and loss of alertness).

Neurotransmitter quizzes:

• Dr. Eric Braverman’s Personality Type Assessment (www.bravermantest.com), used for neurotransmitter dominance and deficiency
• Dr. Mark Hyman’s Ultramind Solution Companion Guide, set of quizzes to determine levels of neurotransmitters, vitamin D, magnesium, fatty acids, zinc, inflammation, thyroid function, and more.
• Julia Ross’s Mood Type Questionnaire (www.juliarosscures.com/mood-type-questionnaire), to determine serotonin, endorphin, norepinephrine, and GABA status. Also, blood sugar levels.

Do You Have a Leaky Brain?

You can get a blood panel from Cyrex laboratories (BBB permeability test) that looks for antibodies often associated with BBB issues brought on by traumatic brain injury or concussion, with the permission of a doctor. Or you could assess the following:

Poor sleep:

• Chronic sleep restriction on mice diminished endothelial and inducible nitric oxide synthases, endothelin 1, and glucose transporter expression in brain microvessels of the BBB, and also decreased the brain’s uptake of 2-deoxyglucose (a sugar needed to maintain proper signaling between neurons). Making the BBB less able to shuttle nutrients into the brain and send messages.

Excessive alcohol intake:

• Leads to neuron degeneration via poor message signaling, cell death, and BBB permeability. Ethanol enhances activity of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which can damage brain cells. Chronic exposure to alcohol also increases the expression of CYPE1, an enzyme that converts ethanol into acetaldehyde, resulting in the formation of excess ROS. When the BBB is permeable, excess acetaldehyde can get across causing havoc as a potent neurotoxin.

High blood pressure:

• BBB dysfunction is related to the combined effects of elevated blood pressure and cerebral vasodilation. Caused by chronic stress, shallow chest breathing, poor diet, and lack of sleep.

Other factors:

• Systemic inflammation
• Stress (acute or chronic)
• Bacterial infections
• Toxins, like lipopolysaccharides, generated from high-fat and high carbohydrate meals
• Mold exposure
• A leaky gut
• Liver damage
• Frequent blood glucose fluctuations
• Frequent sleep disturbances
• Anything that triggers oxidative stress in glial cells, such as high sugar intake
• Hypoxia (oxygen deficiency in cells), from shallow, rapid mouth breathing
• High intake of glutamate (milk, wheat, and vegetables) and MSG. If you have histamine intolerance, glutamate sensitivity, gluten intolerance, or celiac disease, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, type 1 diabetes, or autoimmune diseases linked to glutamate autoimmunity, the effects are much worse.