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PTSD and Psychosocial Modalities for Transformational Healing. A Case for Food and Peers as medicine.
PTSD and Psychosocial Modalities for Transformational Healing.
A Case for Food and Peers as Medicine.
I would argue that chronic, treatment resistant PTSD has become another condition of the west exacerbated by the same risk factors sky rocketing chronic inflammatory disease.
Sure, trauma is the catalyst, but trauma or suffering is a normal part of life that should not lead to a lifetime of suffering and maladaptive psychosocial health.
In order to unpack the idea that food and peers can create transformational healing, mostly without the need for a medical professional, we need to more clearly define the environment that manifests the collection of symptoms characterized by PTSD diagnoses.
Stimulus 1, The Trauma
The fact that our brains are so critical in keeping us alive, functioning, surviving accounts for some very robust, and widespread defense against anything traumatic, either bio-chemically or psychologically (which is bio-chemical). This defense comes in the form of preventing or eliminating oxidation or inflammation. Psychological stress causes the stress hormone cortisol to be produced at high levels, engaging your fight or flight system. Any high level, unchecked inflammation in the brain can have major deleterious effects resulting in mood dysregulation, brain fog, learning, or increased loss of memory and cognitive function. Think Honda brain vs. A Ferrari brain. This hormone by its very nature is inflammatory and is a major component in the development of all chronic inflammatory disease states.
This is why the highest concentration of vitamin C is in your brain and a major source of glutathione production. It also shuts down your frontal lobe, the area of your brain that is responsible for morality, executive function, and rational decision-making processes. In order to prevent this process from rendering you non-functional from subsequent trauma after being exposed to something seemingly unbearable, gene silencing occurs. Regions of our genome in neuronal cells that regulate the expression of stress hormone receptor sites, or neuro-transmitters may become silenced to reduce or prevent signaling, in effect numbing you to future exposures.
From a purely survival standpoint, as something likely selected for during our years as hunter gatherers in a less hospitable place where lions eat your friends, this is fantastic, which has been a naïve and sometimes coveted sensation experienced by those who have been through trauma in their life, which is most of us. Naïve in the sense that it not only protects you from trauma, preventing you from going into shock so you can make it to safety, but ends up limiting access to the emotional parts of ourselves resulting in maladaptive social disparities affecting healthy familial, and intimate relationships. We ultimately begin to fear vulnerability or unconsciously avoid it in order to prevent being hurt.
Stimulus 2 Our Diet
Gut brain connection
Our largest interface with our environment is the tube that runs through us, putting diet as a primary source of information not only for our bodies, but the billions of microbial cells that inhabit our digestive tract. We absorb the majority of our nutritional information as secondary metabolites secreted by the organisms residing in your gut. 90% of the dopamine in your body was manufactured by microbes in your gut. Including serotonin, gamma amino butyric acid. Considering that most of our neurotransmitters, which affect our behavior are being pooped out of the microbes we are feeding, doesn’t it make sense to optimize? Before moving on we must also realize that the “Gut Nervosa” or our gut brain that innervates the length of our intestinal tract, connected to our brains via the vagus nerve and has more neurons than there are in your spine is a thing.
Leaky gut is a name for a condition present in anyone consuming a SAD (Standard American Diet) diet resulting in chronic systemic inflammation via activation of the immune system. As I mentioned earlier, this rampant inflammation is one of your biggest enemies if good brain health is what you’re after.
Our brain needs fats and sugars. Our brain, and the rest of our nervous system for that matter is literally made of fat, and insulated by it. Without the proper fat intake, this takes a hit as it is the first line of defense against oxidation resulting in demyelination of our neurons putting everyone on a spectrum of neuropathy. This causes pain peripherally, and poor stress response centrally. It can also contribute to dysfunction in memory consolidation, emotional regulation, and cognition.
Insulin resistance shrinks your brain. It is hopefully common knowledge at this point given the current epidemic rise of type 2 diabetes in our society that too much processed carbohydrate consumption leads to insulin resistance in humans. If you don’t know what that means, in a nutshell it means your cells starve to death as they have been trained to rely heavily on sugar for fuel and insulin is the hormone produced to let it in.
What does this have to do with mental health? Your brain actually burns 25-30% of your body's available glucose stores and needs that energy to drive all its normal functioning and fight oxidation, which itself requires a metabolic load (more oxidation). If these neuronal cells are unable to produce enough energy to maintain its metabolic activity and prevent oxidation, then atrophy occurs. It is known by science that people with excess body fat, and or diabetes have smaller brains. Smaller brains that aren't cleaning house either, allowing metabolic junk to accumulate. Does this sound optimal for higher order, Ferrari- like brain function? No. This sets the stage for our treatment resistant brain pathologies including PTSD, depression, anxiety, bi polar, add, etc.
Oxygen is important for brain health. Blood circulation, affected by inflammation carries oxygen to the brain, an absolutely essential component of brain function, as without enough oxygen supply, those regions of the brain will experience a reduction or loss of function.
This is why people who smoke have smaller brains. Or at least thinner cortical regions.
Some Nutrients that increase blood flow to the brain:
Exercise: increase in O2 supply,
B12: Aids in the production of red blood cells
Iron: O2 transport
Vitamin C: Vascular elasticity, antioxidant
Magnesium: Helps maintain healthy blood pressure
Oxytocin Mediated Grit
Why groups work better than 1-1 doctor visits:
Our peers have a significant impact on our behavior. Ever heard the saying that you are the average of the ten people you spend the most time with? If everyone you are around is significantly overweight, you are statistically more likely to be overweight yourself.
The beauty of the group healing modality is that if everyone else is working to take care of themselves, and that's the popular thing to do, you are more likely to follow through, and sustain those efforts over a longer period of time.
So what is oxytocin mediated grit? Oxytocin is a hormone that is produced in your brain that is responsible for strengthening the bonds that you have with others, sometimes also referred to as the "love hormone." The fact is, that the more time you spend around someone, the more of this is produced. Side note, the manufacture of oxytocin coincides with increased production of BDNF or brain derived neurotrophic factor which functions as sort of a fertilizer for your neurons, strengthening neural pathways in the brain and in your body. So in effect, being around people that love you can make you smarter. This is critically important to understand as the solidarity formed between members of a group serves as a substantial motivator as the members of the group work towards overcoming the hurdles associated with creating lasting behavioral change that are typically required for transformational healing.
Vulnerability
Does vulnerability contribute to the fitness of an organism?
Is that defined by perception?
Sometimes when things go wrong and we get hurt emotionally, allowing yourself to be vulnerable may seemingly not contribute to fitness.
Why?
Is it a Chicken or the egg situation? - Neurobiological or Environmental?
Do we become more guarded over ourselves because we first believe that it is better to not be hurt to allow us to function in times of danger or is that thinking a product of an underlying physiological response to trauma
i.e.. changes in gene expression, synaptic activity
A Neurobiological explanation would demonstrate dysfunction in the production, utilization, and transportation of neurobiological substrates, and the state of corresponding anatomical structures.
Environmental elements will ultimately lead to a neurobiological impact, but there is an aspect of our environment that we have control over, our thoughts!
ENTER:
We are a product of our Environment
A dimension of that environment is our perception
Ultimately, the niche we fulfill in life is a product of our perception
A dimension of our perception is our thoughts
We are a product of our thoughts……….
Therefore, it is what we ultimately decide that contributes to our fitness or not.
One of my favorite excerpts from the International Journal of Neuropsychotherapy describes this well:
“An appreciation of epigenetics inspires compassion for those of us who come into the world vigilant and defensive, our epigenetic legacy anticipating a harsh world, a dangerous place to live; yet it also inspires hope, for even the most epigenetically determined aggressive, defensive stance is, by its very nature responsive to the novelty of benign and benevolent environments. Fundamentally, epigenetics translates experience in the world into a gene expression profile that shapes who we are. If we are to develop or change ourselves, we must actively seek the experiences that will help us develop along the trajectory we desire.``
- (Peckham, Haley) "Epigenetics: The dogma defying discovery that genes learn from experience." International Journal of Neuropsychotherapy volume 1 (2013
