A look at why many patients receiving acupuncture or related treatments may not be responding as well as we would like. This reason has to do with a major, but poorly understood epidemic in our society that could be blocking their ability to respond.
Americans & Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
About five million Americans suffer with full–blown PTSD that incapacitates them, and these are the ones we hear about in media coverage. Most of the rest of us experience the after-effects of trauma on less incapacitating level, which I call "low-grade PTSD." We can live and function at a high level, but this form of PTSD creates ongoing tension in our bodies; a negative committee in our brain that never shuts up; many brands of chronic pain; depression; as well as anxiety and fatigue. Even these more "normal" levels of chronic stress can be quite challenging.
Somehow the barrage of all those challenging experiences we are regularly exposed to is overloading our circuits and triggering our brains into some of the same experiences veterans of actual war are going through. With this common kind of PTSD it can be very frustrating trying to heal yourself because of the way the brain is wired. It seems that the more you try to get rid of old pain the more entrenched it gets.
A great analogy about this comes from ancient Greek mythology. Do you remember the story about the seven labors of Hercules? Hercules' second labor was to kill a fearsome monster called the Hydra. It had nine vicious, snarling heads with poisonous teeth. Hercules set to work trying to kill the Hydra, but whenever he cut one head off with his sword two heads would grow back in its place.
So many of our patients, and perhaps ourselves have invested huge amounts of time and money into psycho-therapy, workshops and oodles of healers, coaches and spiritual teachers. Yet every time we seem to clear up one set of symptoms it can seem that two more are growing back in its place just like the Hydra's heads.
The upper and largest part of the brain is called the cerebrum. The frontal lobe of the cerebrum is the part of most interest to this discussion. This section governs our sense of empathy, putting things into perspective, planning and ability to filter our experience.
Filtering & The Role of the Amygdala
Filtering is our ability to take in what is relevant or beneficial to us and then block out the rest. People with PTSD often lose this filtering ability. They become over-stimulated by common events that don't bother most people. Mindfulness meditation has been proven to be effective for strengthening the filtering ability. The part of the brain most closely associated with triggering the experience of PTSD is the amygdala – nut shaped structures in the limbic midbrain.
The amygdala creates associations between common experiences of life and past hurts and fears in an attempt to protect us from encountering those same hurts again. This is useful to an extent, as it's good to remember that touching a hot plate causes an "owie" on your fingers, or that ignoring emotional red flags usually ends up badly.
The Hypothalamus & Danger
When the amygdala part of the brain is activated by a triggering experience it prepares the body to respond to danger. It does this by sending a distress signal to the nearby part of the brain called the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is the major command and control center of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), the body's stress response system. Once the hypothalamus swings into action it instantly gets the body ready to fight or flee.
That is a highly appropriate response when there is real danger, as it puts our body in top shape for dealing with emergencies. The vulnerability of the system is that the amygdala can go on overdrive and cause us to stay in a state of fearful arousal even when there is no actual threat facing us. So it is appropriate to get riled up if a real car is swerving toward you at 70 mph. But it is not helpful if you get tense and anxious any time you are driving.
A Programming Error
This is the dilemma and tragedy of PTSD – the amygdala of the brain gets programmed to create inappro-priate associations of danger and emergency to harmless experiences of everyday life. This wires our body to be in a sympathetic stress response some or most of the time. Staying in sympathetic stress mode can be devastating to the body and is associated with these health issues:
- Heart disease
- Hypertension
- Cancer
- Immune deficiency
- Chronic fatigue
- Fibromyalgia
- Chronic anxiety and/or depression, phobias
- All kinds of digestive disorders
- Chronic pain
- Urge to self-medicate with alcohol or drugs
- Over-active mind, making it hard to be in your calm center and be happy
Sadly, our modern society is full of triggers that stimulate our stress systems much of the time. I have learned and practiced effective techniques for relieving PTSD symptoms at their root using vibrational medicine. These involve applying color light and microcurrent onto bilateral acupuncture points with strong psychological indications while guiding patients through healing visualizations as they receive the therapy. I will provide further details about this method in my next Acupuncture Today article.
Click here for previous articles by Darren Starwynn, OMD, LAc.