Cold Feet, Cold Hands and a Hurting Heart

Most of us know someone who has chronically cold feet and hands (the extremities), and who are forever cold. We think, “That’s just their nature.” But what if it’s not? What if it is “nurture?” What if those cold hands and feet went with a certain kind of personality that got its start a few months after conception? Moreover, suppose we could change all of those tendencies at once.
Well that is a tall order and will need some explanation. My general philosophy is that most of us are normal, born normal and adapt normally. So when there is a deviation leading to changed anatomy or physiology early in life it means something went wrong. It is not normal for there to be serious illness or emotional problems after birth if something did not go wrong some time before.
I shall address this problem and try to explore what can go wrong that produces radical deviations in the first few years of our lives. (Some of the following information is taken in part from the work of D. Singer, Germany)
One of the constants I see in my practice is the reliving of oxygen deprivation at and before birth (Hypoxia/depleted oxygen or anoxia/reduced). It turns out that the literature is now filled with studies that indicate that a majority of babies are born with limited oxygen. This is often due to painkillers and anesthetics which reduce oxygen input. The baby then has to adapt to this situation. It does this in many ways but one is to revert to the animal “diving reflex.” It redistributes oxygen to where it is most needed, namely, the key vital organs, lungs and heart. It deprives the extremities of oxygen so that there is set up a tendency to have cold hands and feet, not just for the moment of plus two days, but for life/plus 80 years. Not only that, but there is a reshaping of the personality, at the same time, that also can last for those eighty years. Reduced oxygen (don’t forget the smoking mother or one who takes suppressive tranquilizers) also happens when a mother takes serious pain killers and/or tranquilizers during pregnancy. Involved in this is a long-terms adaptation syndrome. The body needs to slow its metabolism (how fast it uses up nutrients), not for then only, but again for a lifetime. This adaptation I have called the parasympathetic one.
A structure in the brain is called the hypothalamus. It controls many hormone secretions. It also controls two different nervous systems—the sympathetic, managing our aggressive, active tendencies; and the parasympathetic, managing the more reposeful, healing ones. A trauma such as low oxygen at birth can produce a dominant parasympathetic predilection that encompasses many biologic parameters and also psychological ones, as well. In short, we have the makings of a phlegmatic, passive, unassuming, held back personality; someone who is always reacting to the imprint of low oxygen input. Thus, everything becomes a problem, everything is too much, and there is a tendency to give up easily because there is a not a prolonged and continued aggressive, assertive response. These are the shallow, slow breathers, cold in the extremities, reluctant of personality, not a self-starter. We think we can change these individuals. Remember that the ensemble of all these biologic/psychological responses are involved in survival strategies; not things picked at random because they were simply convenient.

Reconfiguring our oxygen reduction response is one key way to prevent oxygen damage to the brain. The system does it for us and sends more oxygen to the heart and lungs than to the feet. It also means less possible damage to the heart. If there is a trauma that affects the heart it may not show up for fifty years until the first heart attack. Of course, one way to avoid all that is to provide sufficient oxygen at birth. Failing that, the fetus/newborn will reduce its oxygen demands. But that can mean inadequate cerebral oxygen supplies, lower cerebral metabolism rate, which later can mean learning problems. You know when we say, “He’s got cold feet.” It is true. The person is reacting based on fear and terror, the same fear accompanying oxygen lack early on.

As I have written in my Musings book, it is not unexpected that there may be an early oxygen deprivation involved in later Alzheimer’s disease. That is, the brain is in constant adaptation to imprinted reduced brain oxygen. The brain is saying, “I am lacking supplies,” and originally adapted to that lack in various ways, including a change in the amount and strength of certain synapses, which are the gaps between nerve cells that are filled with chemicals that either enhance or slow the neuronal message from one cell to the other. In brief, that earlier adaptation becomes permanent and almost immutable. All of this underlies much of the deep depression I have seen constant hopelessness and helplessness accompany the personality (see my book “The Janov Solution”, for a more elaborate discussion of this). And of course, a drop in core body temperature. As patients get close to these deep early feelings of womb-life and birth, the temperature can fall three degrees in minutes as it is being relived. Or, patients deeply depressed can come into a session with a 96-degree reading. The parasympath has generally a one to two degree lower reading than the sympath. He seems to be in a permanent “dive” state of the polar bear. He too is ready for oxygen reduction.

The point about reduced oxygen needs is that the whole personality seems to “shrivel up.” It is a constricting one rather than expansive. When she speaks she takes up much less space and air; her words hardly move out of her mouth, and there is an air of fatigue about her. Is it any wonder that she (or he) is less sexual? Again, the whole system slows to adapt to reduced oxygen; the system is doing its best to avoid a mismatch between supply and demand (see D.Singer, “Neonatal Tolerance to Hypoxia.” Comp. Biochem. And Physiology, part A 123 (1999 pages 221-234). And when there is imprinted low oxygen we might expect slower growth rate. One way we see this is in neonates born to smoking mothers who are often of smaller stature. That in itself assumes trauma somewhere during womb-life maturation. That can foretell of a premature heart attack or cancer later in life. I think it is more likely to lead to cancer than cardiac problems because of the massive repression or inhibition that goes along with this kind of personality. Repression of womb-life events are nearly always of life-and-death matters; the repression it engenders is massive, and the result may be serious distortion at a cellular level. Thus, in my scheme, heart disease is that of expression (sympath) and cancer of repression. This is clearly not a hard and fast rule, but is something to think about. So many other factors play a role in all this, not to exclude a whole childhood filled with experiences.

There are so many later effects of womb-life trauma. Namely, diabetes and hypertension (high blood pressure). It has been shown that when a pregnant woman is given steroids (the stress hormones) the offspring tends to suffer from high blood pressure.
(J.Seckl and M.Meaney. “Glucorticoid Programming and PTSD Risk.” Annals of the N.Y. Academy of Science 1071 351-378 2008) In particular, babies born of these mothers show hypertension tendencies just after birth. They note a strong link between stress hormone intake of a mother animal and her baby’s long-term hypertension (sheep). It seems like the later in pregnancy this occurs, the more permanent the adult high blood pressure. It has to do with the sensory window when a stimulus is most apt to create alterations in functioning. And the reason why this is important is that an anxious mother is delivering stress hormones to her baby/fetus. And so the baby can be said to be born with a tendency to anxiety, as well. One way we know this, is that mothers who are anxious seem to raise the cortisol levels in the amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus. It may seem like heredity, but it is not.
More is getting known about high levels of stress hormones in the carrying mother. It is implicated in later diabetes, immune disease, allergies, hypertension and others. There is now a much stronger correlation between mother’s stress level and later dementia. What is most important in all this is that this stress in the mother/fetus compromises the repressive system so that later it will be difficult to hold down surging feelings. The importance of this is that low level imprints cannot be suppressed so that the person has difficulty in concentrating and focusing—attention deficit disorder. A key element of that repressive system is the prefrontal cortex, which is pressed into service to counteract feelings that are on the march into awareness. Hence, overt anxiety states.
We begin to understand a bit about later drug addiction, which always seems like such a mystery. We are slowly becoming aware that pain can be installed in the fetal system before she is born. It still needs quelling. It is generally of such high valence, (witness our patients reliving early trauma), that it is logical that one uses pain killers later on. Until we re-direct our focus earlier we shall never solve these human problems.
The University of California, Irvine is important in this research. Gary Lynch, a well-known neurobiologist there, found that with very early trauma there was a later likelihood of memory problems. After years and years of suppressing feelings, there seems to be a “caving in” of the externally oriented prefrontal area as neurons, under constant pressure from the imprint, begin to die. That is one reason why in early stress a memory structure in the brain, the hippocampus, tends to diminish in size. Mice who have their hippocampus surgically tampered with, are much more excitable and prone to anxiety states. They do not adapt well.
In short, one’s personal history, one’s neuro-biologic memory, is a significant factor in what happens to one’s brain.