Anoxia, Reduced Oxygen at Birth and Adult Behavior

It stands to reason that pre-natal traumas are generally all encompassing; we should find damage almost everywhere we look. The problem is that without an all-encompassing theory that directs us where to look we would never put together heart attacks at fifty with a trauma at minus six weeks.

There are several studies that have looked into fetal hypoxia (reduced oxygen) and the results systematically seem to be severe emotional illness later in life. (see: Behavioral Alterations in Rats Following Neonatal Hypoxia and Effects of Clozapine.” Fendt.M., et al., Pharmacopsychiatry 2008 Jul; 41 (4) 138-45) (Also see: “Decreased Neurotrophic Response to Birth Hypoxia in the Etiology of Schizophrenia.” T.D. Cannon, et al., Biological Psychiatry. Vol 64, Issue 9 Nov. 2008. Pgs 797-802) There is more and more information about the later ill effects of traumas at birth and before. It behooves us to look into this as those entrusted to heal mentally ill patients. Without this understanding we will not know where to look in order to heal patients. The information is out there; it is up to us in the healing professions to seek it out.

The question is, “why hypoxia in schizophrenia?” There are several explanations. What I have witnessed over and again is that the fetus is in danger of dying from lack of oxygen and then does not have the wherewithal to combat the trauma (a mother smoking, for ex.). Lack of sufficient oxygen is a terrible stressor. If it continues death is in the offing. Further, it leaves the fetus and baby with insufficient resources to combat future stress. The danger remains as a substrate so that any later trauma can set it off; hence breathing problems. So anxiety reactions to seemingly non-toxic situation are inordinate and out of keeping with the gravity of the current situation. They have simply reawakened the almost dying while in the womb. It is never a matter of changing attitudes, as the cognitivists would have it; it is a matter of what shaped those attitudes, in the first place.

I have discussed the notion of the “critical window” in my other works; it simply is that time in life when needs must be fulfilled, and at no other time. We can hug a child all day at age ten but it will not erase the lack of touch for the first 4 months of life which seriously deregulated the whole system and left a legacy of internally imprinted pain; a pain for which one must constantly take pain-killers. And it remains a mystery to the loving adoptive parents who took the child from an orphanage at the age of twelve weeks.

There is no way to make up for that loss except when going back to relive the original trauma. There is no way to “make up for” this deficit as much as we might want to. It is set in altered biologic set-points. We can treat the damage this does (kidney disease) but not its causes. The whole nervous system must retreat to the time when the trauma occurred; it can never be a matter of “remembering.” It has to be organic and systemic memory. That is, part of the precise memory lies in those new set-points. And they are wedded to how they first developed, in the first place.

There is a critical window for healthy functioning kidneys. It is sometime in the last trimester of gestation that most kidney cells (nephrons) are developing (up to the 36th week). Nephron development begins just after the eighth week. Trauma here, however subtle, may result in later kidney disease, with no apparent immediate cause. Once that damage is done we can only treat its symptoms (unless and until we address origins).

Physiologic reactions are the base that feelings are constructed on. What distorts those physiologic responses will ultimately distort psychological reactions, as well. If the system is highly activated due to early trauma, chances are we will have a hyperactive individual who will search out projects to keep herself active and busy. If dopamine and other alerting chemicals are in short supply we may later have someone who is phlegmatic, concocts reasons for not doing anything, for not following through. It is not a one-to-one relationship, but we eventually direct our psychology. If we don’t have all of the mobilizing chemicals we need it stands to reason that the adult, in order to keep matters egosyntonic (comfortable to the person), will rationalize why he doesn’t try and doesn’t persist.

I will sum up once more: high stress hormones in the carrying mother usually means high levels in the fetus. The baby who is born with allergies or other problems is already imprinted with trauma. She is born with a higher than normal stress level, which means that new events that are even moderately stressful will engender inordinate reactions. All kinds of diseases later on will follow from this. So even mild allergens can produce a serious allergic reaction, or a migraine. It means there will be impulsive out-of-control behavior; out-of-control because the level of mobilization/vigilance is already high. It doesn’t take much to set it off.