The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics: Epigenetics

(Originally published July 27, 2008)

 

In the early nineteenth century a French scientist named Jean Baptiste Lamarck decided that we acquired characteristics from experiences that our parents underwent. Russian communists applied this to agriculture but, no matter, it was a widely discredited theory…..until recently. Now this avowed Marxist position may have been resurrected a bit. There is a new field called epigenetics that states pretty much what Lamarck believed. So what is the evidence? And what exactly is it? What Lamarck said was that individuals acquire characteristics as a result of their environment, and now, these characteristics can be passed on to the offspring.

Much of the work in epigenetics has to do with diet; a mother’s diet influences the offspring’s physiology. Epigenetics has to do with how genes are regulated and influenced by the experience of the baby. I believe it has more to do with the fetus who resides in the womb; that his experience is influenced forevermore by the mother’s diet but also by her moods, her anxiety and depression. Has the genetic switch been delayed or was it premature? This can happen without making a radical change in the gene itself but rather in how it is expressed, whether it is shut off or on. What we are discussing is how a mother’s interaction with her environment can pass this on to her offspring. I think we need to understand that a fetus in the womb is always trying to adapt to his environment and that how genes will evolve and be expressed depends on that adaptation. For example, a mother who is anxious and who has depleted much of her serotonin supplies cannot fulfill the young fetal need for his own serotonin supplies. He may well grow up deficient in inhibitory or repressive capacity and be an anxiety case forevermore; this evolves into attention deficit in his youth and his continued inability to have a cohesive cognitive ability. I think it is extremely important that all this occurs while the fetal brain is rapidly developing and needs proper input to evolve normally. An anxious mother is so agitated that the neuronal input into the baby she is carrying is so extreme that he cannot adapt and integrate this input. Thereafter, this is the kind of person who cannot accept too much stimulation because the internal input is so great that anything from the outside, just two terms papers, can be overwhelming.

I have discussed the work of Michael Meaney of McGill University who has worked with mice and found that very early neglect by the mother results in lifelong alterations. In thirteen men who had committed suicide, all of whom suffered from child abuse, there were epigenetic effects. Abuse has many forms but to me those most deleterious is the abuse of a mother who smokes, drinks or takes drugs during pregnancy. Abuse means adversely affect a child’s development. Meaney found the same changes in thirty five people who suffered from schizophrenia. Here, several of the genes involved with the unfurling of key neurotransmitters (which ordinarily help to repress pain or noxious stimuli) where affected. New work has related epigenetics to the occurrence of cancer. What has been called the effects on epigenetic settings I call changing the set-points of many biologic states; this includes the set-points of the neurotransmitters that w
Ill later make us chronically comfortable or uncomfortable. Not feeling good in our skin is one way to state it. What is very new is that experiences of the mother affects the sperm of the offspring, and that may affect how the grandchildren develop. It may be that smoking or drug taking in while the embryo is just forming can later affect sperm production. The meaning of all this is that what happens in the womb while the organism is getting organized can affect the baby for a lifetime. It is so important that we not neglect this period when we attempt to understand and treat those with emotional problems. The more remote the imprint the more widespread the later effects, in my opinion. When a carrying mother is under stress her stress hormone level is high. When the levels remain high for a long time the immune system is compromised, and that might well affect the immune status of the offspring. And as I note elsewhere, a strong immune system (natural killer cells) is needed to stay on the lookout for newly developing cancer cells. It is not that a deficient immune system can lead to cancer, it is that a weak maternal immune system does not impart a strong immune capability to the baby; and the same dislocated physiology of the mother can also affect the fetus, setting the stage for later catastrophic disease. Womb-life has largely been neglected in the psychological literature. It is time to reorient ourselves.

SMALL FEET AND SMALL BREASTS: CANCER?

Are small feet and small breasts desirable? Is it good or bad? It’s more serious than that. It is neither good nor bad but whether that size has arrived at its genetic destination. That is, due to heredity has the size fulfilled the genetic intention? If not, there can be serious repercussions. What it means to me, and now we leave the arena of strict science, is that repression has interceded to slow down or inhibit growth. How do I know? Some of my patients have reported foot growth, chest growth, breast growth and other kinds of growth after about a year of therapy. (We have a letter of a former patient who reported foot growth of several sizes after therapy). All that has happened in my therapy is lifting repression and liberating pain. If we reason backward we might say that repression prohibited proper growth from taking place. That means to me constant pressure in key sites against growth; against genetic destinations. And that again can mean the possibility of serious illness, possibly cancer. Pressure on the cells to stop this unfolding can be enormous. Until one has seen the liberation of pain it is difficult to comprehend.

So we can only say that one’s breasts are too small when we see if they grow as a result of this liberation. And I believe that will only happen when the patient arrives at deeply implanted pain, at birth and before, when so many hormones are affected; where so many set-points are dislocated and fixed. I think that, in this sense, the therapy may have an anti-cancer effect. Can you imagine the pressure our biology exerts to fulfill its genetic promise? That pressure continues against a constant pressure to hold it back. The result too often can be disease as the cells become deformed and dislocated. It is not only the obvious breasts and feet, which are, after all, measurable, but there my be so effects we cannot measure; for example, the kidneys, heart or liver. We see that wherever we have looked, (serotonin/impramine: natural killer cells) there are significant changes. We would expect the same with key organ systems. In other words, pain and repression are laid down as total experience, which means that just about every system is involved in the imprint of the memory. So we would expect that all key organ systems would be affected. That remains to be studied. But we would also expect that those systems, which are inherently weak and vulnerable, would be seriously affected by that repression. The answer? Have a good gestation and birth and infancy. Failing that, relive the key pains set down and undo the massive repression.

There are effects we cannot measure; for example, the kidneys, heart or liver. We see that wherever we have looked, (serotonin/impramine: natural killer cells) there are significant changes. We would expect the same with key organ systems. In other words, pain and repression are laid down as total experience, which means that just about every system is involved in the imprint of the memory. So we would expect that all key organ systems would be affected. That remains to be studied. But we would also expect that those systems, which are inherently weak and vulnerable, would be seriously affected by that repression. The answer? Have a good gestation and birth and infancy. Failing that, relive the key pains set down and undo the massive repression.

In writing about the imprint, I will note again that one way we know that very early imprinted pain endures is that many entering patients have high stress hormone levels which normalize after one year of the therapy. What this may mean is that the imprint endures, is a constant danger, and must be fought against. That danger is signaled by the high cortisol (stress hormone) levels. Why is it, then, that the levels come down to normal after a time? Because the imprint is no longer a force; It is now simply a memory. The force of the pain has been felt and integrated. It is not as though there is a reliving of the memory and then we find changes in the imprint; it is that the way the memory is held and engraved is through these various changes such as in stress hormone levels. The danger is no longer in evidence; the system can relax. The battle is over. As all systems normalize it means that there is no longer an irrevocable memory to deal with. The imprint as a total physiologic event no longer exists. Can we become neurotic again? Not in the same way because the harmful memory is gone. What we often cannot change are the secondary changes already in evidence due to the damage inflicted beforehand.

Prenatal Life and Its Later Effects

When I first wrote about how the birth trauma and prenatal experience affect adult behavior it was considered “New Agey.” Now, there are literally hundreds of studies verifying this proposition. There seems to be little question now that the carrying mother’s mood and physiology can produce long-term effects on the offspring. That means us.

Let’s start with a simple bit of research; Dr. Daniel Schacter, psychologist of Harvard University has reported on a study where subjects watched bits of a TV series and then had their brainwaves measured. (see: Science, Sept. 2008).

They found when the subject remembered the event, the single brain cell signature was the same as in the first viewing. They reported that it seemed like a reliving; which of course, has been my position. What do you call it when a memory brings up one’s exact history with its precise early physiology. This happens to our patients every day. When there are certain triggers the brain conjures up its history, intact. That is why our behavior is so compulsive and unwavering; our history motivates us all of the time. We are largely victims of our deep unconscious brain.

In Schacter’s research on epileptic surgery patients, they threaded fine electrodes down in the brain of the subject. These electrodes could pin-point small brain storms at their origins. And they could make minute measurements during recall. The lesson? We can relive past events in their entirety, precisely as they occurred. What is very new in all of this is how early an experience can be to affect our later life. Think of the implications: that old memories reside in the same neurons (nerve cells) as were involved originally. That is why the neurotic cannot distinguish between past and present and sees reality through the prism of the past.

Let’s go back to the notion I discussed earlier of epigenetics. One genotype, a single genetic predisposition, can give rise to many phenotypes depending on what happens to those genes during gestation. So what we might imagine is genetic is genetic-plus what happens to us in the womb. So much happens to us in the womb; so much as been ignored in terms of the their long-term effects that many diseases remain a mystery because we are looking at the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong tools.

What I am learning is that events in the womb explain so much about later life. If you bend an emerging twig you are bound to get a distorted tree. The question has always been, “how’/ early is early?”

An example: someone is born with all kinds of allergies from birth on. A history of emergency clinic visits for all kinds of infections, asthma, breathing problems due to allergies, and in general, a very deficient immune system. Here is where we need to push back the envelope and direct our attention to those early months in the womb. When we do, we often find out that the mother was quite anxious and/or depressed. Or often, the marriage is falling apart. Or in one case, as her belly got big the husband was turned off and sought out an affair. The mother was crestfallen, fell into a depression, and we had a baby that was impacted by all this and was born with a diminished immune system, something that got its start early on in the pregnancy. Don’t forget that the immune system, in some respects, is our first inchoate nervous system, sussing out dangers and menaces and organizing defenses against them. This includes secreting some of the pain-killing neurotransmitters we know about today. What starts out to defend us ends up hurting us. If the immune system is comprised there is a good chance that natural killers cells will be diminished and weakened.

Because the baby can be born with higher than normal stress hormone levels, and because the immune system works in see-saw fashion with cortisol (high stress—low immune function) the fetus has possibly set the stage for a lifetime of immune problems. Here is where genetics plays a role; high stress in the fetus will affect those areas with genetic vulnerabilities. After all, what is the meaning of high levels of stress hormone during fetal life? It means an input that agitates the system to be chronically alert. And when the system can longer shut off that input we have the makings of an enduring primal imprint. That input is maternally induced. So we have a newborn with a high level of agitation already set in place many weeks earlier. Here is ADDHD (attention deficit disorder) waiting to happen. Over time the deleterious results can range from impulsive tendencies to migraine and high blood pressure (to hold down the imprinted input). It is then no mystery when the child cannot concentrate or sit still. It is not enough to know that there are high levels of stress hormones in the baby, but what causes it, in the first place.

We change natural killer cells after one year of our therapy into normal levels. These cells have as a key function, watching out for cancer developing cells and pouncing on them in an effort to contain them. So a mother’s distress while pregnant can spell life-endangering effects on her baby, not the least of which is later cancer. The earlier the trauma during womb life the more disastrous the effects. That is our important secret life.

What can be done about this? Treating it first and foremost, then make sure it will not come back? How do we do the latter? Reliving the earliest womb-life events. How do we do that? Well, luckily, each new harmful or adverse experience that remains non integrated is re-represented later on a higher level of the nervous system and is noted as the outsider or enemy. It is indeed a threat to the organism. I believe that there are specific frequencies that tie these events together. When we explore these ramified events and begin to relive them we are also reliving deeper and earlier aspects of the feeling and/or pain. And that is how we relive pure physiologic brain-stem responses without ever acknowledging it.

When there are certain kinds of triggers, the brain conjures up its related history, intact. That is why our behavior is so compulsive and unwavering; our history motivates us all of the time. We are largely victims of our deep unconscious brain. We can only reach deeper into the remote past as we gain more and more access to deeper levels of brain activity. We need to have real good access to our feelings first; then very early brainstem events. That takes time but it can be done.

And what about cancer? The beginning deformity of cells can well begin in the womb with mother’s anxiety due to her own history or due to her marital circumstances. In any case, the fetal system needs to gather its resources to shut down excessive input. Here is where many cells are evolving and gathering their identity, but instead there is massive repression and, ultimately, physiologic deviation, even at the cellular level.

One patient had three siblings all “messed up” and depressed. It remained a mystery why all of them were so disturbed, her parents were indeed loving; until she had very early primals (a systematic reliving of early trauma). She learned that in South America, for many years, there was a civil war. The father left to fight, coming home occasionally to make babies. The mother was in desperate straights, had no money and no one to turn to, fearful of the constant raids into her village. The children, even in fetal life, suffered. She was a loving mother whom the children adored, but neglect womb-life, which should not be ignored. It had far-reaching effects. It therefore is an indicator of what went on during fetal life. Can we imagine a doctor learning about a stroke with her patient and then examining his fetal life?

Low birth weight is associated with slow fetal growth and lack of development of various physical systems. If the newborn is abnormal in any respect, even birth weight, we may assume that something abnormal may have happened during gestation. Babies of depressed mothers are more often of low birth weight. At least, let’s consider it. Babies with low birth rate lack muscle, something that follows her into adulthood. Here is a quote from the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study: (we) have shown that the risk for coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes or impaired glucose tolerance is further increased in 60-to 70-year-olds who were small at birth, thin or short in infancy, but put on weight rapidly between 2 and 11 years of age.2, (55) A similar growth trajectory has been shown to predispose to type 2 diabetes or impaired glucose tolerance. “

People who suffer stroke tend to be thin or short at 2 years. There is evidence that these early events can lead to hypertension later on, which is an important risk factor for both coronary heart disease and stroke. A number of mechanisms have been suggested to explain these links.

We need to study Alzheimer’s disease as it relates to gestational trauma as well as birth difficulties.

Certain height and weight problems at 2 years of age is a well accepted indicator of childhood emotional problems. Why is this so? There are a number of answers. Growth of the fetus relies heavily on adequate oxygen supplies. Because of the large brain, which uses a good deal of oxygen, there is a physiologic demand from more and more. If these supplies become limited for any number of reasons the body growth will slow down so that the brain can be left intact. Hence, lower fetal weight. Let us keep in mind that cancer can develop and live without oxygen, and maybe that adapting to lower levels of oxygen in the womb is part of an explanation for later cancer. Deprive a cell of a majority of what oxygen it requires and you have one key element in the origin of some cancers. This an only be a hypothesis.

In experimental animals it was found that anything that increased fetal stress hormone levels could result later on in elevated blood pressure, anxiety and hyperglycemia. And when we fiddle with stress hormone levels we increase the likelihood of later cardiac crises. And cortisol level is also heavily implicated in signaling the birth process to begin.

Cortisol is a stress hormone because it sets in motion the alarm signals to combat too much and too strong an input. When it goes on for a long time it accelerates again, the possibility of dementia and a whole host of other diseases. Primal imprints do exactly that; maintain a high level of cortisol for a lifetime.

In nearly every study of prenatal life there is the implication that high stress hormone levels in the carrying mother can result in hypertension and cardiac problems later on in the offspring. Infants of mothers who were diagnosed as anxious before pregnancy had significantly higher stress hormone levels. What neuro-psychologist Paula Thompson has explained: “prenatal stress responses are dependent on mother’s stress level. But how babies show it is through a limited physiologic vocabulary.” She believes that the fetal stress response is already skewed and, given later stress, the earlier stress response does not change. It can be blocked, diverted, covered over, but it remains pristine clear.

She believes that stress states in the pre-nate and neonate can be recognized by elevated heart rate, greater activity levels (gross body, single and multiple limb-higher reflex activation (Field et al. 2006). The pre-nate and neonate may show mistimed diffuse movement and overt grimacing. Will be rather clumsy and has a lack coordination. All this can be a predictor of later heart disease. That is only if we look at the problem in a gestalt overview.
Thompson: “One overarching goal of this article is to help clinicians understand the potential deleterious effects of prenatal stress. (See Thompson. “Down Will Come Baby.” Journal of Trauma and Dissociation. Vol. 8(3) 2007) She adds: it is hoped that increased knowledge of prenatal stress will inform psychotherapeutic treatment protocols, especially when treating severely traumatized and dissociated patients who may themselves have suffered early pre-nate stress. Further, when these patients become pregnant, appropriate treatment for the mother may benefit the offspring. When clinicians provide therapeutic intervention to a pregnant woman the pre-nate may also be affected”(Field, 2001; Ponirakis, Susman & Stifer, 1998. (My emphasis)

Let us not forget that (Thompson): one of the most dramatic changes occurs in the first moment of conception. The primitive cell carries the blueprint for an individual who has never existed before and will never exist again. While in the womb he is having the most important experiences in his life, because nearly all of it is of life-and-death significance. This is what Freud should have meant when he was developing his theory of psychoanalysis. Here lies the deep unconscious; a dark place with no exit and no words. Biologic responses dominate. In order to relive we have to include all of our physiologic processes, not just cerebral memory. The first step is to acknowledge these facts; a much more difficult step is to fashion a therapy for them. I think we have done that.

One of the key factors in high levels of maternal cortisol is the increase in the chances of a lost baby; or at the least some kind of prematurity. Again, those levels descend into the fetal system and change the baby in ways we are still learning about. Babies born to depressed mothers have higher levels of cortisol than normal. Here was what Lauren Kaplan and colleagues have to say about this: “in utero environment sculpts the uniquely plastic fetal brain resulting in long-term maladaptive patterns of behavior and physiology.” (Lauren Kaplan, et al, “Effects of Mother’s Prenatal Psychiatric Status and Postnatal Caregiving on Infant Bio-behavioral Regulation.” Early Human Dev. 2008 April; 84 (4) 249-256)

What researchers are now saying over and over again is that womb-life can unalterably affect the lifetime of the offspring. And, it is not only behavior that is altered but the physiology, as well. Does this mean a change in Primal Theory? Absolutely, it pushes the envelope much earlier for when imprints start and for their widespread enduring effects. It means that how the birth trauma is played out and reacted to depends on earlier life circumstances.

I want to reiterate my point about serotonin production in the fetus. For the first few months of gestation the fetus must “borrow” serotonin from momma; that is, if she (mother) has adequate levels. If she doesn’t, the fetus can’t go to the pharmacy bank and make a loan. She can be low in stock if she already has a chronic depression that depletes supplies. What is stamped in is a lack of adequate repression by the fetus and the beginning of a free-floating panic or anxiety, which only becomes evident years later as the defense system is under constant attack. This terror cannot be fully contained because of inadequate supplies of serotonin. Then we have panic attacks that are originated far earlier than we have ever imagined. But also these low levels of serotonin affect and retard development. It is as essential as food; it is food for the fetus.

We now know that a difficult birth can deplete the baby of adequate serotonin/inhibition levels. Later, all kinds of impulse neurotics—criminals—addicts, are low in serotonin, and obviously, low in inhibition. I don’t think we need to stop at birth for adverse effects on serotonin. It can happen as serotonin begins to function adequately, even in the last few months of pregnancy. Again, many of my patients are low in serotonin at the start of therapy but normalize after a year; therefore, it is a reversible phenomenon. (see a full discussion of this in my Primal Healing). It isn’t only serotonin; there is ample research now to show that the neocortical inhibitory prefrontal neurons are low in number due to a trauma at or before birth. These are poor inhibitors from the time of birth on. These individuals cannot wait, lose patience, have attention deficit disorder lash out with little provocation and want what they want NOW! They will interrupt because they cannot wait their turn to speak. All this means that we can be born with a tendency to Attention Deficit Disorder. It is not heredity but the experiences during womb-life that impacted that heredity. It seems like we are born with it but mostly we are not.

Now let’s push the envelope even further back. In a recent experiment, a scientist raised some rats after knocking out some of the building blocks for serotonin (the key element in Prozac), which is key for gating or repression. He then let the females mature, get pregnant and have babies. Of the 43 mouse embryos tested, 37 displayed abnormalities and brain malfunction. This indicates that the animal mother’s state affects the development of the baby’s brain. Her levels of serotonin can determine how her offspring mature. So, when a pregnant woman is chronically depressed, and hence low on serotonin, the baby’s entire life may be adversely affected. And the changes in her as a result of “heredity” will determine what kind of mother the offspring will be. Later childhood environment does count a lot but not as much as when the baby’s brain is rapidly evolving. In gestation, it is essential that the mother be normal in every way possible. Otherwise, she cannot fulfill the needs of her baby in the womb. And one definition of love is helping to fulfill the needs of the child. No fulfilling needs—no love.

What is very important for us to realize was that a mouse fetus does not make her own serotonin until the third trimester. It seems like the mother supplies what is needed until the baby can take over. But when the mother is low on supplies, she cannot fulfill what the developing baby lacks. Therefore, the baby carries around a load of pain. Now if we apply that to humans, there seems to be a time in gestation when pain or noxious stimuli impinge, but we are not yet able to produce enough of our own gating chemicals, leading to ungated pain. This residue will continue and may lead to bouts of anxiety later on in life. It becomes free-floating fear or terror. This is not due to heredity but rather to experience in the womb. This is why we should never neglect womb-life when addressing neurosis. Part of our in utero life, therefore, takes on hurt at a time when our system can do nothing about it. Nevertheless, it affects all later development. At thirty we may suffer from panic attacks (as excessive agitation) that began its life in the very early months of our mother’s pregnancy. It is pristine and free-floating, ready to spring forth whenever we are vulnerable or our defenses are weak. No talk therapy can make a dent in it. It leaves us fragile for a lifetime so that any insult in infancy and childhood weakens us all the more. Demanding and/or aloof parents can easily compound an allergic tendency, for example.

Catherine Monk and her associates studied anxiety in pregnant mothers. (Monk, C. et al.“Effects of Women’s Stress-elicited Physiological Activity and Chronic anxiety on Fetal Heart Rate.” Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 2003. Lippincott publishers. Their conclusion was: “women’s emotion based physiological activity can affect the fetus and may be important to fetal development.” To think that there is a significant physiologic change but no later psychologic one would be to ignore the human brain.

Now as to the enduring effects of pre-birth and birth trauma. Alyx Taylor has shown that the baby’s stress response to an inoculation at eight weeks was largely determined by the “mode of delivery” of the newborn. Those who reacted the most were birthed by assisted delivery. Cesarean showed the least response. The central finding is that the stress response circuits (HPA circuit) in the brain help determine how a baby will response to future stress.

I am not going to cite any number of relevant studies but one such article is of a review if many related ones. Nicole Talge and her colleagues reviewed the data on what happens to the babies of stressed mothers. (“Antenatal Maternal Stress and Long-term effects on Child Neuro-development. How and Why.” J. of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 48:3/4 4 (2007) pp 245-261)

Nearly all studies claim an effect of the mother on the fetus. I suppose the real question is, “what can we do about it.” Years later it seems an impossible task, but it is not. Once there is an imprinted trauma during womb-life, the brain system closes down on the pain through inhibition/gating. Thereafter the effects are life-long. What we must do is go back to the originating source and undo the trauma. The way we do that is to relive the trauma and open the gates. It can be done, as I have explained elsewhere, is by reliving emotional trauma during childhood, which has at its roots the pre-birth event. When we fully relive the childhood event it incorporates the earlier trauma; each new related trauma is re-represented on higher levels. And when these later traumas are relived we see the disappearance (or reduction in the severity) of the symptom, as for example, high blood pressure. That is because the earlier trauma may only be expressed through specific physiologic reactions such as blood pressure or heart rate. To relive the physiologic responses can be enough given other variables. If we latch onto the related childhood feeling in our therapy it automatically (given deeper access) includes the earlier physiologic component of the feeling. I want to reiterate that there is a timetable of needs that must be fulfilled at that time and no other. Once the fetus has been impacted due to a high level of stress hormones that is it; the system gates it as best as it can, and no other mode of treatment except reliving can change it.

This is a change in our paradigm. It means that trauma that has life-long effects can occur during womb-life, and thereafter has profound effects on our later behavior and symptoms. How, therefore, can we possibly attack allergies, migraine and high blood pressure without an acknowledgment of the deep and remote origins of the problem? I have been writing about this for decades. The difference is that research has now caught up and begins to confirm our theory. And now we see why after one year of our therapy there is a normalization of natural killer cells; as I pointed out, these are cells on the lookout for newly forming cancer cells, and attack them. So we might say that one way to help forestall cancer is to make sure that our immune system is intact and strong.

One may rightly question how anyone can relive events in the womb with no scenes or words. Luckily, that part of the imprint is totally physiological. We don’t need verbal acknowledgment. That deep brainstem is also a very important part of our central nervous system and gives the oomph or push to a feeling. A single feeling will encompass all three levels of brain function. Again, there is no exit here except entering into the most profound of unconscious states as possible.

Scientific Confirmation for Primal Therapy

It isn’t only what happens in a laboratory with men in white coats that counts as science; I think clinical science also counts in the mix.  And it is not only the need to extrapolate from studying little animals with white tails.  It means studying real people with real maladies.  Which I believe we have done over fifty years, including also research results from outside groups … those mysterious souls in white coats.

Let me give one example.  Over the years we have seen dozens of patients suffering migraine headaches.  Those were the ones with severe anesthesia at birth.  Their Primals (reliving of feelings) were of choking and suffocation, gasping for air.  It was the commonality of most of them, but not all.  But as they relived lack of oxygen at birth, the suffocation went away as did the migraine.  It sounds like we figured it all out right away.  No.  It took months and years of this observation to learn that the whole vascular system was shutting down to defend against dying from lack of oxygen.  It was an extreme conservation move to survive.

Sometimes if the Primal did not finish there would be a return of the migraine, in short, there was still the memory of suffocation at work.  We were learning that the origins of many migraines was this asphyxiation during the birth process.  One of the early treatments for migraines was oxygen.  Now it is pills for shutting down pain, but coffee as a vasoconstrictor can help because it helps shut down the blood flow.

What then happened later on was that almost any stress could trigger the migraine as it also reawakened the original reaction which became the modus operandi for the sufferer.

The first coalescence of lab research and our clinical efforts was found at King’s College, London; Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience.  They wondered why pain continued even after the physical insult had gone.  They wanted to know why pain became chronic.  One thing they knew was that in pain there were more pain nerves active.  But why did they continue to cause pain?  Why did these proteins maintain their altered function?  They believed it was prolonged by epigenetics.  After an initial injury there is an “epigenetic footprint”.  The molecular imprint reawakens those proteins again; hence pain.  It tells us about the mechanisms but less often about the “why” of all this.  Why is there a migraine, in the first place? What caused it?

In Primal terms, the imprinted memory is still there and endures, and adverse events can set off the reactions again.  The nerves involved are still there waiting to be activated again.  But they carry the imprinted memory and are vulnerable. The triggers can be any threat or danger, even a criticism, taken as a threat to being loved; worse, to be excluded.

Another point of convergence between lab science and clinical science: A November 2015 study in Nature, Neuroscience (see http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v19/n1/abs/nn.4181.html), found that prenatal trauma was important in leaving traces on the gene of past trauma. This happens to coincide with our work where we actually see patients relive these traumas—a process called methylation.

The lab scientists found that these early traumas were heavily implicated in the later development of schizophrenia.  They studied methylation traces in over 500 cases and found that methylation changes “were most pronounced between pre and postnatal periods”.  We are finding this often during gestation that leads to many different kinds of mental afflictions.  Terror states becoming anxiety reactions in the parlance, the key cause of attention deficit reactions later on. Several studies have shown DNA methylation earlier than anyone expected: in the prenatal life.  And this then, in turn, changes gene expression, so what looks like pure genetics is really epigenetics which can be changed because it is not set in stone.  And a great deal of methylation changes occur very early to start the neurotic process even before we are born.  So in any therapy that deals with later life exclusively may be missing the proper therapeutic target.

It is not ideas that produce neurosis; it is the feeling traumas that predate them. They produce twisted ideas and perceptions and also physical abnormalities.

Here is more of what the researchers point out: ”Whatever risk factors are occurring in the fetal environment in utero, they appear to leave a lasting  mark on the sites that are different later in life in brains of patients (with schizophrenia).”
So there is an imprint that causes damage and endures and affects our mental apparatus.
Wait, isn’t that Primal Theory?  Oh my, we converge.
We must address the right brain, which literally is the right brain which imprints earlier than the left, if we are to help patients.  And isn’t that our goal?

Now About This Addiction

I must say, and what wrangles me is that the NY Times refuses to carry any of my articles.  They tell me and I quote:  “You guys think you have all the answers and none of you do “.
Gee, I thought I did.    So here is what they publish on the front page of their  SCIENCE  section.  “Rehab Rooted in Science.” (see http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/science/mark-willenbring-addiction-substance-abuse-treatment.html)  I will discuss what they write so I remain true to their proposition. It is about Dr, Willenbring, a psychiatrist who has found a novel way to treat addiction.  He was treating someone formerly addicted to heroin and tried some twenty faith-based and abstinence notions of therapy. None worked.
The patient’s  brother died of Oxycontin overdose.   He also tried suicide with drugs.   Ayayay.

First step: explaining the neuroscience of alcohol and drug abuse.  Ok, good idea.  Convince them it is bad for you.  Then the doctor adds, “it is genetic.”  Exactly how does he know? Has he ever heard of science and epigenetics?  Now, he should know better since he was formerly director of the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.  Surely, the notion of methylation has reached him.

The person is immediately relieved that it is not all his fault. This in contrast to the usual blah blah, booga booga speech where they are exhorted to believe that they have a spiritual defect. It is, they say, all the patient’s fault.  They are put on an abstention program: no drugs, and then they count days off drugs as the beginning of the cure.  And all attendees applaud. Good for the ego and less good for cure.

After five years on the job our doctor returned to his hometown to open a private clinic, with his own ideas, treating drug abuse and alcoholism. He advises, first, to plan on a long-term therapy. And now I quote: “His treatment plans can involve anti-depressants, medication for anxiety, and anti-relapse medication; i.e, pain killers.  He also includes psychotherapy. This is new? He doesn’t get people off drugs; he gets them on them. And he treats for traumatic stress disorder. He states that medication is necessary to reduce alcohol craving. Whey are they craving? Duh; Pain. “I don’t want anyone to have to go through the crap I went through,” the doctor insists.  He credits the pain killer suboxone for his getting off opioids for three years. So he credits one drug for helping him get off other drugs. He believes that the main target is the craving; so it is ok to use drugs to reduce the craving.  And where does the craving come from? Ah!  Another mystery.  There is no recognition of a deep inner life; of embedded imprinted memory that endures and causes cravings. The focus is on inhibiting the desire for drugs; that is, for relief from pain, only the cause of all that is pain, which is rarely mentioned. Oh yes, did I mention breathing exercises? They have added that to the mix.  And they accept weed in moderate doses.  

Wait a minute. Is this a clinic for addiction?  Sadly, it touts itself as an improvement on other approaches.  So explain to me how and why? I could go on but that is enough;  it is not enough to use drugs to cure drugs.  That is an oxymoron. What is needed is the really new approaches, an awareness of a deep inner life; an imprint down into the antipodes of the brain which creates havoc and unrelenting need. It is unrelenting because it results from a memory imprint that is imprinted into the genes of the system and endures perhaps for a lifetime. You do not conquer need.  Need is essential for fulfillment and development.  It cannot be denied or avoided. It is an immovable object. Above all we need to understand how personal evolution gets detoured; we need to examine epigenetics and methylation.  We need to understand what lies below addiction and why it exists.

Let me start with one truism. We are addicted to need not any substance. And that behavior or drug has to block need and the pain it engenders. Are we addicted to sex or are we addicted to the need for touch, for caresses and hugs and kisses; all of which we missed early in our lives but never leaves the memory centers whether in the limbic system or in the brainstem. Those alterations become part of our systems and drive behavior.  They have the importuning quality of life and death because they derive from deep and life endangering pain.

So let’s see what Dr. Willenbring brings to us: suboxone, which has elements of an opioid in it, joined with naloxone which blocks the effects of an opioid.  This latter helps undo a bit of repression.  It is basically an opioid antagonist.
Why that?  Because they have also offered a wee bit of the drug they are trying to detox.  Many years ago we used it for a time for depression.  So here we have drugs to stop drug addiction?  And this is revolutionary? Is there ever going to be a realization of why we need that?  A description of inner life and above all, of our early history.  Or are we changing chairs on the Titanic? Because down below there really is a catastrophe  lurking; the boat is sinking.  And what is being treated?  What we can see in the present, on top: behavior.
We too see behavior but of  very different sort: the behavior of those who address and relive their history with all of its agony. We don’t have to confine ourselves to what is obvious, taking drugs.  We reach the bottom layers of the brain which contain feelings, needs and pain so that we are not limited to the evident.  Aah.  What a relief, just because our good doctor brings relief but no resolution,  a big difference.  But if you have no way to observe deep into the nervous system then you are confined to the superficial.  This is what Primal Therapy offers: a deep look at the changes in the brain, so that we understand the importance of the new neurology: epigenetics and methylation.  We can now measure the pain and measure its resolution; that is science at work, no surmise nor guesswork.  Neurology has opened up a whole new dimension to us.  Let us not neglect it. If we do, it is at the patient’s peril.

Allow me to add another caveat: it is a pain that ends, a pain that feels good because it is out of the system and becomes a relief. A pain that feels good.

Can we imagine the lifetime effects of never reaching the pain and leaving that deleterious force to do its damage over the decades?  No one escapes; no one who has unaddressed pain stays untreated with impunity; repression will take its toll.  Caveat emptor.

Epigenetics and Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis (Part 20/20)... the End

When is that point? 

We cannot change personality so long as the imprint remains to drive us; and the little love we get later on may not be enough to allow us to change direction. And more, the shutoff that occurs with gestation and birth trauma may be so great that we are helpless before it. We no longer can let love in; we first have to feel agonizingly unloved by our parents. We cannot purposefully open up because we are then open to great pain. The pain has to be out of the way first.

Why do we have to feel unloved first? Because it is a memory sealed in and engraved thanks to the process of methylation. That chemical helps to make sure the memory lives on in our memory bank. Once we address the imprinted memory and help to undo the methylation process, the system opens up all on its own. We need to undo repression so that we can feel again. When we "feel" unloved we begin to feel once again. If we open up first to any feeling we will be overwhelmed with pain. If we gain access slowly over time to lesser hurts we will not. We will be on the road to fully feeling.

An article in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health sheds light on this problem by analyzing the quality of interactions between mothers and their children. Researchers from Duke, Brown and Harvard universities conducted a long-term study of 482 adults, using data from the National Collaborative Perinatal Project (NCPP), a Rhode Island, New Jersey-based observational cohort of pregnant women and their children (Maselko, 2010). The researchers observed the interactions between mother and child at the age of eight months. Those mother-child exchanges were then classified as high- or low-loving interactions. Decades later, the children were studied again as adults. The mothers who were judged most loving produced offspring who were low on anxiety, hostility and general distress. There was more than a seven-point difference in anxiety scores between loved and unloved children, and a three- point differential in hostility scores. Unloved offspring are more hostile. In brief, the higher the mother’s warmth, the lower the score in distress.

Doesn't that tell us a great deal? And it means that very early love is so, so important. Without it we have a damaged soul, someone more likely to fall ill and who has poor social skills. That lack of love makes us unable to interact lovingly with other adults, decades later. Affection is all, even if we had first line pain. You cannot as a parent say, “My children know I love them. I just can’t show it.” Sorry, that is not good enough. It is like saying I know my child is hungry but I cannot feed him. There is that need for warmth that cannot be abrogated. Love is love and there is no compromise. Either you love or you don’t and it will show up decades later in the feelings and behavior of the person. We can “smell” a loved person; they exude it in every pore, in every word and every movement.

I have for decades stressed the importance of early love in preventing the suffering we see in so many patients who didn’t get it. Now, science has found the means to prove the point. As the authors of the maternal love study concluded, “It is striking that a brief observation of level of maternal warmth in infancy is associated with distress in adult offspring 30 years later,” stated lead study author Joanna Maselko, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University. “These provocative findings add to the growing evidence that early childhood helps sets the stage for later life experiences and provide support for the notion that biological 'memories' laid down early may alter psychological and physiological systems and produce latent vulnerabilities or resilience to problems emerging later in adulthood."21

Epigenetics is all about experience, about nurture over nature. And in a dialectical process, nurture can become nature; that is, the system treats the intruder of experience as genetic and heritable. And we then confuse the two in trying to understand it. In Primal Therapy, we are the dealers in experience because we have seen what experience does to us, especially very early pre- verbal experience. If one sees one primal one knows for all time how crucial experience is in the scheme of things. The cause is rarely a brain disease. That is an answer concocted by those who fiddle around in neurons and synapses and do not see the brain reacting to experience. If we leave out experience we are bereft of what can give us answers. We see only the end result and miss half of the puzzle. It is like looking at diabetics and never knowing what they eat. If we leave out the first three years in an orphanage can you wonder that we can never know what the matter is? Thinking it is a brain disease is the result of another more serious disease: solipsism.

And neither is the problem “all in your head,” as mindfulness and other cognitive therapies suggest. A true cure can never happen with a cognitive therapy that never touches deep-lying imprints that deviated and deviate the system. Intellectual therapies never operate on the levels that set off deviations. They operate on the derivatives, the effluvia of the early imprints such as deviations in perception or thought patterns or learning. Treating all that never makes a profound change. And who suffers? The patient.

But isn’t this what medicine today is about – treating symptoms? Lowering blood pressure, giving allergy medication, restructuring behavior. It is called “whack-a-mole.” Every time a symptom shows up, just whack it back. And don’t ask where it all came from? Experience takes a back seat as we slither down into the depths and minutia of the brain seeking answers that do not exist there, and never will.

I offer a rather immodest proposal. In our coming brain research we hope to measure the process of demethylation so that we have a quantitative measure of progress and the diminution of repression. In brief, we shall measure pain and how it is stored and where. It may then be possible in this way to undo the driving force of aberrant behavior and the manifestation symptoms. This is to say, that we hope to reduce the primal traces on the genes that have driven behavior for most of our lives. To add to the immodesty, this will mean reversing history and undoing imprints that have held our lives in such constrained fashion, reducing our options for behavior, and reducing physical afflictions.

If our hypotheses confirm our expectations, I believe it will change the face of psychotherapy as we know it. We will let science answer. But, I must add that in addition to science, we have been doing exactly that, reversing the imprint for thousands of patients over almost fifty years with highly significant results. That too, is science at work. We apply our theory to the treatment of patients so that eventually we leave the realm of theory and see the results in the flesh and blood of our people. Theory becomes palpable, in the literal sense of the term. We see it in our addicts who leave drugs far behind, and we measure this “cure” by the reduced traces of trauma on the genes. And, of course, we see their whole lives change after therapy. They no longer think of drugs but make choices in life that are not directed by pain, but by freedom of choice. Then and only then, can we use the word “cure.”

21: Brauser, D. (2010, July 28). High Levels of Early Maternal Affection May Lower Emotional Distress in Adult Offspring. Retrieved from http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/725920

Epigenetics and Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis (Part 19/20)

Conclusion

Without a theory of pain, how could we ever get to the bottom of cancer, heart disease, migraines and high blood pressure? If we have no theory of brainstem trauma, we will never understand it. And if we have no such theory, then we are not keeping up with psychologic/brain science.

I believe we can reverse some of it in our therapy, but I also believe that the earlier and stronger the imprint the more difficult time we will have to reverse it. Once cells take on their imprint, they often cannot be changed readily; their identity remains unshakeable. That’s because the imprint is rock solid, engraved even into microscopic cells that do not shed their identity easily. The evolution of the genes has been rerouted. Epigenetics reigns. That is crucial; experience cannot change it. That is why we cannot love neurosis away or exhort it to change, or plead and beg for it does something “healthy.” There is no way out of the biologic fact of the critical period, the time and space where love must be received or forever more becomes an imprint.

I have written about the irreversibility of early trauma, gestation and birth. The worst-case scenario is a traumatic birth followed by a loveless childhood later on. That compounding can be a person’s undoing. It sets up insurmountable emotional problems that create damaged individuals. But having said that there is some hope. A certain level of trauma in-utero and at birth can be ameliorated by mitigating factors, namely plenty of early love. It never erases those traumatic imprints, but it does hold them at bay. I think that part of a good childhood can block the effects of first line early pain. Damage to the kidneys during gestation will not be reversed by later love but it may not flower into serious symptoms. Very early traumas are never altered or diluted by later love, never mitigated by hugs and kisses, but they do not have the reach, the upper level access, they would have had without all that infancy love. To be clear; love during or near the imprinting time of the sensory window (when needs are importuning) can alleviate pain. For example, after a terrible birth, hugging and kissing a lot can minimize the damage. The same hugs six years later will not have that effect. That is why a father who leaves home for years and comes back needing acceptance will not get it. The pain is installed and working in the child. The child wants to love but the pain is blocking him.

As we have seen, a nervous mother leaves a predisposition to fear in the offspring, just as a depressed mother leaves a base of depression in her baby. Whether it becomes overt depends on those later events and traumas. I personally believe that lots of love and healthy living in the very young child can abate these deleterious effects. In fact, premature babies who were hugged and caressed a lot went home earlier than those babies not touched as much. Those early kisses count a lot and help shape personality, a loving and warm person versus a standoffish one. This is especially true for those babies who were taken from institutions. They are greatly in need of love and reassurance early on. If they don’t get it, it can be somewhat irreversible; that is, there may be a point where love can no longer make a great difference. The damage is done and it is pretty well fixed. This is the research we will embark on in the near future. Is there a point in time when love cannot reverse previous damage?

Epigenetics and Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis (Part 18/20)

Years ago, we did research showing that after one year of Primal Therapy our patients had enhanced production of natural killer cells (NK cells). These immune cells look out for developing cancer cells, then attack and devour them. I assume this means better control of cancer among our patients. But why would reliving those early imprints increase production of NK cells?
Here I have to make an assumption: when we have traumas during womb- life there is a deregulation of many bio-chemicals, hormones and neurotransmitters. The whole system, in short, changes to accommodate the input; and what that does is alter set points. How do we know that? Because in all of our studies we have found that set points seem to change after therapy and “normalize.” thus, for example, NK cells seem to change set points and come back to normal after one year of our therapy, as do levels of the stress hormone, cortisol.
There are many existing studies that correlate parental abuse with later cancer. One study from Purdue University found that adults who were emotionally and physically abused as children had a much greater likelihood of cancer as adults (Morton, Schafer, & Ferraro, 2012). The more intense the abuse, the more likely the cancer. Imagine now if we have left out of the mix one of the greatest risks of all: constant abuse while in the womb – a drugged or depressed mother, or one who is chronically anxious or tense and angry. Add that to it all and you have one of the great causes of later cancer.

So once we go back to those generating sources, those early imprints, the system appears to re-regulate itself back to what it should have been before the trauma intruded itself. Our therapy seems to “erase” the input and allow the cells to normalize. It is as if the trauma never happened; which is why I maintain that we can go back and undo and redo our early lives. The mechanism for this may well be the pattern of methylation that “seals in” the trauma – cancer is characterized by “methylation imbalance” (Baylln, Herman, Graff, Vertino & Issa, 1997). For example, depressives who relive deep and remote imprints will find their normal body temperature go from 96 degrees to 98 degrees. They normalize, which means that they do not go from 96 to 101; that is abnormal. That has no part in normalizing. The body system seeks out its own limits. Here again we see that there is no need to work on body temp, as such. We work on central factors and the system adjusts all on its own. There are other factors, as well, which are being sussed out anew each and every day by biochemists and other specialists. We will leave that to those experts. But it seems as though we are reversing those early changes that caused a detour of biochemical set points. Along with this was a rerouting of brain circuits as well. The neurotic system changed.

So what happens when the NK cells are increased? We have a stronger army to fight cancer, an army that was weakened by trauma occurring during our womb-life (and also possibly during the birth process). The system has a normal amount now and can amass a greater force to fight cellular anomaly. The cells seem to know when something is amiss and rush to correct it in the same way that repair cells rush in to stem the flow of blood and help in healing when we cut ourselves. We are a naturally healing system when given the chance; and what is wonderful is that we always have the chance in our lives to go back and re- stabilize the system. That is why when NK cells are extracted from tumor cells, processed and reintroduced to the system there is an increase in cancer fighting ability.

Here is the good news: when the NK army is bolstered there is less cancer, and when there are even metastasized cells the NK cells can fight each and every appearance of abnormal cells, no matter where they are, and stop them in their tracks. It is not like chemotherapy, a poison that destroys the malignant cells and also healthy cells along with them. Here, it is but a matter of increasing the health of the cells in order to combat the intruders: a much healthier way to go; in other words, the system now has a normal amount of NK cells, which it should have had early on but did not. And the same trauma that may have lowered the set points of NK cells could have also increased the likelihood of cancer. What may well happen is epigenetic changes can affect the tumor- suppression genes, leaving the system open to later cancer. The problem is that the distance between the early trauma and the appearance of cancer at forty is so vast as to be incomprehensible. It is only when we allow patients to go back and relive early trauma that we see the connection. And for now, it still has to be an assumption. But what we do see is how completely systemic are the effects early imprinted pain; when terror and pains are relived, the healing effects are widespread.

Still More on the Act Out

What I offer here is surmise, not proven fact but I have seen enough cancers to give me some idea about it.   My belief is that the very same trauma that caused the cancer may be the cure for it, as well. That is, there is an embedded memory deep in the brain; it is strong enough to devastate the brain because it is of first line origin, and it is there in the brainstem that powerhouse feelings are lodged.  And some cancer causes, as well.   If we can extirpate that trauma, and new research on methylation seems to indicate that we can, then we can do something about cancer. The rarity of cancer in our long-term patients is added confirmation of my point. Those incredible feelings which cannot be believed until seen, can alter the biologic and genetic trajectory of the system to change minute cells. I have long ago postulated that possibility of breast cancer in those women who are flat chested, not because of that but because possibly, their genetic destiny for larger breasts was blocked and diverted.  There is then constant pressure toward one’s proper destiny which cannot fulfill its biologic purpose.  It is the surge toward normalcy, an intact system.  The biologic impulse toward being normal is always there.

Biology is destiny, as the saying goes.  I prefer epigenetics is destiny; much more accurate.   It largely sweeps away that genetic destiny and replaces it with a new biologic system, and perhaps an heritable one.  That system, by definition, is faulty because it evolved out of damage.

Here is what patients say about their act out:

“I think there may be something to this...
 I am certainly a shallow breather - always have been - and I feel a need to conserve emotion, I would say.
 All I know is my mother had "gas and air" (NOX with air) when she was giving birth to me. I doubt that would have led to any extreme trauma for me as a foetus trying to get out but would be interested to learn anything to the contrary.
 That said, I think breathing is central to how we experience life and will undoubtedly reflect our earliest experiences.”


 “I have had Primal Therapy back then to get rid of all that tension.
I recall a dance class I went to straight after a Primal Session , where the teacher didn't recognise me because my movement was suddenly and unexplainably, free of tension and full of presence! Also I wasn't dancing to get her love anymore, but for the joy of feeling.
 Primal is the most truthful and healing form of dance and movement therapy .
 A lot of dance and movement classes are teachers acting out their need on their students. How can they not? Especially sad when it happens to children.”


“The way we breathe depends on physical and mental memories.
 My breathing, I have often touched on in my blogs over the years. It was dramatically disturbed / affected in the neurotic / conscious, protracted birth trauma caused by my mother. I was locked in the birth canal for 48 hours. Therefore, many of my act outs and subsequent therapeutic treatment experiences have come to focus on my breathing.
 For several years, existed a repeated pattern, during my birth primals, that I fell into a deep anesthesia. This was aggravated gradually that I hyperventilated fiercely and suddenly not breathing at all. This condition lasted a good while and I struggled desperately to get air but without success. Suddenly, I gave up and felt myself drowning / dying. Consciousness returned weakly and slowly. I had been through a primal instead of an epileptic seizure. The feeling of anesthetic pressure released slowly. I experienced a total relief and liberation, first physically and shortly afterwards emotionally. My breathing was relaxed and parasympathetic.
 During more than 20 years, I made early each morning push-ups (2 x 125) at my fingertips with my feet on a table (my way of freediving). During each of the two pushup series I held my breath. Besides Carbamazepine (Tegrotol), these act outs were my way of keeping up my ego and reduce my anxiety of my problems and then especially the epileptic threat. I used my abdominal muscles in combination with my pushups to displace anxiety and tension associated with a stressful and demanding work career. This defense tied to my breathing, which I have developed over many years with great willpower and discipline, was certainly the heaviest reason that my two years at the Primal Center in LA did not lead to faster visible results.”


OK. I get it.  It helps.  And that is why so many of us are addicted to horror movies.  We go to a theater prepared to be terrified (as close to the terror of a first line primal) and then we watch in horror;  and then we escape safely.  But still we get to scream and yell, releasing some of the emotional part of the original imprint.  Again, we have reawakened the Primal demons with impunity.  For some, it becomes an obsession. Aah.  What a relief.  Terror is the attraction.  It pulls us in because we can go back to the (original) terror so to speak, without the terror.  We know we will be safe afterwards.  So we go through the birth trauma without the trauma, only the feeling part.  Because it lacks the original content there is not the terrible terror involved.   But symbolically it is close.  Listen! Feelings pull us in.    That means that so many obsessions and compulsions are sucked into us by the imprint.  It makes us compulsive gamblers and eaters, and drives so many neurotic behaviors.   If we are always in terror and don’t know it then we won’t try, won’t get out and do something new. Won’t approach a stranger and talk to him. Takes forever to make a decision;  so afraid to make a mistake.  Fear runs his life.  He becomes a “loser”  because he will not grab opportunities, hangs back, and in the presence of strangers he acts like he did as an infant,  holding mother’s skirts.   He needs emotional support at all times, and now we know why.

It does put a new perspective on dangerous sports, i.e. car racing. The crowd looks for crashes to add to the excitement of something gone wrong (near death re-experience?)  But often there is no death or serious injury, and we all relax.  It is the analogy over and over again.


I don’t want to leave out the act-in.   There are those since infancy who hold their breath when anxious or surprised.  Still others who cannot catch their breath when upset.   Others with asthma who often have breathing problems and also cannot catch their breath.  Especially those who lose their breath when anxious and have to lie down.  The permutations are endless but it is all about breathing and not breathing.    They are often the minimalists who hoard and never buy too much, and save and save. …in case.    With reliving over time we resolve the act-in and act-out against the very same imprint.
Again, one has to go back and relive the original trauma, exactly.  No way around this. It was never lived fully at the start; cut off by repression when the pain got to be enormous.  

Has anyone noticed that when shocked, people put their hands over their mouths? Not an accident; it is part of holding back breathing, a return to the prototype.  When scared originally we stopped breathing as death approached; that became the template for later reactions.

The act-in results from having so little chance to behave against the trauma of being pinned down, unable to escape the womb.  The reactions develop inside,  and become the act-ins.  They leave a prototype of physiologic responses and certain kinds of afflictions such as asthma.  A lot depends on the nature of the birth and specific weaknesses of the system.  Most certain, a  lack of oxygen at birth and even before leads to blood vessels constricting to conserve supplies.  The act-in may be migraines; and sometimes the treatment for it is..?  guess what?   Oxygen.

The leitmotif often can be, “Something is missing but I don’t know what it is.  I think I will eat more or make more money.”   I will try to fill a void I don’t even know is there. Something is surely missing, and when patients get down to the deep brain they finally know what is missing, and the obsession with food or money stops.

Here is one recent case of obsessions and shallow breathing.  A woman over sixty recently had a birth Primal, reliving birth.  The forerun was dangerously high blood pressure and fast pulse.  (190/101…..pulse 97).  She often had to take blood pressure medication to bring her vitals downward.    What she found through reliving was that her imprint of anoxia was breaking through and raising her vital signs.  It was telling her that her embedded memory was pushing.  Of course she was a shallow breather.   After her reliving her vitals were again taken:  149/125 and pulse of 64, a vast improvement but not yet normal.  It wasn’t pills that could normalize her; it was feeling and reliving.  Previously gate her pain but could never touch her imprint.   Sometimes during the end stages of her Primal she could return to heavy breathing and begin the process of normalization.  She tried again to get air.  Before, she gave up. She became a hiker early in life in order to breathe deeply and get air in.  It became an obsession; more and more hiking.  Until her knees gave out. She did have cancer earlier on. The doctor told her she had to careful for another 5 years to be considered out of the woods.  Now she knows why; the imprint is still there doing its damage.

Who could dream that a serious imprint deep down due to lack of early oxygen could help produce a cancer decades later?  Pills suppress the pain but never touch the cause.  It hides it well.  That lack of oxygen remains with us and agonizes all of the time.  It does its damage sotto voce.  And will never tell us the truth until we travel back in history to where the damage lies.  Only then do we learn that the simple truth is revolutionary.

Epigenetics and Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis (Part 17/20)

The Cause of Some Cancers: Not What You Think

Our theory is not just something “nice or interesting or amusing.” It is life- saving. It means reversing serious mental illness. We see this all of the time. Many of us think that good diet will prolong life, and it is true. But few are aware that repression makes us sick and can kill us prematurely. Repression kills because it distorts basic physiology and detours brain development. And repression forces the kind of unhealthy eating habit that makes us sick early on. Repression kills because, unconsciously, it forces us to deal with imprinted pain every minute of our lives. It forces us to find ways to act out feelings or suppress them. The wonder is how we all manage to keep deep pain stored away, never once acknowledging it. The body does, however, and gets sick. And it makes us sick on the deep cellular level, the level where the early imprints lie. All the pressure to keep pain stored puts the cellular development at risk; eventually we find serious illness, which should not be a mystery but a foregone conclusion.

Consider the research on twins done by scientists from London’s Institute of Cancer Research who found that the origins of leukemia are prenatal (Ma et al., 2013). The researchers there delved deeper into the disease process by looking at cases where both twins had developed acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a cancer of the white blood cells. They studied the DNA inherited from both parents, completing a full genome study on their subjects. They found that
womb-life was a culprit in the development of the disease. They believe that the mutations accounting for it must have come from the womb. Other mutations may have come after birth. The results prompted another British biologist, Dr. Julie Sharp of Cancer Research UK, to suggest that further study could lead to better cancer treatment. Quoted by the BBC News, Sharp said, “Studies like this could reveal new ways to target the very roots of cancer and help us better understand how the disease develops over time. Survival rates have increased significantly over the past decades thanks to research, but there is still more to
do to make treatments better with fewer side-effects."(20)

Now I must ask the question: how about finding out what happened in the womb that forced these mutations? That seems to be overlooked as mission impossible. But it is not; we can find fairly closely what happened during womb- life to produce mutations. They are looking to alter those mutations by examining the mutation itself. But the basis of all this is that something goes
wrong in the womb while the mother is carrying. It can be external forces such as war or more personal events such as a husband who leaves home, leaving the mother chronically anxious or depressed. The permutations are myriad, but the result is an imprint that causes a deviation and ramification of many functions, from brain circuitry to vital organs.

I will hypothesize that Primal Therapy can help prevent cancer if we have the time to go deep enough. I am not stating that in every case, but we have little cancer among our patients and we believe that Primal Therapy can be a factor. In short, I think cancer originates deep in the brain often during womb-life, and that is exactly what we treat. We do not treat this or that bit; we treat the central organizing factor of the whole system.

20: Scientists track leukaemia's origins 'back to the womb' (2013, April 9). Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31622341

Epigenetics and Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis (Part 16/20)

(After a long pause, I will be publishing the remaining articles about Epigenetics and Primal Therapy over the next few days.)

How Early Is Too Early?

In the scientific community, the question has always been, “How early is too early?” And this is where epigenetics is relevant to our discussion. A group at Washington State University led by Matthew Amway found that gestational experience in animals that sways the genetic unfolding can show effects for three generations. They found that exposing pregnant adult rats with defective sperm could engender many diseases, including cancer, in adult animals. Females avoided mating with other rats that were also exposed during gestation. And this went on, not only for the life of the adult, but for the life of their offspring, as well. It seems that the system knows how to behave given certain biologic deficiencies, and it does so according to what is best for heredity, what gives us the best shot of succeeding in life. So when we cannot explain some trait in adults by heredity we may have to reach back several generations to find the answer we’re looking for. This gives us a new perspective on so-called psychological problems in adults. When we do an intake interview of prospective patients, it has to be thorough enough to include the prenatal life of the patient, as well as their parents and sometimes the grandparents, as well.

Without clinical evaluation we can only guess as to what traumas may have occurred in the life of a pregnant mother, and what adaptations continue to show their effects in her children and grandchildren. Of course, it isn’t just that a mother underwent trauma, but that the trauma has altered her basic physiology and produced lifelong changes in her and her offspring. Did the pregnancy occur in wartime? Were the parents fighting all the time? Was the child’s grandmother depressed? Was she a heavy smoker or drinker during her pregnancy? These are all questions we should be asking.
And in truth the distinction between heredity and epigenetic “heredity” must be made, if we are ever to reverse disease. When a mark is made on certain anxiety-regulating cells, for instance, we may be stressed until that mark is revisited and relived. As I have noted, the process of methylation also can be chemically reversed by demethylation agents, for example. That leads us to believe that certain regions of the brain altered by drugs are the same areas that may be affected by reliving gestational events.

What is most important is that stress in the mother compromises the repressive system in the fetus, so that later it will be difficult to mitigate surging feelings. Low-level imprints from womb-life burst through the repressive barrier, overloading the system, and — in the absence of a cohesive cortex — result in difficulty focusing and concentrating, and problems learning. The prefrontal cortex becomes overwhelmed as it is pressed into service to counteract and hold down painful feelings.

Why are those early imprints so critical? Because almost every key adverse event in the womb can be life-endangering: low oxygen, inadequate nutrition, too much agitation, flooding by drugs or alcohol, etc. they all affect vital organs and change the system of the baby accordingly. I will never omit smoking, which is deadly to the maturation of the baby. Imagine being in the womb while a mother ingests all kinds of toxins hour after hour, every day of the year. Who can survive that?

There is a beginning to personality development and we must not immediately ascribe it to genetics. Epigenetics is possibly more important. Life circumstances wrap themselves around the gene, and alter who we are and what we become. It is those days in the womb that form the crucible for personality type; they all accommodate life circumstance. They pivot around the imprint; and when we take patients down deep we find the little nugget, the key imprints that forced all that accommodation. And when those early imprints are relived and all the vital signs move as an ensemble down lower, we know we have struck gold. We have found Nirvana, the core of the pain. Remember, there is no suffering in the pure state of Nirvana.

Why Are So Many People Dying of Cancer?

The same reasons that their gestation and birth epochs are so damaging.
Oh kind sir, please explain. And cut out all that pretentious language.

I will try to explain even while recent neuroscience is making headway on the problem. But their headway is too often an explanation of how to treat it and less about what causes it.  If people could see what I have seen over 50 years, I think that might agree with me about causes.  Why are so many dying of cancer?   Why are so many undergoing harmful birth practices? There is a relationship.   And apart from doctors’ birth practices there is also their advice:  “a couple of drinks should  not hurt any baby.”  Oh yes it does; it makes them dizzy and disoriented. They sense these effects during and after a Primal, in the same way they feel suffocated when the mother smokes. These are most harmful events.  And due to their load of pain they are not integrated.  Instead the brain uses some of its supply of methyl and leaves a trace on the gene, called methylation.  Here the pain is stored, remains active and continues to spread onto the system. It raises the cortisol level and adds methyl markers to the experience.  It also increases adrenaline levels so that the system is forced into hyperactivity to deal with the suffering.  The person is often not aware of any of this since it happened early on before language was available.

The earlier in life the imprint, the more devastating it is; it emanates from the deepest level brain, the brainstem. This is the structure of great reactions: where pain becomes agony; sad and a bit hopeless into, suicidal hopelessness, anger into rage; all of archaic responses we might expect from sharks or dinosaurs.  When a hurt is registered high up in the brain it translates it through resonance to lower and exaggerated reactions residing deeper in the brain where later emotional pains are registered. It is a neuronal train of neurons of similar valence and content join up to connect on deeper levels.  Let’s be clear:  one can be disappointed with the loss of a lover in adult life.  It can create anguish and misery; but if there lurks deeper down and very early in life a great loss of a mother, the current misery through the process of resonance descends to another emotional level where deeper pain is organized,  and the emotional consequences may be serious and even suicidal depression.  Any major hurt during gestation where deep brain levels are involved and where parasympathetic nervous system is engaged can produce heavy depression.  When the mother smokes without stop or takes drugs or when she is chronically depressed, can find its way into the developing system of the fetus.  In short, any event which blocks normal responses can produce a general suppression in the baby.  This is especially true during birth where egress is blocked and baby struggles and cannot get out by his own efforts.  His body gives up and defeat becomes imprinted. The result may well be a parasympathetic personality; passive, defeated, unable to be aggressive or fight for himself.  Why all that?  Because we are involved with deep level trauma and deep, often violent,  reactions.   When disease occurs we have the beginnings of later cancer or other catastrophic disease.   Catastrophic events lead often to catastrophic disease.  Brain stem responses often engender brainstem responses; deep-lying reactions and serious bodily disease.  That is, we reaction on the same level as the trauma.  The disease often pinpoints for us the origin of the disease. It says look here for answers; alas, too often we look elsewhere.

We often are not aware of all this as its origins are so deeply embedded but they are there. The current pain higher up, has now resonated with deep—lying traumas, roiling the whole system, detouring natural functions and preparing  us for serious afflictions later in life. The brainstem does not mess around; its reactions are major and life-endangering.  As major as a dinosaur response when danger lurks.  In the human when the mother drinks continuously, the baby cannot escape the system splashes into overdrive, as all reactions are exaggerated.  Yet full deep reactions, escape, is not possible so the suffering begins. Worse, we do not know it, but at the age of forty there lies a tumor, and no  one knows where it comes from or how it got its start.  So we embark on decades-long research to see how we can fight it, when we do not know what “IT” really is.   We fight it and wrestle with it but never get to its historic source, so we remain bereft.   “It” is so far removed, so deep in the brain we cannot imagine what went wrong, but one thing is likely: the trauma reached down and resonated very deep down where catastrophic reactions live in the brain.  It touched off dinosaur reactions and upset so much of us and changed our genetic destiny. We are often on a secret trip to cancer or Alzheimers disease, plunging forth with our load of first-line,  brainstem pain until a doctor during his exam says, “Have you had any trauma recently?   “Why do you ask, doctor?”   “Because I see something suspicious on your liver which we must look into.”   Oh my, I had no idea.

You know why you had no idea? Because ideas lie far above the origins, so of course you have no idea. You body knows and carries its memories forward to finally make you know.   And when you relive all this, then you really know because you are in touch with your body, at last.  And you feel the trauma for what it is because the pain is excruciating.  So Janov’s rule #1.  You are not suppose to know about deeply buried pain because it is so very painful.   And so you body is all conflicted.  Should I tell him or should I keep it secret so he does not suffer?  OK.  I won’t tell him and save his life; wait a minute; if you don’t tell him you may be killing him. Ayayay;  the Faustian bargain.  He goes along blithely unaware but his body is dying.

But he feels it, finally, in our feeling therapy, which opens up the neural gates and lays it all out for him;  it is the real fortune teller.  It spills out everything.  And it literally screams out its pain; there is no mistaking it.  Only a feeling therapy that engages the full brain can use it and react to it.  Finally, we can resolve it.
It can be extirpated from the system and let the body relax and normalize.  One way we know is that in our therapy there is a radical increase in Natural Killer cells after one year of therapy.  Their job, recently suppressed, was to be on the lookout for newly developing cancer cells and destroy them.   We don’t “know” about them but the immune system does and whips into action unbeknownst to us. That system is the  cancer marauder sniffing out danger and attacking.  It does what we would do if we were at all aware and conscious.  Yet we remain unconscious for self protection.  We remain unconscious to keep consciousness from being perturbed.  What a dilemma.  It is not us who made the Faustian bargain; it was our system trying to survive as best it could.  We live on, seemingly healthy, while our life is being cut short. A feeling therapy must be called upon to help out. The sine qua non, is to react to the trauma;  we cannot do that when we do not know it is there.  Full conscious permits that life-saving response. It hurts and I can scream it out. Screaming  itself in absentia, solves little but it is the way we acknowledge the pain.

We now understand that the imprint is aided and abetted by the process of methylation, in which the chemical methyl group is added to the genome to restrict its expression. In other words, the imprint is laid down, in part, by a change in the cell, as certain chemical reactions are taking place — hydrogen removal, methyl infusion, and so on. Methylation leaves an heritable imprint, one that can be passed down even from grandparents to their grandchildren, as research by Kerry Resslar has shown. So what we always thought was genetic may well be the result of very early experiences diverting the genetic legacy (Meaney, Aitken, Bodnoff, Iny, & Sapolsky, 1985; Janov, 2013). In short, the experiences of our forbearers can endure and be passed down the epigenetic chain – the inheritance of acquired characteristics. This is something science thought impossible not long ago.

Epigenetics had affected the function of the stress apparatus, what is called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA), a complex part of the neuroendocrine system that controls reactions to stress and influences many body processes, including digestion, the immune system, mood and emotions, energy storage and expenditure. A possible implication of these findings is that the changes are more or less permanent; they alter the gene’s activity, leading to later illness and suicidal tendencies. When the NR3C1 gene is less effective, it cannot produce the kind of alerting, galvanizing chemicals that help one fight through things. (Clearly, such trauma also diminishes an individual’s adaptive capacity). As a result, the body behaves as though it were constantly under stress. And there is ample evidence now that chronic stress can lead to serious disease.  Methylation marks enlighten us that disease is hidden below.  That trauma has occurred, and forced the system into hyper-vigilance. It is vigilant for a danger that has already occurred.  Too late.

Make yourself at home.

On Evolution and its Role in Therapy

I am reading a book by Sean Carroll on evolution (Evo-Devo).   He points out that in a survey of many countries, the U.S. came out  last in the understanding of evolution: worse it was last in the agreement with evolutionary principles.   Do we come from earlier species?  Answer, “no”.  This led me to thinking that it also applies to the field of psychotherapy; even though we are clearly the evolutionary result of those who have gone before.   So how can we understand who we humans are without any understanding of who we were? We are then ahistorical beings; and indeed we may as well have come along in full force out of what?  Zeus?  No evolution to explain it, even though key scientists all over the world consider Darwin’s discovery the most important in the history of science.   So the bias toward the present leaves us confined away from history. It may be because of the predominance of anti-evolutionary beliefs in this country.

When evolution is by-passed there is no way to do a proper psychotherapy when our origins are left behind, we cannot acknowledge or know that we are the result of who we were early on; above all, how our early months and years shaped us and changed our evolution. Should I say that again?  Our early lives shape our personalities and help determine who we become.

That is why our therapy is so heavily evolutionary.  It allows us to see personal history in the light of brain evolution; something that cannot be ignored. Yet ignored it is by the majority of therapists who never even mention evolution in their books and papers. We are now a cult of the here-and-now. And we present our findings and results within the context of the here and now.

There is a new study on migraine headaches discussed in the NY Times (Dec. 12) where the newest therapy involves monoclonal antibodies, enhancing immune cells to attack the enemy.  I will not go into its intricacies except to say again that in their work, there is no search for origins, no focus on probable causes.  No use of history to search out answers.  It is as true in research as it is in psychotherapy.  “Don’t bother me with the facts” just get on with it.

I want to go on with this aspect because over decades of doing primal therapy and observing patients about to drop into deep brain imprints I noticed something critical.  It points out the difference between statistical conclusions and observation/clinical ones.  As longer term patients arrive at brainstem memories they sometimes start with the onset of a migraine headache, quite severe.  It comes on suddenly with the patient having no idea what is happening; it often is the harbinger of something totally unexpected, although some have had migraine attacks previously for which they took new painkillers that were transiently effective.

As they get deeper into the pain, and it is often very hurtful, they begin to have breathing problems and cannot catch their breath. As this went on, the headache  pain exacerbates until they  drop into the heart of it all:   the actual memory of the depletion of oxygen when the mother was given a  powerful  anesthesia which blocked some of her pain but also shut down oxygen supplies to the baby; the newborn.

What the patient then knows is that there is not enough oxygen and she can figure it out as she goes along in therapy.   It is quite common and leads us to believe that this is primary and primal cause for the affliction. This was the template for the years to follow:  slight stress, trouble catching one’s breath, and the depletion of oxygen, leading to severe migraine headaches.   If there is no focus on very early life and its imprints, there will be no way to know what is behind the symptoms, or why one needs pain killers for life, after that.  And now begins million dollar research into causes, looking for them in biochemistry, neurology, etc. And yes, they sometimes find correlates or concomitants that help to explain processes in the blood flow or in brain dysfunction, but rarely causes. We must always beware of the difference between the two—correlated or causes.   That changes everything.

And what is often a helpful therapy for them?  A correlated: oxygen therapy.  Of course, there are many other options, the most prescribed of which are painkilling drugs which are somewhat effective for a time.   And it is no surprise that whatever helps constrict the blood vessels, like coffee, helps conserve oxygen and lessens the pain. Let us make sure we are not just treating a correlate.  It helps ease the pain, and that is a good thing but not a good substitute for the real thing.

More important, I have discovered, along with methylation and epigenetic scientists that the earliest months of our lives alter the trajectory  of our development,   it determines  who we become;  what diseases we will suffer and how long we will live.  Also the form we take, physically and mentally.  Carroll says macroevolution is microevolution writ large.  Our trajectory is made up of small changes over time, which turn into major evolutionary changes.

Among some of my patients we see bone growth after they touch on deep levels of consciousness.  I have seen it in my wife whose fingers and feet grew.  This is for now anecdotal.  I have no corroborating information, no scientific studies.  But I have seen it in patients, enough of them to impress me with its veracity.   Why is this important?   Because we seem in some respects to alter the trajectory of their personal evolution, including how they grow.  (Yes, I have seen general growth of patients). We also normalize a number of factors, including heart action, blood pressure and kidney function; to say nothing of epilepsy.  We change evolution. What this means is that we change some of the results in their evolution; one thing we do, for example, is change their susceptibility to diseases. We help increase their natural killer cells levels, which when normal, seek out and destroy early cancer developing cells.  When impaired they cannot do their job and cannot prevent serious disease from happening. We have rare appearances of cancer among our longer-term patients.

If due to primal damage very early on they are destined for serious disease later on, we may abort that fatal destiny by reducing or eliminating the trajectory of primal pain that would have led to serious disease.  We shall test this out in the month and years to come in our research on epigenetics and methylation. Above all, by liberating or cutting short those who previously had a bad developmental trajectory, they can become who they were supposed to be. That is why we see breast growth in some women after we reverse serious repression (most often in flat-chested women); the repression that does not permit normal evolution to take place. When all that pressure is removed from the system the body returns to its genetic destiny; and for some women it means breast growth.  For others, heredity has its say and no breast growth appears.  It seems that we work with evolution in some ways. By liberating its normal processes.


If we can change, even minutely who we are destined to be, wouldn’t that be wonderful?  Changing evolution is not easily done, and in dialectic fashion, to do that we must go back in time to recapture basic genetics, and undo some harmful epigenetics.  In short, to recapture our biologic destiny.  We may then grow to where nature intended.  And be as healthy as nature intended before methylation stepped in to abort normality from setting in. It is both genetics and epigenetics that change.  For when we undo epigenetic harm, we free genetics to be their normal selves again. When we reverse repression, the breasts can be normal again and let genetics hold sway. I know this can sound booga booga but I have observed so many times as to dissuade me from any booga booga ideas.

What does this mean for the rest of us?  That we interfere with evolution in some ways. And liberate its normal processes,  and if we can change, even minutely who we are destined to be ,wouldn’t that be amazing?  Changing evolution is not easily done, and in dialectic fashion, to do that we must go back in time to recapture basic genetics, and undo some epigenetics.  In short, to recapture our biologic destiny.  

If we confine our search to only the correlates involved in the development of migraines it can be an unlimited task. We will certainly find reduce blood flow and start with circulation enhancers.   Or we will find excessive salt intake; and it will go on and on; those answers may be partially right, as associates of the key primal imprint:  they are proximate causes: but they are not and cannot be the ultimate causes. Until then, every therapy we try will be temporary, something we need to do over and over again.   It can be nothing else because the imprint has the force of survival, of a lifesaving memory and must endure until the life-endangering imprint is finally fully felt and resolved.  Clearly this applies to many problems, from high blood pressure to asthma and allergies.   That is why it is urgent that we re-focus on the real problem and avoid at all costs, those therapies that remain blindly and snuggly in the present.
Aside from the admonition not to forget about evolution in the practice of psychotherapy there is one more admonition: don’t forget the dialectic:  the interpenetration of opposites:  how one structure or process can turn into its opposite. Thus, basic feeling at a certain valence loses its identity and  becomes amorphous pain. When that pain is forceful enough it becomes repression, so that feeling becomes no feeling. And when pain is relived,  the repression diminishes and becomes a specific feeling again.  When feeling is experienced over time it is integrated and becomes a normal part of us.  Until it becomes a specific feeling, it cannot be dealt nor integrated. The dialectic has come full circle which means cure.  There is no cure with simple happy or positive thoughts.  Cure must grow out of the reality that exists in us...pain. Then negative turns into positive and can lead to positive thoughts. History and the dialectic can be our twin saviors.  Let us not denigrate them in favor of a safer present.