On the Anxiety Case

I have written about anxiety many times.  But I want add a couple of things that may round out the picture.  As we know now anxiety comes from deep in the brain where primal terror is organized.  No matter what we call it, it is always basic terror; it happens early in life either at birth or during gestation when the brainstem is dominant and where breathing is organized.   Some of us are chronic shallow breathers, others suffer sleep apnea where the whole system stops functioning for seconds at a time.   In both cases it is an attempt to conserve oxygen due to diminished oxygen both at birth through anesthesia given to the mother (and therefore the baby), or during womb-life when the mother smokes heavily.  In this case there is oxygen deprivation and the automatic tendency to hold one’s breath.  We see this when a person is shocked at something and puts her hand over her mouth; this is a survival reflex to hold down breathing.

   The point is that from the very start there is a survival response which means conserving oxygen and it becomes a template for any later threatening situations.  By the time we are born the agitation, galvanizing response is in action; therefore there is this constant input from within.   The imprint of threat becomes imprinted and is a constant menace.  Holding one’s breath even for a few seconds is the automatic response,  Terror has now become anxiety, only becomes we cannot peer down into the medulla of the brainstem to see how it all got started.   We cannot see the terror for what it is so we give it a label—anxiety.

    So we have constant activation from within that fights for space from whatever is coming in—a homework assignment, instructions for how to put together a table, etc.    The internal input usually wins sense it is primordial, is survival driven and is incredibly strong.   Later in life when there is a gathering of many people there is far too much possibility for input and so the anxiety person can be overwhelmed.  She may avoid any large gathering.   Or if she attends the party, for example, she suffers and cannot wait to leave.  The whole idea is to reduce or eliminate input.   She wants everyone to do anything complicated for her.  She will feign helplessness or not understanding when all it is that too much information/activation is forcing its way toward conscious/awareness.  The information is in the form of nerve impulses that travel at great speed throughout the system trying to “tell” the whole system to get ready for danger.  And the danger is……..reduced oxygen.  Those impulses tell the chemistry to pour in more cortisol (stress hormone) or inform the immune system to lower its functioning.  No words in those transmissions; just key information warning of danger.  That takes precedence over all other input; so trying to figure out geometry while anxious is far too much.   Anxious means life-threatening input and that cannot be ignored.

  This person often has breathing and lung problems. She goes to doctor after doctor to no avail because he has no idea what is wrong.   But looks into her lungs deeply and can only see the alveolas, not able to see those life and death memories at work in them.  He cannot see deep-lying terror sequestered far below the comprehending cortex.  He cannot see its causes.     He is, in effect, blind.  And so she rushes to a psychiatrist, and he too cannot see what lies deep in the brain so he focuses on her behavior: she has to learn to focus and not pay attention to other input.  She must learn patience, and blah blah.  He too is blind.  They cannot believe what does not seem to be there but, in fact,  it is there if we look.  None so blind who refuse to believe what is there and continue to believe in what isn’t there.

On Curing Cancer, Leukemia and Other Life Threatening Diseases

 The BBC News published a paper on the work of the Institute of Cancer Research (BBC News, Health 8 April 2013. “Scientists Track Leukemia’s origins back to the womb, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22062616”) What they say is what we have understood for years, the deleterious effects of trauma during womb life. They report that Leukemia is the most common cancer in children but I maintain it tells us much more about adult cancers, as well. 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. It can also be because the mother drinks or smokes or is chronically anxious or depressed; the permutations are myriad. The result is often a change in genetic expression called epigenetics. The result of this, what I call “the imprint” is a deviation and ramification of many functions, from brain circuitry to vital organ function. And when we change the imprint we would expect to see changes throughout the system. This assumes we change the imprint. One of the ways we might do this is reverse the elements of the imprint such as methylation. Methylation helps in repressing expression, through enhancing repression. Bit by bit we should see changes in this as we go back and relive parts of the imprint on every level of conscious, all along the chain of pain. Reliving through connection to the source means undoing methylation, in my opinion. This is the goal of our future research.

 Now about the study: the researchers delved deeper into the disease process and through twin studies found that womb-life was a culprit. They studied the DNA inherited from both parents (having done a complete genome study), Leukemia, also known as acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), is a cancer of the white blood cells. There are faulty genes linked to the disease but epigenetics are key. They believe that the mutations accounting for it must have come from the womb. Other mutations may have come after birth. Here is the conclusion: “Studies like this could reveal new ways to target the roots of cancer; there is still more to do to make treatments better with fewer side-effects.”

 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. I have written about how trauma reduces the efficacy of the tumor suppression function which has the job of stopping cancer growth; and I have also written about natural killer cells which are part of the immune system which look out for newly developing cancer cells and kill them. I have also noted that our therapy was studied independently and discover a significant rise in NK cells after one year of therapy. I will hypothesize that primal therapy can be a preventative of 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 in womb-life and that is exactly what we treat.