Wednesday, May 9, 2018

A collation or Collection!!!!

  • L-theanine is an amino acid found in green and black tea.
  • Studies show that, even with 50mg doses mimicing normal dietary behavior, theanine increases production of alpha brain waves, which are the brain waves that increase creativity and decrease depression.
  • Theanine is a glutamate antagonist, meaning it blocks glutamate receptors in the brain, which is part of the reason some people report a calming effect after taking theanine.
  • Theanine has also shown promise as a sleep aid and in stopping the release of histamine from mast cells.
  • Despite efficacy at 50mg doses, many theanine supplements up this dose to 100mg and beyond, so keeping an eye on dose is important.
So I would start at 50mg at 'night' (yours) and then move up from there.  I normally suggest that people do not use it in the morning as the effects over time and you want the supplement to help with he underlying issues of anxiety - not a quick fix.

The GABA tea does work and can be drunk during the day.  If I am having a difficult time I make a mug full, cool it, then drink from a mug with ice all the way through the day. It has a mild effect that is just enough of a lift.  I have persuaded hyper-active kids to try this as if does not have the side effects that either SSRI's or 'uppers' can be too harsh.

Taurine is an essential element in pet food.  If it is not in your dog food change your brand!  An absence of Taurine can result in CNS issues.  I get mine from eating well but you may want to see if it works first.  I am not sure of your routine but you should, at your time of life, be eating four and five times a day.  Small but healthy meals.

I went through 'the change' without using anything but natural hormones.  I have not tried this salve from Swanson's but I know people who have and they recommend it.  PUREMEDY
I used PROGESTERONE cream and found that I could even tell from the dryness of my hands that I needed to use it.  In Africa women pound yam with natural yogurt and use that both on their skin and vaginal area.  It works. I am 'cheap' so I use Swanson's for everything and also because I found that they had the best reputation because of the turn-round being very fast.

5-HTP 5-Hydroxytryptopha increases serotonin levels to promote restful sleep, manage stress, and decrease sugar cravings.  50mg is about as much as you might want to use at night. It is regularly available in a health food store in 25mg and 50mg doses.  I like melatonin as well so I take the Swanson's brand
At the moment I am using 5-htp for sleep and as a very mild antidepressant.  Medically it is a precursor to serotonin but can be used occasionally.  I use one tab at night when I feel that my brain is still 'running' after my body has turned off.  I dream on this but nothing too dramatic - more importantly, I wake up when I want feeling rested and with no 'cotton mouth'.  I do not take it all the time but in the UK (40 years ago) I did and had no ill-effects. 

SAME-e. (look for item # 3)  GREAT as an anti-depressant and also helps liver recovery.  It is standard to start for depression and anxiety in Europe.  Your issue is more to do with anxiety and so I would try other things first.

Stress :   Try some of these but at the same time I would look at simple quick breathing exercises and do them frequently during the day.  I have worked with Chefs and have said that they need to do one of the breathing strategies EVERY time they wash their hands at work.
    SIMPLE OFFICE STRETCHES  for   STRESS.  Finally, Tai Chi.  At night - if I can't sleep or wake up too early - I get into my chair and watch the sun rise and slowly relax .  I have found this increases mobility and my reaction to pain. 



Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Anxiety redux - FYI only - CONSULT A PROFESSIONAL






Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid, also known as GABA, is an amino-acid produced naturally in the brain from another amino acid and vitamin B-6. GABA found in the brain does help to improve sleep, symptoms of anxiety and panic. It has been found to help children with ADD/ADHD along with a low gluten diet and no high fructose corn syrup enhanced foods.
GABA supplement may interact with other drugs that stimulate GABA receptors in the brain, such as benzodiazepines and some muscle relaxants. Please consult a health care professional.
GABA TEA
Produced from low-elevation Taiwanese oolong tea leaves, this tea contains a high percentage of Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid (GABA), known for having a calming effect on the nervous system. It has a wonderful, soothing flavor, said by some to be similar to that of ripe bananas; others liken it to baked yams.



L-Theanine

L-theanine, a compound found in tea, increases GABA levels and decreases caffeine's stimulant effects. This compound is one of the reasons that tea has a milder stimulant effect than coffee. L-theanine supplements are commonly taken in doses ranging from 200 milligrams to 800 milligrams per day. A study published in the September 2011 issue of the journal "Child: Care, Health and Development" found that L-theanine supplementation significantly increased GABA levels in children with traumatic backgrounds. Consult your doctor for guidance and supervision in the proper use of L-theanine.

Taurine

The amino acid taurine increases the effectiveness of GABA. Taurine can be added to your diet by eating lean meats, seaweed, nuts, legumes, onions, garlic and cabbage. Therapeutic doses for boosting GABA levels are obtained through supplementation. Typical doses of 1,000 to 5,000 milligrams per day have been used safely, according to Dr. Uzzi Reiss, author of the book "The Natural Superwoman: The Scientifically Backed Program for Feeling Great, Looking Younger, and Enjoying Amazing Energy at Any Age." Find your ideal dose by starting with a high dose to gauge your response. Too much taurine will have an overly calming effect and leave you feeling tired. Lower your dose until you no longer experience this side effect.

Vitamin B-6

Vitamin B-6 coordinates the mood-regulating and nervous system activity of other B-complex vitamins, thereby helping to ensure adequate production of GABA. In addition to food sources, such as lean meats, fish, egg whites and cabbage, vitamin B-6 supplements in doses up to 300 milligrams per day produce calming, anti-anxiety benefits. Since the B vitamins work as a team, for best results, take B-6 supplements along with a comprehensive B-complex providing at least 25 milligrams of each of the B vitamins.

Magnesium Glycinate

Include magnesium glycinate, a highly absorbable form of magnesium, to round out your GABA supplementation regimen. Magnesium is well known for its calming effects and provides a highly safe and natural approach when paired with vitamin B-6. Magnesium also supports your endocrine system, which, through feedback mechanisms, influences your brain's levels of neurotransmitters, including GABA. Start your magnesium supplementation at a low dose to avoid potential side effects, such as loose stools. Work up to a daily dose of 400 to 1,000 milligrams. A study published in the 2006 issue of the journal "Medical Hypotheses" found that magnesium glycinate was helpful in treating major depression.
See earlier posts:
http://phenomenologyexistent.blogspot.com/2007/08/alternative-therapies-for-depression.html
http://phenomenologyexistent.blogspot.com/2013/02/fyi-only-supplements-to-nature-and.html
http://phenomenologyexistent.blogspot.com/2013/02/fyi-only-supplements-to-nature-and.html

Sunday, March 11, 2018

GENETIC SEXUAL ATTRACTION

"I knew Rita was my sister," he says now. "I didn't choose to fall in love with her, or expect to feel sexual desire. It just happened. Even in front of my wife, I made no attempt to hide my adoration, I just buzzed whenever she was around. It was as if no one else existed. The two biggest mistakes I made were deluding myself that I could become all-important in her life, a brother and a surrogate lover, even though she didn't desire me, and then believing I could control and resolve the problem by myself."

This is a genuine situation and the people caught up in this have very complicated emotions.

That awareness has led New York psychotherapist Joe Soll to adopt the term "genetic attraction", believing the word "sexual" is in many cases inaccurate and also responsible for the underlying shame and fear that make the condition so distressing. He has noticed that the "romance" that develops, especially when mothers meet their adult children, mirrors the sensuous bonding between a new mother and her baby. "These people regress to an earlier stage of development. The relationship is sensual, but we don't call it 'romance' or being 'in love' when it's breastfeeding, cradling and stroking, or when it's a mother and baby gazing into one another's eyes. Often, people tell me all they want to do is snuggle up together.  There's an urge for intimacy, which they were previously denied."

This isn't fiction; in the age of the sperm donor, it's a growing reality: 50% of reunions between siblings, or parents and offspring, separated at birth or in life, result in obsessive emotions. Should we criminalise a bond hardwired into our biology and psychology? 

This writer has no interest in this issue other than it exists and causes great pain to real people in real relationships.

You may care to follow up with:

https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/incest

http://www.gsaforums.com/


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect


Friday, May 12, 2017

Will you just leave me when I'm sixty four .....


I am trying to find the podcast version of this seminar:  https://wanp.org/event/botanical-influences-on-the-central-nervous-system-bastyr-u/.  The actual even was cancelled but she has done a podcast.  Beware though, the practitioners often survive by creating their own line of supplements and they are VERY expensive!!!!


Earlier in my development as a professional whatever I wrote a posting on the 'blog' suggesting ways to wind back the progression of dementia and stop the gradual descent.  From what you describe I would have certainly called what was/is happening as vascular dementia - which is your guess as well.   The issue for John is how much has been the result of years of over-medication and a lack of activity (physical as well as emotional).   If anyone is available there are strategies to 'teach' someone to take care of what is remaining and 'rewire'.

I found many ways (including my sight) to increase my flexibility and facility to take care of myself thus retaining independence.  I have trouble sleeping and get up frequently in the night ( every 2 hours) .  When this happens I do Tai Chi to help me breathe properly and for balance and exercise.  The light coming into dawn and the few morning birds are very calming.  Occasionally I have a small four footed audience.  Mostly I am in solitude. 

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Complex PTSD

FLASHBACK MANAGEMENT IN THE TREATMENT OF COMPLEX PTSD 

 By Pete Walker , 925 283-4575   http://pete-walker.com/
http://www.alice-miller.com/en/home/
A significant percentage of adults who suffered ongoing abuse or neglect in childhood suffer from Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. One of the most difficult features of this type of PTSD is extreme susceptibility to painful emotional flashbacks. Emotional flashbacks are sudden and often prolonged regressions [‘amygdala hijackings’] to the frightening circumstances of childhood. They are typically experienced as intense and confusing episodes of fear and/or despair - or as sorrowful and/or enraged reactions to this fear and despair. Emotional flashbacks are especially painful because the inner critic typically overlays them with toxic shame, inhibiting the individual from seeking comfort and support, isolating him in an overwhelming and humiliating sense of defectiveness. Because most emotional flashbacks do not have a visual or memory component to them, the triggered individual rarely realizes that she is re-experiencing a traumatic time from childhood. Psychoeducation is therefore a fundamental first step in the process of helping clients understand and manage their flashbacks. 
Most of my clients experience noticeable relief when I explain PTSD to them. The diagnosis seems to reverberate deeply with their intuitive understanding of their suffering. When they understand that their sense of overwhelm initially arose as an instinctual response to truly traumatic circumstances, they begin to shed the awful belief that they are crazy, hopelessly oversensitive, and/or incurably defective. Flashbacks strand clients in the feelings of danger, helplessness and hopelessness of their original abandonment, when there was no safe parental figure to go to for comfort and support. Hence, 
Complex PTSD is now accurately being identified by many as an attachment disorder. 
Flashback management therefore needs to be taught in the context of a safe relationship. Clients need to feel safe enough with the therapist to describe their humiliating experiences of a flashback, so that the therapist can help them respond more constructively to their overwhelm in the moment. Without help in the moment, the client typically remains lost in the flashback and has no recourse but to once again fruitlessly reenact his own particular array of primitive, self-injuring defenses to what feel like unmanageable feelings. I find that most clients can be guided to see the harmfulness of these previously necessary, but now outmoded, defenses as misfirings of their fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses. 
These misfirings then, cause dysfunctional warding off of feelings in four different ways: 
[1] fighting or over-asserting one’s self with others in narcissistic and entitled ways such as misusing power or promoting excessive self-interest; 
[2] fleeing obsessive-compulsively into activities such as workaholism, sex and love addiction, or substance abuse [‘uppers’]; 
[3] freezing in numbing, dissociative ways such as sleeping excessively, over-fantasizing, or tuning out with TV or medications [‘downers’]; 
[4] fawning in self-abandoning and obsequious codependent relating. [The fawn response to trauma is delineated in my earlier article on “Codependency and Trauma” in The East Bay Therapist, Jan/Feb 03]. 

 As clients learn that their originally helpful defenses now needlessly hinder them, they can begin to replace them with the anxiolytic and therapeutic responses to flashbacks that are outlined and listed at the end of this article. I introduce this phase of the work by giving the client a copy of this list of cognitive, affective, somatic and behavioral techniques to use as a toolbox outside of the session. These tools are also elaborated ongoingly in our sessions. I continually notice that the clients who acquire the most recovery are those who carry the list with them or post it up conspicuously at home until they are thoroughly conversant with it. 
As clients begin to derive benefit from responding more functionally to being triggered, there are more opportunities to work with their active flashbacks in session. In fact, it often seems that their unconscious desire for mastery ‘schedules’ their flashbacks to occur just prior to or during sessions. In helping them to achieve some mastery, my most ubiquitous intervention is helping them to deconstruct the outmoded alarmist tendencies of the inner critic. This is essential, as Donald Kalshed explicates throughout The Inner World of Trauma, because the inner critic grows rampantly in traumatized children and because the inner critic is the primary initiator of most flashbacks. The psychodynamics of this is that continuous abuse and neglect force the child’s inner critic [superego] to overdevelop hypervigilance and perfectionism – hypervigilance to recognize and defend against danger, and perfectionism to try to win approval and safe attachment. Unfortunately, safety and attachment are rarely or never experienced. Hypervigilance progressively devolves into intense performance anxiety and perfectionism festers into a virulent inner voice that increasingly manifests self-hate, self-disgust and self-abandonment at every imperfection. Eventually the child grows up, but she is so dominated by feelings of danger, shame and abandonment, that she is unaware that adulthood now offers many new resources for achieving internal and external safety. She is stuck seeing the present as rife with danger as the past. I sometimes think of this phase of the work as rescuing the client from the hegemony of the critic. Despite the negative connotation rescuing has in many circles, I believe there is an unmet childhood need for rescue that I help meet when I ‘save’ my client from the critic… like mom didn’t save her from abusive dad, or like the neighborhood didn’t rescue her from her alcoholic family. This rescue process then, is a gradual emancipation from self-alienation, and a gradual deliverance from the internalized parents who trigger the client with flashback-inducing catastrophizations and perfectionistic invectives. 
If no one shows the trauma-locked individual that extrication from the self-torturing processes of the critic is possible, he rarely learns to rescue himself. He may live forever without discovering that he now has a variety of helpful responses [detailed in the list below] available to him to resist the triggering and exacerbating dynamics of the critic. / / / 
Over the course of therapy, I often reframe flashbacks as messages from the wounded inner child about the denied or minimized traumas of childhood. In this vein I paint flashbacks as the inner child righteously clamoring for validation of past parental abuse and neglect. Flashbacks are the child pleading for unmet developmental needs to be met, none more important than the gradual awakening of a healthy sense of self-compassion and self-protection. This is fundamental to recovery because without selfcompassion, clients rarely evolve any substantive self-care habits. Similarly, without reconnecting to the instinct of self-protection, clients rarely develop effective resistance to either internal or external abuse. When clients get that their emotional storms are messages from an inner child who is still pining for a healthy inner attachment figure, they gradually become more self-accepting and less ashamed of their flashbacks, their imperfections and their overall affective experience. They understand that the lion’s share of the energy of their intense emotional reactions in the present are actually appropriate but delayed reactions to various themes of their childhood abuse and neglect. As they learn to effectively assign this emotional energy to those events and perpetrators, they metabolize and work through these feelings in a trauma-resolving way. This in turn leads to a reduction of the emotional energy that fuels their flashbacks, and flashbacks in turn, become less frequent, less intense and less enduring. 
Eventually flashbacks can even begin to automatically invoke a sense of self-protection as soon as the individual realizes she is triggered. Eventually this can even happen at the moment of triggering, as well as just before encountering known triggers. Some final words. I have seen so many of my clients respond well to this model, even those who ‘only’ suffered neglect, I have come to conceptualize Complex PTSD as being on a continuum of severity. In this vein, it seems that with enough neglect, certain children automatically over-identify with the superego and adopt an intense form of perfectionism that, via the critic’s “not good enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not helpful enough, etc…,” triggers them over and over into painful abandonment flashbacks every time they are remotely less than perfect or perfectly pleasing. 

MANAGING FLASHBACKS [Focus on Bold Print when flashback is active] 
 1. Say to yourself: “I am having a flashback”. Flashbacks take us into a timeless part of the psyche that feels as helpless, hopeless and surrounded by danger as we were in childhood. The feelings and sensations you are experiencing are past memories that cannot hurt you now. 
2. Remind yourself: “I feel afraid but I am not in danger! I am safe now, here in the present.” Remember you are now in the safety of the present, far from the danger of the past. 
3. Own your right/need to have boundaries. Remind yourself that you do not have to allow anyone to mistreat you; you are free to leave dangerous situations and protest unfair behavior. 
4. Speak reassuringly to the Inner Child. The child needs to know that you love her unconditionally– that she can come to you for comfort and protection when she feels lost and scared. 
5. Deconstruct eternity thinking: in childhood, fear and abandonment felt endless – a safer future was unimaginable. Remember the flashback will pass as it has many times before. 
6. Remind yourself that you are in an adult body with allies, skills and resources to protect you that you never had as a child. [Feeling small and little is a sure sign of a flashback] 
7. Ease back into your body. Fear launches us into ‘heady’ worrying, or numbing and spacing out. 
  •  [a] Gently ask your body to Relax: feel each of your major muscle groups and softly encourage them to relax. [Tightened musculature sends unnecessary danger signals to the brain] 
  •  [b] Breathe deeply and slowly. [Holding the breath also signals danger]. 
  •  [c] Slow down: rushing presses the psyche’s panic button. 
  •  [d] Find a safe place to unwind and soothe yourself: wrap yourself in a blanket, hold a stuffed animal, lie down in a closet or a bath, take a nap. 
  •  [e] Feel the fear in your body without reacting to it. Fear is just an energy in your body that cannot hurt you if you do not run from it or react self-destructively to it. 
  • 8. Resist the Inner Critic’s Drasticizing and Catastrophizing:          [a] Use thought-stopping to halt its endless exaggeration of danger and constant planning to control the uncontrollable. Refuse to shame, hate or abandon yourself. Channel the anger of self-attack into saying NO to unfair selfcriticism.      [b] Use thought-substitution to replace negative thinking with a memorized list of your qualities and accomplishments 
9. Allow yourself to grieve. Flashbacks are opportunities to release old, unexpressed feelings of fear, hurt, and abandonment, and to validate - and then soothe - the child’s past experience of helplessness and hopelessness. Healthy grieving can turn our tears into self-compassion and our anger into self-protection.
10. Cultivate safe relationships and seek support. Take time alone when you need it, but don’t let shame isolate you. Feeling shame doesn’t mean you are shameful. Educate your intimates about flashbacks and ask them to help you talk and feel your way through them. 
11. Learn to identify the types of triggers that lead to flashbacks. Avoid unsafe people, places, activities and triggering mental processes. Practice preventive maintenance with these steps when triggering situations are unavoidable. 
12. Figure out what you are flashing back to. Flashbacks are opportunities to discover, validate and heal our wounds from past abuse and abandonment. They also point to our still unmet developmental needs and can provide motivation to get them met. 
13. Be patient with a slow recovery process: it takes time in the present to become un-adrenalized, and considerable time in the future to gradually decrease the intensity, duration and frequency of flashbacks. Real recovery is a gradually progressive process [often two steps forward, one step back], not an attained salvation fantasy. Don’t beat yourself up!

The only addition I would make to this excellent article is that it is important to get the thoughts, feelings and flashbacks from out of your head and into a place where they can be easily seen.  So I ask myself and others to take a very short period of time to write phrases that describe the experience.  Then put them away promising to come back later and review and discover.
14. This is my 'defer and revisit technique.' But it only works if you follow through.  Otherwise you just have a list.  You need to be empowered not the Inner Critic or Inner Nag!

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Necrosing Narcotic 'Krokodil' Makes Its Way to US Streets: MEDSCAPE Deborah Brauser

"Krokodil" in Russia has been used extensively by addicts since 2003 It may have made its way to the United States, according to a report from an Arizona poison control center.
This version of the opioid desomorphine was nicknamed Krokodil and pronounced crocodile because it causes a users' skin to turn scaly and green, eventually leading the skin to rot and even drop off.
Although the New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services (NYS OASAS) estimates that as many as 1 million people in Russia have used this drug, what is thought to be the first 2 cases of use in the United States were reported during the past week in Arizona.
Frank LoVecchio, DO, a medical toxicologist and co–medical director at the Banner Good Samaritan Poison and Drug Information Center in Phoenix, Arizona, told Medscape Medical News that this is a "very frightening drug" that clinicians need to be aware of.
"Based on what we know from Russia, it is just so devastating," said Dr. LoVecchio.
"It might be a little sensational to say it's killing you from the inside out. But if you inject this toxin into your skin, or muscle, or veins, you actually can say that. It can cause a lot of damage."
Paint Thinner, Lighter Fluid, Gasoline
Desomorphine was invented in 1932 in the United States as a faster and more potent form of morphine and was used under the name "Permonid" in Switzerland, reports the NYS OASAS.
However, the recent bootleg version of this injectable drug contains crushed codeine tablets (which can be purchased in Russia without a prescription), as well as red phosphorus and often iodine, hydrochloric acid (HCA), paint thinner, lighter fluid, and even gasoline. It is also approximately 3 times cheaper to buy in Russia than is heroin.
Use has been reported in other European countries, such as Germany.
As reported recently by Medscape Medical News, Krokodil is known as "the drug that eats junkies," and for many users leads to having exposed bones and rotting sores all over their bodies. It can also cause a rupture of blood vessels, and complications can include thrombophlebitis and gangrene.
The survival rate after first use of this designer drug is usually only 2 to 3 years.
"The reason the skin effects from this are so tragic is because of the way this stuff is made. Addicts know that injecting gives a quicker and better high. But they want to get 'the medication' out of the codeine pill by crushing it and then adding in different chemicals and then passing it through filters, such as coffee filters," said Dr. LoVecchio.
"However, some impurities remain. We know from our poison center experience that just having HCA on your skin can cause illnesses and significant scarring. And some of the other chemicals can lead to fat cells and muscles dying, leading to big holes in the skin or tissue."
Be on the Lookout, Call for Help
Although there have been few studies of this drug, an article published last year in Substance Use and Misuse notes that treatment should be similar to that of heroin, including the use of naloxone. The serious tissue damage at injection sites should help clinicians to distinguish between users of the 2 substances.
"It is not unusual for users to present to the emergency department with exposed skeletal anatomy, ligaments, and tendons," writes Ashley Grigsby, from the Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine.
She adds that identification and treatment of infections in these patients are also hugely important.
In 2011, Time magazine published a story about a woman who survived her addiction to Krokodil but had a subsequent speech impediment and decreased motor skills ― and only stopped using the substance after gangrene began to develop around her groin, which was her injection site. Still, she considered herself lucky because most of her friends who were users had already died or "simply rotted."
Dr. LoVecchio noted that if clinicians suspect that a patient is presenting with complications from Krokodil use, they should contact their local poison center through the nationwide number 1- 800-222-1222 to discuss management options.
"I don't want to oversensationalize it, but I am worried. And I hope the use of this drug just stops and doesn't go any further. So my goal is to tell physicians to just be on the lookout and to be aware from a public health standpoint," he said.