Re: Nutritional Treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

HI 58606,

It is not easy to get the message across that most mood disorders - including PTSD - are the result of a body that, for some reason or other, is not producing or manufacturing the right hormones and neurotransmitters to cause one to feel happy and content. This is because most people believe in the generally accepted conventional wisdom so well expressed by you that: "the brain rules the body". This is a major 20th century assumptions that made Sigmund Freud so famous and which philosophy is basically still adhered to by most "professionals" in the mental health care industry. This can also be called the "psychosomatic model" of psychology, where it is believed that the "mind causes one to feel sad" or the mind causes a mood disorder.

It is true that environmental stimuli can cause severe depression, such as in bereavement, rejection of love, and other traumas. The body helps a person deal with these traumas by inhibiting the production of relaxing hormones and neurotransmitters. We surely do not want to feel relaxed and lethargic when faced with a trauma or danger and when strenuous action is required. The body helps us deal with stress by producing stress hormones - such as cortisol and adrenaline - that increase the amount of biological energy - called adenosine triphosphate (ATP) derived mainly from carbohydrates (glucose) - necessary to take appropriate action. Stresses or Depression so produced are recognised as "environmental" stress reactions.

But mood disorders that appear to be "happening" to a person and over which they have no conscious control and that bring most sufferers to a therapist are mainly endogenous usually defined as: "feelings of sadness attributable to internal causes in the absence of external circumstances such as loss of job, death of a loved one". See:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENAU240&q=define%3A+endogenous...

PTSD belongs to this kind of mood disorder. The idea that the "biological" and the "psychological" should be dealt with at the same time, does not make sense. A biological disorder cannot be dealt with by "talk therapy" and by "delving into your childhood". We are dealing with a medical issue here, that needs to be attended to FIRST!

Most people recover after a trauma and start producing healthy hormones and neurotransmitters after effluxion of time. Thus for most people, "time heals". This is not the case for people who for a variety of medical reasons fail to produce feel good neurotransmitters and continue to produce stress hormones despite the fact that there is nothing in the present environment to trigger these stress hormones. There is a principle in psychology called "rationalization", where a person will have an cognitive process or psychological experience consistent with or based on reason. It is a process of constructing a logical justification or explanation for a belief or experience that has no other logical explanation.

This explains why people with schizophrenia may suffer from delusions and hallucinations. In non-psychotic illnesses marked by endogenous production of stress hormones it is natural for a fear reaction to trigger images that are associated with the first experience of the same fear reaction by a simple behaviouristic learning model. It s a mechanism that secures a "reason" for the experience, that otherwise cannot be explained or be logical.

This is the same mechanism at work when we develop a phobia, or a unreasonable fear of an "object" or thing. A person suffering from anxiety attacks may "happen" to enter a lift and the lift now becomes indelibly associated with a fear response.

The reason why hypoglycemia plays such a major role in mood disorders - including PTSD - is that most people with mood disorders are found to be hypoglycemic, that can be confirmed by a medical test as explained at our web site at:
http://www.hypoglycemia.asn.au/articles/self-help_personal_growth.html#Testing

This is not to say that hypoglycemia is the ONLY factor, but it happens to be the most common silent disease to play a role AND it is an illness, that people can treat without recourse to expensive medical consultations and medications. It empowers people to help themselves, because we can treat it by going on a hypoglycemic and an allergy free diet. But again if there are other factors apart from insulin resistance at work, then the hypoglycemic diet ALONE is not going to cure it. For instance a hypoglycemic diet will not necessarily cure anemia or hypothyroidism possible causes of mood disorders. This why nutritional doctors subject their patients to extensive medical tests.

But there are many other silent diseases - defined as an illness of which a person may not be aware - that can cause mood disorders (including PTSD). Some of these illnesses have been alluded to in:

Silent Diseases and Mood Disorders at:
http://www.hypoglycemia.asn.au/articles/silentdiseases.html

Here we may require further testing by nutritional doctors (unfortunately most psychiatrists are not trained in this area), for diagnosis and nutritional treatment.

The significance of hypoglycemia as an important element is that it is responsible for the production of excess stress hormones, especially adrenaline. The biochemical function of adrenaline is that it converts Sugar stores in the body - such as glycogen - into glucose, whenever the brain is starved of glucose. This happens in a hypoglycemic dip, when blood Sugar levels falls below the norm and triggers the adrenal glands to pour adrenaline into the system so as to ensure proper glucose supplies to the brain. Hypoglycemia is really not just low blood Sugar levels as the name indicates, but actually means unstable wildly fluctuating blood sugar levels as a result of insulin insulin resistance.

Thus when a PTSD patient has a sudden nightmare in the middle of the night - conjuring up the dreadful images responsible for PTSD - he actually suffers from a hypoglycemic dip, triggering excess adrenaline production to save the brain from dying of energy starvation. To prove this point a person should try taking GLYCERINE and this remedy may give him a peaceful night sleep and keep the demons away.

You can find information about glycerine by searching our web site for it at:

http://www.hypoglycemia.asn.au/
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