Researchers have long sought a factor that can trigger the brain’s ability to learn – and perhaps recapture the “sponge-like” quality of childhood. Neuroscientists at Children’s Hospital Boston report that they’ve identified such a factor, a protein called Otx 2. Otx2 helps a key type of cell in the cortex to mature, initiating a critical period–a window of heightened brain plasticity, when the brain can readily make new connections.

And where does this protein come from? Interestingly enough, it is developed in the cornea. Basically, when the eye opens and is functional, it tells the brain to start receiving data and learning.

“The eye is telling the brain when to become plastic, rather than the brain developing on its own clock,” says Hensch, who is also a professor at Harvard Medical School and at Harvard University’s Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology. In essence, the eye is telling the brain, “The eyes are ready and seeing properly — you can rewire now.”

That finding is very significant to Rapid Eye Technicians because it may help explain the phenomenon that occurs when their clients blink their eyes rapidly in response to the instruction given them by their technician.

As of yet, no study has determined that rapid eyelid blinking can generate the Otx 2 protein identified by the researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston. However, given the anecdotal evidence of thousands of clients reporting significant change in their lives after RET sessions, I feel confident in suggesting that perhaps the basic RET process of rapid eyelid blinking, eye movement, and strong directional languaging, affects a release of Otx 2 and a triggering of the brain into rewiring plasticity.

“The nervous system is recycling an embryonic factor to induce brain plasticity,” says Hensch.

As the brain is triggered into rewiring mode by the rapid blinking process, suggestions given by the technician by way of direct commands to “release” old programming followed by instructions to rewire in a new frame (called “reframing”) offers the client the best conditions for setting real change into their brain. As the brain rewires, so does conscious perception – and eventually subconscious underlying belief.

Article adapted and commented upon from original press release.

Another study, this time from the Universiteit van Amsterdam, demonstrates that memories – most particularly long-term fear memories – are encoded when they first happen and then again whenever we re-store those memories. There is a short period of time in which the brain must chemically “prepare” and then “store” the memory. Whenever we bring the memory back to mind, it must go through the same process to re-store it in the brain. In both of these labile phases, the memory is vulnerable to change.

This research strongly suggests that memories are not, therefore, permanent structures in the brain. Their emotional content can be removed by interrupting the labile phase of long-term memory storage.

I wrote about the brain’s file cabinet in another post (Click here to read). Basically, the brain requires a chemical to access memories and to code them back after accessing them. It’s as though we take each memory, like a file, out of the long-term memory cabinet, close the cabinet, look at the file, use it, then open the cabinet again to put the file back in. If I understand Kindt’s research correctly, interrupting that process at the “putting back in” phase can, in theory, stop the perpetuation of the effects of fear memories by eliminating the fear in the memories.

According to the Universiteit van Amsterdam study by Merel Kindt, et al, published on 15 February 2009 on the website of Nature Neuroscience as an Advance Online Publication, chemically (using propranolol) interrupting the fear memory labile phase caused human subjects to lose their fear responses while retaining their memory of events connected to them.

I contend that without using propranolol it may be possible to bring forth an emotionally charged memory, deflate it of emotional energy, and then re-encode it back into long-term memory – without the emotional element attached. I’ve seen this process thousands of times in Rapid Eye Technology sessions and in my own work with clients complaining of irrational fears of all kinds.

My hope is that some ingenious scientist with the proper laboratory setup might experiment with more than Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) that was mentioned in the study article and look at the many types of alternative therapies around. Certainly, with the basic structure of the study in place, substituting an injection of propranolol with a technique like Rapid Eye Technology or Emotional Freedom Technique or hypnosis could easily be done and results scientifically observed and measured.

Study resource:  Merel Kindt, Marieke Soeter and Bram Vervliet at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research

Chronic stress kills.

According to Nicole Vogelzangs, PhD, of VU University Medical Center in The Netherlands and lead author of a study on the subject, high levels of the stress hormone cortisol strongly predicts cardiovascular death among persons with and without pre-existing cardiovascular disease. “Previous studies have suggested that cortisol might increase the risk of cardiovascular mortality, but until now, no study had directly tested this hypothesis,” said Vogelzangs. “The results of our study clearly show that cortisol levels in a general older population predict cardiovascular death, but not other causes of mortality.”

Chronic stress induces chronic high levels of cortisol in the bloodstream, which in turn predicts cardiovascular death. Chronic stress kills.

“Cortisol is an important component of the stress system of the human body but in higher concentrations can be harmful,” said Vogelzangs. “Our study shows that older persons with high levels of cortisol have an increased risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. This finding significantly adds evidence to the belief that cortisol can be damaging to the cardiovascular system.”

High blood cortisol levels should indicate immediate work on creating an effective strategy for calming down in the face of stress.

Especially for those over 45, I recommend Rapid Eye Technology, Emotional Freedom Technique, Hypnotherapy, and/or Yoga to calm the body and mind; then Skills for Life training from the Rapid Eye Institute to learn how to deal with daily stress to lower blood cortisol levels and keep them low. All these techniques and processes may be used right along with medications. You’ll probably want to work with your physician to make sure you’re not over-medicating as you progress with your stress reduction strategy.

To test your cortisol level lowering strategy and to monitor your progress, check your blood cortisol levels regularly and work with your physician for best results.

This is a life-or-death matter – your life-or-death. If you have chronically high levels of cortisol in your bloodstream, calm down! Maybe you’ll live longer.

Study Source:
Other researchers working on the study include: Aartjan Beekman and Brenda Penninx of VU University Medical Center in The Netherlands; Yuri Milaneschi and Luigi Ferrucci of the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, Md.; and Stefania Bandinelli of Azienda Sanitaria Firenze in Italy. The article, “Urinary cortisol and six-year risk of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality,” appears in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).

Is your fear killing you?

An interesting series of experiments conducted by researchers from the University of Toronto demonstrated that dragonfly larvae died at much higher rates when exposed to a predator even when the predator was unable to attack its prey. This is strong evidence that fear played a part in the demise of the dragonfly larvae.

Scaling up from larvae to humans and adding in the additional brain cells inherent in humans, I can surmise that human fear would express itself slightly differently in the behavior of our species, but with the same deadly outcome.

Unfortunately, the “cure” is not so simple. Ridding oneself of any fear can put one at risk of imminent death, too. “Healthy fear” – the kind that keeps you on the sidewalk instead of crossing a street where deadly vehicular missiles are speeding by – is useful.

Negative fear, however, has a different “signature” in the body, identified easily by its results on the body – you’ll feel “less”. That is, you feel drained of energy. One writer I know sees this drain as the result of energy vampires feeding off your fear (or possibly the chemical reactions involved). Whatever the cause, the result is the same – death.

“Death?!” you say! Yes, death. Remember the dragonfly larvae?

To avoid death, one might be well served to quickly and efficiently identify and process positive vs negative fear. When one recognizes unhealthy fear, they tend to release – sort of like when one sighs deeply after an event (“sigh of relief”). There is a sense of empowerment with that sort of sigh and release – energizing the body system.

Usually, however, we embrace our negative stress and defend it! What is wrong with us?! You’d think an intelligent species like ours would have solved this by now. But we are basically no better off than the dragonfly.

The “cure” then may be awareness and alertness – putting our big brain to work quickly identifying negative stress and “letting it go” ASAP. Something the dragonfly larvae perhaps wishes it could do, too.

Sources: “The deadly effects of ‘nonlethal’ predators”, published in Ecology. Research was supported by grants from the Canada Research Chairs program and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and a post-doctoral fellowship awarded to McCauley of the University of Toronto.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/236770.php

“When subjects posed expressions of fear, they had a subjectively larger visual field, faster eye movements during target localization and an increase in nasal volume and air velocity during inspiration,” observed researcher Dr Joshua M Susskind and colleagues from the Department of Psychology, University of Toronto in Canada. The opposite pattern was found for disgust. The study was supported by a Canada Research Chairs program and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council grant and published in the peer-reviewed science journal Nature Neuroscience.

Using computer-generated graphics, the researchers trained a group of undergraduate students to model a set of facial expressions and then tested their vision and the airflow through their nose. During the training, the participants were presented with facial examples from one of eight different individuals, four men and four women, displaying six different emotional expressions. They used pictures of faces showing anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise. After the participants rated these faces to identify which type of expression was shown, they were then asked to perform the face themselves. For fear, they were asked to furrow the brow by contracting the muscles, widen the eyes and flare the nostrils. For neutral expressions, they were asked to relax their muscles.

In separate experiments, with up to 20 participants each time, the researchers checked their ability to perform various tasks and took some measurements. They checked the visual fields by assessing how well the participants could see objects at the periphery of their vision, and by tracking participants’ eye movements. The researchers also used a respiratory device with a mask attached to a computer to measure how well the participants could breathe through the nose and to record the volume of air inhaled each minute. They also used MRI scans to take images of the nasal passages and this allowed them to estimate the volume of air within the nose by counting the number of pixels contained in the image of the passages on the screen.

They repeated the same tests when the participants were asked to show disgust. This face type was closest to the opposite of fear, with narrowed eyes, raised lips and a narrow nose.

The researchers suggest that fear may enhance perception, whereas disgust tends to dampen it. These results provide support for the Darwinian theory that facial expressions are not tools for social communication, but may have originated as a means of changing our interaction with the sights and smells of the physical world.

I suggest that perhaps fear (as an emotion) may have developed as an evolutionary adaptation that tends to enhance life force by energizing the immune and perceptual systems whereas disgust, which is more of a judgment than an emotion and is therefore more a mental exercise than an emotional one, tends to decrease life force by dampening the immune and perceptual systems.

The logical conclusion to me – in evolutionary adaptation, true negative emotions may actually be good for you while negative judgment appears to be the opposite. How can you tell the difference? Surprisingly, it’s fairly easy to distinguish emotion from judgment – by the time it takes to develop. True emotions tend to be spontaneous whereas judgments tend to take more time to manifest in their expression. For example, the symptoms of fear (perspiration, change in breathing pattern, facial expressions, increased heart rate, muscular movement, etc.) come almost instantly to a person faced with the object of a phobia. On the other hand, a person faced with something they find disgusting, feces for example, might wince up at the sight or smell of it, but not instantly as they would if they were truly afraid of it instead.

Can you experience true emotion without judgment? We humans tie our mental so tightly with our emotional and physical aspects that it makes me wonder. Yet the startle response suggests to me that it is possible to experience emotion without judgment. And whenever I let go my judgment about something or someone, I tend to also release the emotions, too. And many times, I’ve confused emotion with judgment – such that in releasing one, I release the other – because in my mind I’ve made them one and the same.

What do you think?

"These medications aren't candy, and taking them is far from harmless."

Taking medications to treat insomnia and anxiety increases mortality risk by 36%. This is according to a study conducted by Genevieve Belleville, a professor at Universite Laval’s School of Psychology. The details of this study are published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. Dr. Belleville arrived at these results through analysis of 12 years of data on over 14,000 Canadians in Statistics Canada’s National Population Health Survey.

“These medications aren’t candy, and taking them is far from harmless,” commented Dr. Belleville. “Given that cognitive behavioral therapies have shown good results in treating insomnia and anxiety, doctors should systematically discuss such therapies with their patients as an option. Combining a pharmacological approach in the short term with psychological treatment is a promising strategy for reducing anxiety and promoting sleep.”

There are so many proven effective strategies and therapies for insomnia and anxiety that medications may be unnecessary after only a short time if at all. Self-hypnosis, especially has been proven effective in treating insomnia. Over many years of practice, I can say that Rapid Eye Technology and Emotional Freedom Technique have proven effective for symptoms of anxiety.

I have to ask, “is it worth the risk?” when the side effects of medications may include a very high probability of death.

What do you think?

2009 “Perceptions of Stress in Adults”, a part of APA Study, Stress in America survey results show that adults continue to report high levels of stress and many report that their stress has increased over the past year. Additionally, many adults are reporting physical symptoms of stress.

75% of adults reported experiencing moderate to high levels of stress in the past month (24 % extreme, 51 % moderate) and 42 % reported that their stress has increased in the past year. 43 % of adults say they eat too much or eat unhealthy foods as a result of stress. 37% report skipping a meal because they were under stress.

While 44 % of adults report that they exercise or walk to relieve stress, many Americans also say they rely on more sedentary activities to manage stress (49 % listen to music, 41 % read, 36 % watch TV or movies more than two hours per day, and 33 % play video games). Although these activities may be helpful in alleviating stress, they do not improve overall physical health or maintain a more healthy weight than more active forms of stress management.

Overall, many adults say they have felt the physical effects of stress in the past month:

• 47 % of all adults report that they have lain awake at night;
• 45 % report irritability or anger;
• 43 % report fatigue;
• 40 % report lack of interest, motivation or energy;
• 34 % report headaches;
• 34 % report feeling depressed or sad;
• 32 % report feeling as though they could cry; and
• 27 % report upset stomach or indigestion as a result of stress.

“The prevalence with which Americans continue to report increasing and extreme stress levels is a real concern,” said Dr. Nordal. “Also, people say that their levels of stress and lack of willpower are preventing them from making lifestyle and behavior changes that are necessary for improving and maintaining good health. It’s clear that people need tools and support to better manage extreme stress in order to prevent serious health consequences. Unfortunately, our current healthcare system does not do a very good job in this regard. And insurance companies often don’t cover preventive services or the kinds of services people need in order to better manage chronic illness.”

The results of the 2009 “Stress in America” survey by the American Psychological Association found that while 85 % of Americans say their stress level has remained the same or increased in the past year, just 4 % of people use therapy as a way to combat that stress. This reflects a decrease in therapy usage related to stress. In 2008, 7 % of people said they saw a mental health professional to manage their stress.

In fact, Americans are more likely to eat (28%), smoke (14%), shop (15%) or watch TV (36%) than see a therapist as a stress management technique.

“We need to make Americans aware that seeing a mental health professional such as a Marriage and Family Therapist is a wise, effective way to manage stress that’s getting in the way of daily life,” said Patsy Pinkney-Phillips, Ph.D., president of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists Board and a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. “If you’re experiencing high levels of stress, talk therapy can help you get through it.”

The same report indicates that adults seriously under-appreciate the stress their teens and tweens endure in their daily lives. That pretty much sums up the appreciation most adults have for their own levels of stress day-to-day.

Most adults will acknowledge their true levels of stress only when pinned down about it or when they experience physical symptoms. And even then many will deny those symptoms believing a pill or better boss or less demanding spouse or change in some other external environmental issue will take care of it. Although those kinds of changes can decrease stress to some degree, they are usually much harder to manage and control than internal stress mechanisms – resources one can learn to harness at will.

That’s the good news! Stress can be easily managed by you from within you. You don’t have to wait for your employer to mellow out or ease up on you. You can take care of your stress yourself without indulging in health reducing behaviors such as smoking or vegging out on the couch in front of the tube.

If your health insurance carrier (assuming you have one) does not provide coverage for mental health (a likely situation), you can learn powerful stress management techniques such as the Rapid Eye Technology Immediate Release Technique (IRT), Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), and Self-Hypnosis for free from a trained professional practitioner. Just ask!

Even those who profess to have no emotional energy about something may still feel something physical (a sensation) related to an emotion.

I think addressing physical symptoms is the key to healing just about any emotional issue that includes a physical aspect. Addictions, colds, allergies, irrational fears, weight issues, and a host of others I find respond well to healing modalities like Rapid Eye Technology (RET) and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), when focused on “What do you feel in your body when…?” rather than “How do you feel (emotionally) about that?”.

Emotions are so nebulous and esoteric for most people, I think. However, even those who profess to have no emotional energy about something may still feel something physical (a sensation) related to an emotion.

For example, I once worked with a lawyer who had absolutely no emotional responses to “How do you feel about your impending divorce?” But his body was wracked with pains of all sorts that he could not explain. And even for those aches and pains he could explain (over-exercise, etc.), they ALL responded to RET’s Instant Release Technique – but ONLY if I asked “what sensations do you feel right now in your body [as we're talking about the divorce]?”. He had four sessions and turned his life around completely (fortunately, his wife did RET sessions at the same time, so they felt they were working together to rescue their marriage – which they both felt was worth preserving after 40+ years).

Honoring Emotions

Interestingly, I’ve had many clients who really wanted to dig into their emotional problems – over and over and over again. These clients get a certain amount of pleasure from RET particularly as they feel they are HONORING their emotions – and sometimes finding new ones they did not know they had. Each time I’d see them, they’d report the very same emotional issues – over and over and over again. They were recreating rather than healing – or so I supposed. Actually, they were healing – IN THEIR OWN WAY. One shoe does not everyone fit.

Just because RET is fast and effective for most people does not mean that everyone who wants to do RET wants to deal with their issues quickly. Some want to “drag them out” and enjoy/honor their emotional journey. When we RET technicians hurry them along, we dishonor their process. And how does one identify such clients? For the most part, they tend to book multiple sessions in advance. They tend to want to “wallow” a little bit in their emotions. And many I’ve seen tell me to slow down a little. Think how disappointed and dishonored such a client must feel when they completely resolve their issue in their first RET session. I’ve had clients call me and complain that it felt we went too fast – even though we completely resolved their issue and they were happy with the results.

As fast as RET works, we still must encourage some of our clients to entertain the notion of doing multiple sessions where we can delve and explore more fully their emotional depth – far beyond mere “healing” – into the realm of “what’s next” in their personal evolution. “What ELSE is there?” or “What’s next for you?”

How do you feel about resolving your issues too fast? Leave a comment about it below…

Choosing the right course is a much more complicated affair than I once thought it was.

A fairly new and not well known field, decision neuroscience, is emerging as an important asset in our growing understanding of why people do what they do. People make choices every day. Some of those choices cause harm to themselves and/or to others.

In the field of change therapy, I’ve often heard it said, “Just make the right choices…” Some people, however, have a faulty or ineffective (for them) choice making strategy. Others have a faulty choice making mechanism. Those involved in decision neuroscience have discovered that there may be genetics behind choice making as well. It’s much more complicated than I thought it would be. Darn!

“When people face the same decision, they tend to make different choices,” said Lee. “Some of that is due to their different experiences and learning environment. There are also fundamental genetic differences that give rise to different decision making styles. Getting a better understanding of the neurobiological basis for those individual differences in decision making will have enormous implications. It can explain a lot of problems in our society, including differences in the tendency to develop psychiatric illnesses.” – Daeyeol Lee, PhD., Department of Neurobiology and Kavli Institute for Neuroscience, Yale University School of Medicine.

Basically, I’d tell clients/patients to simply, “choose again” – meaning, the first choice resulted in an outcome other than they wanted, so it seemed obvious to me that one could simply choose a different strategy and that was that. Simple.

Ah, but not so says the decision neuroscientists. Those pesky genes play a role, too, and are not to be denied.

“If you’ve ever had a friend or family member with depression, you can see they are not making decisions the way they normally do. So there clearly has to be dysfunction in the neurocircuits of psychiatric patients affecting their decisions, and we need to understand this better in order to come up with better treatments for mental disorders.” – C. Daniel Salzman, MD, PhD., Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience and Kavli Institute for Brain Science, Columbia University School of Medicine.

My, oh my – it’s never as simple as we hoped it would be. Still, if one is engaged in a change therapy, one will make changes. To optimize those changes, it occurs to me that using a therapy that affects the central nervous system and thus those brain structures involved in genetic expression, might be useful.

“Which therapies might those be?”

I like Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Rapid Eye Technology (RET), and hypnosis. Each uses a slightly different paradigm and methodology, yet each definitely touches deep brain structures associated with genetic expression (specifically amygdala and hypothalamus). Okay, I can’t PROVE these therapies actually touch genetic expression – to date I’ve found no studies to demonstrate this ability. However, in my own practical and professional experience, significant changes at fundamental mental levels occur with these therapies. SOMETHING must be happening – and it sure does LOOK like genetic expression change. (if it looks like a dog, sounds like a dog, wags its tail like a dog…)

Source: The Kavli Foundation

Prof. Joseph Zohar from the Sackler Medical School, Tel Aviv University, has found that an injection of cortisol shortly after exposure to a traumatic event could prevent the onset of PTSD.

What a brilliant idea! Why wait for symptoms of PTSD to debilitate a person when prevention can address and effectively eliminate the problem altogether. Further, as inoculated trauma victims are returned to their families and societies, they are more likely to be more productive, better able to cope with their home environments, and quicker to adjust to later possible traumas.

Dr. Zohar’s idea of an injection shortly after exposure could backfire for those people susceptible to cortisol build-up or who’s bodies don’t process cortisol well. Many overweight people have difficulty processing the stress hormone and thus their bodies collect body fat instead of dealing with stress properly.

I propose that those exposed to traumatic events instead, use a quick de-stress process like RET or EFT to better utilize the cortisol they already have. In those cases where cortisol injections might be especially useful, I propose they be accompanied by RET or EFT sessions so that the cortisol is better utilized.

As it takes about 30 seconds to a minute to learn how to de-stress using RET or EFT, de-stressing techniques could be easily taught and administered along with the cortisol injections for soldiers returning from a fire-fight, for example. I see this as a one-two punch against an often-debilitating affliction. And it could be so easy to do – a ten second injection followed by a 30 second education in Rapid Eye Technology Immediate Release Technique or basic Emotional Freedom Technique – possibly accompanied with a 30-minute session of either process – and the affected person is “inoculated” from the effects of PTSD.

Sounds reasonable to me.