Power Up Your Brain (10 page)

I left the examining room and began to review her previous medical reports and laboratory studies—and they were extensive. Interestingly, aside from a very mild anemia, her studies showed nothing to explain her symptoms. Even the blood tests for Lyme disease, which had been repeated several times before, during, and toward the end of her antibiotic treatment, were all normal. Susan and her mother had brought MRI scans, which we reviewed together. Once again, everything looked fine.

When I returned to the examining room, I observed that Susan had displayed all of her numerous nutritional supplements on the examining table. Obviously, along her journey, she had visited a number of complementary medicine practitioners, and each had seemingly given their best advice in hopes of getting her back on her feet.

“Before we go through your supplements,” I said, “let me share my thoughts.”

I started by giving Susan and her mother an overview of the medical records, including telling them that the Lyme panels were normal, which clearly surprised both of them. I discussed the MRI scans as well as the reports given by the various other practitioners. I then sat back a bit and began to explain my ideas as to why she was so incapacitated.

“I do not have a name for your illness,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t help you.”

I told Susan that the issue ultimately compromising her health was centered on energy. I explained how mitochondria provide energy to the body, and that, for whatever reason, perhaps the initial severe viral infection, her mitochondria were just not fully functional.

“But,” I continued, “there is another energy that we need to consider.” I explained that energy surrounds every person, that to be alive is to interact with and share in the energy that exists throughout the universe. I carefully watched her face, knowing that this discussion could cause her, or her mother, to feel uncomfortable, but Susan nodded her head with understanding. The really good news was that her mom was also smiling in agreement.

We then went through her various nutritional supplements, and I selected several that would help improve mitochondrial function. I added several more to the regimen as well as coconut oil and DHA, an omega-3 oil. “We’re going to get your mitochondria back on line,” I explained.

I then went further into the idea of “tapping in” to the energy that surrounds all of us and demonstrated a brief meditation technique that I asked her to perform twice daily.

There wasn’t any real need for extensive blood work, because what she had provided was more than comprehensive. But we did check one simple blood test, an evaluation of lipid peroxides that is available at most standard laboratories and provides an assessment of mitochondrial function. It took three weeks to get the results, but what they showed—a very abnormal condition—did confirm that we were on the right track.

After the initial evaluation, we began a series of injections to administer glutathione—a natural compound that enhances mitochondrial function as well as the process of detoxification—in conjunction with the oral supplements.

In addition, I ordered hyperbaric oxygen therapy, a treatment in which Susan sat in a clear acrylic chamber filled with oxygen under pressure. This is the same technology used to help underwater divers recover from decompression sickness caused by returning from pressurized depths to the surface too quickly.

Together, the nutritional supplements, glutathione, and hyperbaric oxygen created a comprehensive program to reestablish mitochondrial health and function in Susan’s body. (We will describe each of these in detail later in the book.)

I checked on Susan and her progress during the week that she received her various treatments, then saw her in my office a week later. Even after just one week, Susan was transformed.

But the real evidence was not in how she looked but on her mother’s face. I have learned over the years that a parent’s concern for an ill child is the same whether the child is 5 or 50. Clearly, Susan’s mother had finally seen some daylight at the end of what had been a long tunnel for both of them, and the tears she shed were tears of relief.

“We’re going to add a couple more things to your program,” I said, recommending some light daily exercises.

Susan eagerly agreed. “I can’t believe I’m going to start exercising again,” she said, beaming.

In addition to the meditation practice, we began to incorporate affirmations. Several times a day, Susan repeated phrases such as “I am well,” and “I am part of all that is around me.”

The other new aspect of her program was a day-long fast once every three weeks. Even though she looked puzzled when I first proposed this, I explained both the current science that validates the effects of fasting on mitochondrial function and the rich history of this practice in virtually every one of the world’s religions.

Two weeks into the program, Susan was walking 45 minutes each day, was clear-minded enough to keep a journal of her thoughts and activities, and, remarkably, was no longer sensitive to chemicals.

She returned to her home and arranged to receive injections of glutathione three times a week, first at her doctor’s office and subsequently with a visiting nurse. She continued the supplement program and fasted every three weeks, as we had discussed. Meditation and affirmations had become a regular part of her day, and she happily reported, “Even my husband is doing them.”

We consulted by telephone three weeks after she left our clinic, and she reported that she was able to accompany her husband and two children on bicycle rides. She no longer experienced pain in her muscles, and the headaches and chemical sensitivities had disappeared. I recommended that she reduce the glutathione injections to once a week for the following month.

During our telephone follow-up one month later, Susan reported that all was well. She was continuing with all components of her program and had returned to part-time work. We stopped the intravenous glutathione at that point and made plans to speak several months later.

Our next contact, however, came sooner than that when our office received a Christmas card from Susan and her family that included a photograph of a now-healthy, young-looking woman with her husband and two children.

CHAPTER 5

NEURAL NETWORKS
AND HABITS OF
THE MIND

Neural networks are unique patterns created by millions of interconnected neurons. Individual neurons extend nerve fibers that reach out to other neurons like the branches on a tree. The links they create can direct traffic along many routes of an extraordinarily intricate web. The neural pathways can join to form networks through which particular patterns of thought, action, and reaction occur. In other words, the neural networks in your brain are made up of a team of nerve cells that have learned to fire together and have subsequently wired together to perform a specific, reproducible function. It is because of neural networks that you are able to accomplish such tasks as chewing gum, snapping your fingers, or recalling the lyrics to “Hey Jude.”

CREATION OF YOUR BASIC NEURAL NETWORKS

For the sake of survival, a child needs to develop an instinctive sense for potentially threatening situations. This is why, early in life, we develop aversions and fears in association with events and experiences that, rightly or wrongly, we perceive as dangerous. A great many of these aversions developed while we were still inside our mother’s womb.

A flood of stress hormones crosses the placental barrier and informs the fetus of exactly the mood and feeling state that its mother is in. If the mother is happy, the fetus is joyous. If the mother feels safe and loved, this message is registered by the fetus, who also feels safe and loved. If the mother considers terminating the pregnancy, neural networks in the fetal brain are coded for fear as it may intuitively perceive that its life is in danger.

It is in this formative prenatal time that a large percentage of the neural pathways in our limbic brain develop, biasing the way we see and feel the world, and determining our personality. These biases are later reinforced by the codes of conduct and the emotional repertoire that we learned from our parents.

Until about age seven, the human brain is a fertile field, absorbing information, first from the mother’s placenta, then from a host of external post-birth influences. Some of these, such as the mother’s and father’s loving touch and the sound of family laughter, enrich the infant’s brain with positive experiences. Other experiences, including that initial inhalation of the first breath, infuse a sense of change, if not danger, in this world outside the mother’s warm, watery womb.

During those early years of life, the child’s brain is like a digital recorder set on constant record. Or, measured with an electroencephalogram (EEG), the brain-wave frequency of a child from birth to age two is in the delta range, which is also the frequency of the brain waves in a sleeping adult. The brain-wave frequency for a child from two to six is in the theta range, which is what an adult experiences in a state of imagination or reverie or while dreaming. Only into young adulthood does a child’s brain become fully adult-functional, operating in the higher frequencies of the alpha or beta wave ranges. In other words, a child under seven years of age basically functions in a hypnotic trance or dream state, which allows that digital recorder in the brain to gather information—
and
form neural pathways—appropriate for the youngster’s environment without the filtering and interference of logic and reasoning from the neocortex.

Then, between the ages of 7 and 16, something quite the opposite happens. We take ourselves out of the record mode and start playing around with delete/erase mode instead. During the years of adolescence, our brains eliminate over 80 percent of the interconnections between neurons, in a process known as synaptic pruning.

Why? Because we have learned what’s happening in the environment around us. We have a pretty good idea of whom to trust and whom not to trust, who provides food and hugs, and who inflicts pain and punishment. And so we no longer need to gather data from all possible sources, explore behavioral options, and seek alternative ways of experiencing the world.

Shortly after our late teens, we become bound by tradition, anchored by the way things have always been, and entrenched in the belief that everything will remain the same even as the world changes around us. Our worldview is set—not in stone, but in the neural networks of the brain. And while these neural networks communicate chemically and electrically, we experience them as emotions.

THE TYRANNY OF EMOTIONS

There are many schools of thought about emotions, and there is no universally accepted theory or taxonomy of the emotions. Some biologists speak about one set of emotions being instinctual and generated by the amygdala (which is involved in processing the memory of emotional reactions), and another kind as being generated by the prefrontal cortex, and being conscious, cognitive experiences. For the purposes of this book, we will employ these descriptions.

The
cognitive emotions
are conscious, original, and of the moment. It’s natural for you to feel happy, angry, or sad at different times in your life, and often for no reason whatsoever. No amount of positive thinking will keep us from occasional unpleasant feelings. Fortunately, these feelings do not last for long. Even though you can have feelings about someone for an entire lifetime, these cognitive emotions are not burdensome, nor do they take up any space in your awareness, and the very act of recollecting them offers you a brief and passing sensation. You might remember your beloved warmly, your childhood sweetheart lovingly, or the school bully fearfully. These emotions are reasoned and make sense with the situation to which they pertain.

Instinctual emotions
are toxic. When you become upset during an argument and remain so long after the exchange is over, it’s a sure sign that you’re experiencing an instinctual emotion. When overcome with this kind of emotion, you walk around angry without knowing why; your spouse asks you why you were rude to the waiter, and you do not recall being rude; someone stops you to ask you a question, and you nearly bite off their head for no reason at all. When the higher brain functions try to intercede, they are instead hijacked, and you find yourself relentlessly attempting to convince yourself that you were right and the other person was wrong, even years after the event. This results in a refusal to forgive, so that with every recollection of the offending incident, your adrenaline pumps into your nervous system and your body relives the event over and over just as if it were happening again, and you debate how you would have responded differently. Only with difficulty—sometimes extreme difficulty—will your nervous system settle down.

Instinctual emotions are produced by ancient survival instincts—often coupled with smoldering memories of trauma— that are wired into our brain. Toxic emotions of fear, sorrow, envy, and anger, which are often passionate, sometimes violent, and always draining, are never experiences of the present moment only. In fact, we can think of them as eruptions caused by trauma that was imprinted into the very fabric of your being. These emotions dredge up stories from your childhood that are superimposed onto the current moment. They prevent you from experiencing authentic feelings, here in the now. Everyone you meet reminds you of someone you have known before, and every new situation seems like a déjà vu. In that way, instinctual emotions are like ancient viral programs that hijack the brain’s mainframe and cloud your judgment. And they are the nemesis of true spiritual experience.