Brain Detox: How To Destress The Brain by Dr. Alicia Armitstead

Anxiety and Stress Treatments at Healing Arts NYC

When faced with an unwanted situation, have you ever noticed that your mind goes to a worst-case scenario or down a rabbit hole of 'what ifs'? When the mind is behaving crazy, it runs ancient programs belonging to the limbic brain and focuses on survival and fear. When we're in its grip, we see danger everywhere. 

The Four F's

The neural programming of the limbic brain is known as the Four F's - feeding, fighting, fear, and fornicating. That's all you need for survival. The limbic brain craves sweet comfort foods when you are feeling sad. Feed it sugar, and the brain keeps operating at a dull level of awareness that does not lead anywhere healthy. The limbic brain helped us survive cave times and is obsessed with having food and sex. It craves mind-dulling alcohol and drugs and is biased toward aggression, emotional withdrawal, and self-preservation. 

Starve the Neocortex from Sugar

To change this and stop the limbic brain from running the ancient programs, we need to cut off its supply of sugar. To think better, we need to say no to cakes, cookies, and candy but also to fewer carbs like bread, rice, and potatoes. Sometimes, to really get the neocortex of the brain to override the limbic brain, people need to be strict and go into ketosis. When the neocortex part of the brain is in charge, there are less fearful thoughts. The neocortex allows us to learn, create, and envision new futures without fear. The neocortex is programmed for beauty, and when the neocortex is running the show, you will see beauty everywhere. 

The neocortex needs ketones to override the programs of the more ancient limbic brain. On a carbohydrate diet, it sputters along, coughing up the occasional creative insight but no lasting revelations. The limbic brain, driven by pleasure-seeking and emotional drama, does not thrive on peaceful experiences. When we are under stress, the limbic system kicks into full gear, and we are paralyzed with fear or so riddled with anxiety or rage that we can't think straight. When this happens, the limbic system hijacks the entire neural apparatus, restricting blood flow to the brain's frontal lobes so we can no longer develop creative solutions to problems. 

When the limbic brain is in charge, often, we're not even aware that we're operating out of instinctual fear. We think the world is a dangerous place. There aren't enough resources to go around. The simplest tasks become overwhelming to perform. Every time we think a fear-based thought, the nerves fire, the limbic system lights up, and the neural pathways get reinforced. 

Neural Networks

Neural networks are information superhighways that quickly interpret what we perceive through the senses. They tell us what is dangerous, when it's safe, who is smart, who is dull. They hold a map of our world and how our reality works based on sight, sound, scents, memories, touch, and childhood experiences. These neural networks become stronger as your day-to-day experience proves your map true, with more connections between neurons formed every time that pathway is used. Over the years, this path became the road most traveled and eventually the only route used. A brain scan will show neural networks in a particular area of the brain light up as you think certain thoughts. The opposite is true as well. When a neural network doesn't light up as it should, the void in that area of the brain will show up on a scan. 

Our brain is not developed during childhood and then hardwired, never to change like medicine thought it was for ages. It has just recently been discovered that our experiences affect the brain's functioning and structure. Neurons can grow and fire differently based on different thought patterns. Different thoughts come in based on our life experiences. The brain can change in response to an injury or due to an epiphany or personal realization. 

Neural networks act like filters that screen out certain experiences, allowing us to perceive only a limited slice of reality. Based on our neural networks, we may fail to read the emotional warning signs from the person we are dating and become entangled in a toxic relationship. 

Psychological Themes

Studies show that the brain can remap itself very quickly. In a 2005 study, medical students' brains were imaged using a brain-scan device before and after exams. In a few months, the gray matter in the students' brains increased significantly, indicating that learning was clearly forming new neural networks in their brains and increasing their brain volume. Since 2000, scientists have discovered that new brain cells develop regularly, particularly in the hippocampus, the brain structure associated with learning and memory. Our neural networks make us creatures of habit, and they are set by an early age. This is how psychological themes run in families, passed down from parent to child. Children learn by watching their parents and will interpret what they see the same way their parents do. Our neural networks do not help us write a better life story. They will work the way they know how to and only reinforce the learned script from childhood. Without awareness, we will turn into our parents because it is the only thing we know, and we are hardwired for it. 

Psychological themes aren't the only thing that runs in families. Heart disease runs in families, and certain cancers run in families. Autoimmune diseases involve the immune system attacking its cells and often run in families. Diseases that run in families are not just shared genetics. It's similar to neural networks that light up in the brain and tell the body what to do, including what genes to express. The brain tells every cell what genes to express by releasing specific neurotransmitters. Cells express different genes based on neurotransmitters and are influenced by the toxic load and availability of nutrition in the environment that the cell inhabits. 

Genes

Genes are written in stone, but what is expressed can change. Genes can be turned on and off and expressed differently based on the cell's environment. The study of such genetic expression is called epigenetics and is so crucial in understanding why we need to get healthy and stay healthy. Detoxing heavy metals or heavy chemicals and eating healthy is of utmost importance if we want to get healthy AND prevent diseases. 

There are so many hidden chemicals in our food and water, plus the food getting contaminated with plastic and aluminum. Not only do toxins interfere with gene expression, but the body stores poisons in fat cells, and the brain is primarily made of fat. We cannot lay neural networks for creativity and curiosity if our brain cells contain toxins. 

Detoxing the Brain

To help the brain detox, we use ozone therapy. Ozone therapy is adding extra oxygen to the body to help it heal. We have two ways of doing ozone therapy in the office: sitting in a sauna or breathing it in through the nose. Our practitioners will help you decide which way of ozone therapy is best for you. For headache sufferers, know that the pain means your brain is not detoxing and that inhaling extra oxygen will be beneficial. I find too many patients who think headaches are common. 

We can help by muscle testing for supplements that can cross the blood-brain barrier, which not all supplements do. One supplement that is great at crossing the blood-brain barrier is MCT oil. Adding it to your diet can help the brain detox and also feed the brain. Eating more essential fatty acids like avocado, flaxseed, hemp seed, oily fish, pumpkin seeds, and walnuts can also feed the brain.

Psychological and Emotional Stress

Reducing psychological and emotional stress through exercise, meditation, and journaling is essential, too, if you want healthier neurons in the brain to fire. Stress management must be noticed when trying to live less fearfully. The one thing that's easy to do that can fire healthy neurological pathways is gratitude. It's best to do a gratitude list at the end of the day to strengthen the neural pathways before bed. Please list at least eight things you are grateful for in your head or write them down in a gratitude journal. It could be as basic as being grateful for being alive or the nice weather. 

Practicing gratitude, exercise, meditation, and journaling can help tremendously in getting nerves to stop firing in the limbic brain. However, it takes time to create these new habits. What if we are too fear-based to do things we know are good for us? Often, whatever willpower we exert to change our bad habits, we fall back into the old themes because of our ever-efficient neural networks that have been there since childhood. The good news is that we can rewire our neural networks to be less fear-based by detoxifying the brain, supporting the brain with good nutrition, and implementing good stress management. 

Sometimes, however, that isn't enough, though, and we really are neurologically stuck. That's when we need to use a technique called PSYCH-K® to rewire how the neurons are firing. It works on the subconscious brain, the part of the brain that we aren't even aware of. Recent scientific research shows that at least 95% of our life is automatically operated by our subconscious (unconscious) mind without us noticing it. Often, the subconscious is like a minefield of limiting beliefs and old, outdated "programs" that are no longer worthy of who we are or who we are becoming. These powerful but limiting programs and beliefs continuously affect our lives in all aspects, including relationships, self-confidence, financial status, career choice, and even our health and physical condition. In our lives, the reasons for these behaviors and performances that we cannot understand are also due to these belief patterns we are not aware of.

PSYCH-K® is an energy-balancing technique to help individuals transform their subconscious beliefs. It uses techniques such as visualizations, affirmations, and muscle testing to help reprogram the subconscious mind and create new neurological pathways.

If you are stuck in anxiety or have a fear you know is holding you from your best life, know that there is a way to reprogram your neural pathways and help your brain health by detoxifying the brain, supporting the brain with good nutrition, implementing good stress management and doing PSYCH-K®.

Additional References



• Natural Remedies for Anxiety Disorders - Healing Arts NYC