Dealing with Stress

[Bernard]

Stress - A mentally or emotionally disruptive or upsetting condition occurring in response to adverse external influences and capable of affecting physical health, usually characterized by increased heart rate, a rise in blood pressure, muscular tension, irritability, and depression.

Stress

Psychological aspects of stress include feelings such as anxiety, depression, anger, guilt, hurt, morbid jealousy, shame, embarrassment and envy. These may be linked with various other responses that can include sensations, imagery, behaviours, cognitions, and physical symptoms. It is important to remember that a person suffering from any one of different kinds of psychological stress listed above may develop a stress-related physical illness.

Physiological Impacts

The body is capable of internalizing stress in extreme situations. Just about everyone says that stress is a seizure trigger. We all know that too much stress is a bad thing.

There is a doctor in South Africa that is using hypnotherapy and neurofeedback to "empower people to change their reaction and response to ..." stress:

... Dr Cecile Gericke, a registered psychologist, who has been working in the corporate sector using hypnotherapy combined with neurofeedback.

"People come to me suffering from depression or anxiety, but I can't handle these in isolation. One's environment has a great influence on one, and this is the reason I began to be interested in the workplace," she says.

...

Neurofeedback is beneficial to business people who have to be internally focused but outwardly open, Gericke says. "The exact opposite of this happens when people become upset."

Using this method has had outstanding results with anxiety, concentration problems, depression, sleeplessness and under-achieving. ...

Teaching minds to deal with stress

I have yet to find anything negative about neurofeedback.

 

[lindy]

I've never tried neurofeedback but my sister did for ADHD and was really pleased with the results. She went to a two week long group session and said that most of the people there were people like us, trying to get control over their seizures. I use meditation and massage therapy was stress relievers and I can certainly tell if I don't meditate on a particular day or if my massage has to be delayed for some reason.

 

[howdydave]

Meditation has worked very well for me.

 

[Bernard]

Meditation is a different means to achieve basically the same ends - controlling the brain wave activity. But meditation is an active or conscious action. With neurofeedback, the brain learns to function with normalized brain wave activity all the time - a passive or subconscious mechanism.

 

[RanMan]

Re that stress thing, I suffer with two conditions that are STRESS related, Epilepsy and Ulcerative Colitis.
It has been my experience over the last 26yrs that during a stressful situation, the meds and the natural body defenses fight the stress and fight off a possible seizure or reduce a grand-mal to a petit-mal BUT I've also noticed on several occassions that after a stressful or traumatic day ( I have lots of them, my 19yr old son is manic depression/bipolar) THE DEFENSES ARE DOWN and an episode will happen while I'm relaxing.

Randy

 

[lindy]

Sounds to me like the stress is reducing your body's ability to produce serotonin (this is something that my doctor told me about this year). Without adequate serotonin, the brain can't function properly. I take 5-HTP to increase serotonin production and it works really well for me.

 

[RachelR]

I find some exercise or some short walking can reduce my stress levels and therefore decrease the chance of me having a seizure

 

[lindy]

Massage also does alot of good for stress reduction. I go every four weeks and more often if I feel particularly stressed.

 

[winnie]

I do not cop very well with the stress as I just seem to start to cry which is embarasing to come out and say but feels good to be able to do so. I have tried relaxation but then my mind jumps so I cannot get any of that right at all. I feel I cannot get very much right sorry. I have not been able to put anything worthwile to this topic. I have been thinking and thinking what to put in so that I can offer help.
from Winnie

 

[Bernard]

No worries Winnie. No one here (AFAIK) is any kind of expert. All we can offer is our own experience and whatever knowledge we may have gleaned from somewhere else.

Crying is one mechanism for releasing stress.

 

[Tilei]

I've been tracking down as much information I can find the past couple of days and lindy, you may have something there for those of us who are triggered by stress.

What I've learned in my own words:
Serotonin is the chemical in the brain that causes you to sleep, calm down, promotes the good mood after sufficient exercise, and helps remove spent amino acids from the brain. If I understand my reading correctly, serotonin is like an electrical buffer for the brain. It keeps the neurons and other transmitters from over firing or firing to severely.

There are a lot of studies on serotonin & athletes and serotonin & depression. One study mentioned a possible link to the depression seen in epileptics to a low serotonin level. Depression, can be another word for stress, a known affect on epileptics. Now, stress causes one to use up more serotonin in the brain and it would be a logical conclusion to me, the resulting deficit could trigger a seizure as the brain chemistry is out of balance. To me this makes sense as my seizures only seem to happen when I am under extreme stress. It seems to me that from my reading that serotonin takes a while to fluctuate too. Too long with too little = seizure? Sure there are no real direct studies, but it makes sense based upon the information available.

There are two schools of thought on how to get more serotonin to the brain and one is through proper nutrition and the other is through supplimentation. Obviously proper nutrition is a place to start because if you are missing some of the basic precursors in your diet for serotonin, one is probably missing other essential vitamins etc. Supplementation could be needed if deficits are so bad that basic nutrition can't compensate for it.

Some epileptics probably won't see any benefit from increasing the serotonin levels as it may not be what is causing their seizures. Some of us might.

Nutrition and the Brain, why don't the doctors seem to know much about it? Or worse, they pooh-pooh it in favor of pharmacological toxins to help people with everything from mental illness to epiplepsy. If the body isn't getting proper nutrition or nutrition is not part of the treatment plan, how can one expect to see distinct improvements?

Edit:
Also both meditation and neuropathy have been shown to affect serotonin levels too.

From an interview with Mike Cohen,
Southern Institute of Psycho-Physiology, August 1996.

Reflections on the mechanisms underlying Neurofeedback
It seems to me that Neurofeedback has a lot of similarities to recent developments in psychiatry that involve modifying serotonin. Serotonin is the neurotransmitter of self-regulation. Prozac, among other SSRI class of drugs increases the available supply of serotonin thereby improving the self-regulation of dopamine and epinephrine, other regulators of our mood and behavior. The SSRI drugs involve direct modification of the chemical composition of the brain. Neurofeedback comes at it from a different angle, from changing the brains own self- regulation of its electrical system. If you think of the brain as a electro-chemical system, then it should be possible to get the same effect from entering from either direction. What is different about neurotherapy is that it draws upon the brain's very essence, its ability to modify its own performance.

 

[Herb]

The Other Brain Also Deals With Many Woes

Dear Bernard,

Knowing your advocacy for the use of biofeedback as a treatment option and the current discussion relating to stress and serotonin I found the following article of much interest to me and thought you and your readership might also have some interest too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/23/health/23gut.html

Warmly,
Herb

.

 

[lindy]

When my doctor told me about serotonin during her annual harangue about why she wanted me to take an antidepressant, it just made so much sense. Wish that she had given me this year's lecture when she first got on this antidepressant kick in 1998! If a lack of serotonin causes the brain to not function properly, then why wouldn't it be a consideration in ideopathic epilepsy? After all, what is a seizure except a malfunction of the old brain function?

 

[Herb]

Tilei,

The following presentation might be of some interest to you and the other participants. It is presented by the Infinite Mind Series, “Foods and Moods” and encompasses your discussion relating to serotonin etc.

http://www.lcmedia.com/mind389.htm

Warmly,
Herb
.

 

[Tilei]

Herb,

Thank you for posting the link. Alas, it is a 'real audio' file and I don't have that player on my computer. The last time I downloaded it to load it crashed the darn thing, so I avoid 'real audio' files. My player is the Windows Media Player.

It looks like they have been doing some interesting work on Moods and Foods up at MIT. I would like to know more about what they are finding out. Perhaps they have a transcript from the broadcast somewhere.

 

[stilldancing_98]

Wow. Stress. My dreams tell me everything. It's my son. He is very very sick. I dont know what to do. I am very stressed out to the limit. I am on Vimpat now and I'm not having seizures but I think it affect how I react to things.I do meditate.

 

[Rae1889]

I find having a good cry sometimes really helps. like just when I am so frustrated, I go in my room close the door, cuddle my pillow and cry. usually to a sad song soundtrack I have. it starts with sad frustrated or sappy moody songs and then it gets progressively faster and pumping and bouncing and really grooving so by the time i'm done crying I have songs i can sing and dance to.

EDIT: I think I just notified everyone on how nerdy i really am.

 

[Meetz1064]

Lolol

It's all good, Rae. We all have our own thing.......

 

[BuckeyeFan]

S-98

I hope things are better today. How is your son doing? Don't be afraid to vent on us or to me in a PM. Nothing said here will hurt my feelings.

Rae,

You are not nerdy. That comes from an middle age man that listens to Jewel's 'Pieces of Eight' CD quite often. (talk about some sad songs)

 

[alivenwell]

Hey, I like older music, too. Long before Jewel, too. Like Hendrix, Cream, and a few other old bands. Ironically, I have nothing by Jewel. I'll have to check it out. Most of my collection is classical music which definitely helps my stress level immensely. To be honest, I can't say any of my taste is extremely sad.

For me, exercise has been the trick to beat stress. And my canine companion is a lot of fun, too.