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What Happens in Vagas...
Stays in Our Nervous System Inviting Anxiety
Homeopathy is an excellent modality to consider if you suffer from anxiety or panic attacks. Clearing the “mis-attunement” can take a bit of time ~ often because the symptoms of anxiety can be complex and interconnected. When treating those with anxiety symptoms, it is helpful to balance all aspects of life: physical, thought patterns, and emotions (in addition to the energetic ~ homeopathy).
Science is showing us that cultivating good digestive health is a crucial piece of the treatment puzzle. Research is showing that the bacteria in your gut can directly affect your behavior and emotions…. This might be surprising for many, however it’s a critical, and often overlooked factor in treating anxiety.
Healing and restoring balance to one’s digestive tract can make a huge difference in symptoms. Your digestive tract can be damaged by chronic stress, medication use and exposure to foods that aren’t great for your body (to name a few).
Many factors besides poor digestive health may contribute to your symptoms. Maybe you’re in an unhealthy relationship, suffer from low self-esteem, struggle with panic attacks, or worry needlessly about little things. No matter what the issues that are contributing to your anxiety, experiencing it can leave you feeling isolated, scared and mentally exhausted.
When it comes to treating emotional distress homeopathy can take you far but we need to address the barriers to healing. We need to utilize multiple agents of change for the most beneficial way to experience relief. For example, when treating anxiety, it’s extremely beneficial not only to receive bodywork therapies and talk therapy, but also to change your diet, exercise, patterns of self-talk, methods of self-care and introduce relaxation techniques.
Working on balancing your gut flora can be a very healing addition to the aforementioned therapies. While research is still emerging, science is supporting the idea that your gut bacteria affects your emotional health.
Dr. Michael Gershon first brought this groundbreaking science to the public with his lab studies with rodents. He was first prompted to study the connection because of his interest in serotonin; 90% of our serotonin is produced and manufactured in the gut! He wrote, The Second Brain, which describes the role of the digestive tract in regulating emotional health and decision making.
Some fascinating research has been conducted to further this idea. Researchers swapped the bacteria in anxious mice and fearless mice by changing diet, adding probiotics. They found that the timid mice actually started taking more risks and acting more gregarious and the opposite also happened: the fearless mice acted more timid.
In a 2013 study published in Gastroenterology, researchers studied the effects of probiotics in humans. After 4 weeks of ingesting probiotics, they scanned the brains of each participant. The researchers found subtle signs that the brain circuits involved in anxiety were less reactive.
But, how do the brain and the gut communicate? The brain and the gut are in constant communication via the vagus nerve, a large nerve that connects the two.
The concept of “gut feeling” and butterflies in your stomach is actually a real thing! In a study conducted in Ireland, researchers found that when the vagus nerve was cut in mice, they no longer saw the brain respond based on changes to the rodent’s gut flora.
Scientists have also begun to study certain neurochemicals that have not been described before being produced by certain bacteria, thus suggesting that gut microbes can produce their own version of neurotransmitters. This is another way that gut microbes may communicate with the brain.
Gut Vagal Afferents Differentially Modulate Innate Anxiety and Learned Fear
~ Melanie Klarer, Myrtha Arnold, Lydia Günther, Christine Winter, Wolfgang Langhans and Urs Meyer
Abstract (at bit dense, but really amazing)
Vagal afferents are an important neuronal component of the gut–brain axis allowing bottom-up information flow from the viscera to the CNS. In addition to its role in ingestive behavior, vagal afferent signaling has been implicated modulating mood and affect, including distinct forms of anxiety and fear.
Here, we used a rat model of subdiaphragmatic vagal deafferentation (SDA), the most complete and selective vagal deafferentation method existing to date, to study the consequences of complete disconnection of abdominal vagal afferents on innate anxiety, conditioned fear, and neurochemical parameters in the limbic system.
We found that compared with Sham controls, SDA rats consistently displayed reduced innate anxiety-like behavior in three procedures commonly used in preclinical rodent models of anxiety, namely the elevated plus maze test, open field test, and food neophobia test. On the other hand, SDA rats exhibited increased expression of auditory-cued fear conditioning, which specifically emerged as attenuated extinction of conditioned fear during the tone re-exposure test.
The behavioral manifestations in SDA rats were associated with region-dependent changes in noradrenaline and GABA levels in key areas of the limbic system, but not with functional alterations in the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal grand stress.
Our study demonstrates that innate anxiety and learned fear are both subjected to visceral modulation through abdominal vagal afferents, possibly via changing limbicneurotransmitter systems.
These data add further weight to theories emphasizing an important role of afferent visceral signals in the regulation of emotional behavior.
FLU SEASON AND VITAMIN D DEFICIENCY
With flu season upon us and serious new viruses making the rounds, keeping blood levels of vitamin D at optimal levels can be truly lifesaving especially for children and the elderly.
Flu is actually vitamin D deficiency disease, not a happenstance occurrence in your life because you didn’t get a flu shot or sat next to a coughing person on the train to work.
Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council and one of the most preeminent Vitamin D researchers in the world today, has identified that vitamin D helps produce the antimicrobial peptides that protect against the flu.
This is why people are more prone to the flu in winter when Vitamin D producing sunshine is minimal or nonexistent at some latitudes, or people are too bundled up to get enough skin exposed in the first place.
Bolstering Dr. Cannell’s suggestion that vitamin D deficiency is why people get the flu, a study published in the journal Nature Immunology further explains how vitamin D protects us by properly activating T cells, an important part of the immune system:
“When a T cell is exposed to a foreign pathogen, it extends a signaling device or ‘antenna’ known as a vitamin D receptor, with which it searches for vitamin D.
This means the T cell must have vitamin D or activation of the cell will cease. If the T cells cannot find enough vitamin D in the blood, they won’t even begin to mobilize.”
This is troubling given that vitamin D levels were reported by the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2009 to have plummeted for every single age, race, and ethnic group in the United States over the past two decades.
Vitamin D deficiency is such that it can lurk unnoticed until it is too late and you are already sick. Another challenge is that it takes time, usually at least several weeks, to raise vitamin D levels and so a few days of taking supplements is not going to cut it especially if you have a serious deficiency challenge to overcome or already have the flu.
~ Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
ANNUAL FLU CLINIC Happening Now!
Influenzinum 2014-2015 is an excellent choice for flu prevention.
If you have opted for the flu vaccine, homeopathic Influenzinum 2014-2015 can enforce the vaccine's actions. Influenzinum 2014-2015 also helps to alleviate adverse reactions to a flu shot.
You receive all the doses you will need for the season
Access to me for questions and concerns
CALL TO SCHEDULEYOUR SESSION 612.715.0782
Check out my budget friendly offerings for 2015 ~ HEALTHY AND STRONG.
Registration and sign up starts now.
You deserve an “upstream” approach to wellness. Give your body’s natural immune balance a reset by providing the right conditions for it to thrive.
Consistency is the answer to sustained wellness and health. Harness your capacity to heal ~ be pain free the natural drug-free way!
BODYWORK ON A BUDGET: HEALTHY AND STRONG
What if it was possible to get bodywork when you actually need it?
You get 9 sessions of Rolfing or Craniosacral therapy in a 12 month period for only $96 a month (January to January). Your credit card is billed monthly, no fuss, no worry.
That’s a savings of over $200
Get the wellness work you deserve ~ receive bodywork every six weeks, or whenever you NEED it.
HOMEOPATHY, A NATURAL MEDICINE: HEALTH AND STRONG
With the HEALTHY and STRONG plan, you can get the help you need, regularly and quickly. You get access to me via phone or email whenever you need ~ I am here for you when you need me.
After the initial intake, we have a regular 50 minute check-in every 6 weeks for a 12 month period (including one remedy) ~ for only $68 a month. Your credit card is billed monthly.
You get peace of mind knowing that all your homeopathic needs are covered.
You save over $200 annually!
Keep yourself on track, as we continue to identify and treat the underlying causes of illness, and co-create a plan for health and healing using natural medicinal therapies and regular bodywork.
MARZIPAN MOMENTS...
This Fall has been an amazing weather experience. I feel like we sorta earned it just by enduring last winter's freezing and spring's deep rain.
Marzipan can't get enough.
With this warmth and wind, I have noticed that Marz is a bit sneezy and uncomfortable.
I realized she must have seasonal allergies.
There are tons, and I mean tons, of homeopathic remedies in the pharmacology. I could have taken her "case" and with the totality of symptoms come up with a remedy that fit for her allergies.
But because I know her constitutional remedy ~ the remedy made of the substance that her being wants to help it reach balance, I decided to go with that. Her preferred remedy is Silica.
I put the cell salt, meaning silica in the 12c potency, in her water each day for a week.
It worked, she was more comfortable and stopped sneezing.
