Flashbacks Vs. Dissociation Vs. Hallucinations

[Bill Dickerson]

OK but that doesn't explain seeing my hand blown off. I never had my hand blown off and that's not part of my Trauma issue. I have seen lots of traumatic body injuries on kids but that doesn't seem to fit.

It doesn't seem to fall into the ....chemical imbalances, chemicals introduced into the body, seizures, brain injury, or injury to a part of the nervous system. I was advised it was probably stress induced. Can stress cause a chemical imbalance?

 

[Deaf Global Nomad]

Stress can definitely cause a chemical imbalance. That's basically what PTSD is. In extreme cases of depression and anxiety (and with that PTSD) can actually trigger full-blown psychoses.

 

[Bill Dickerson]

Is there a difference in stress and anxiety?

My teenagers sometimes had angst but a good DiNozzo fixes that. LOL

 

[Deaf Global Nomad]

You can measure stress in different ways: heart rate, breathing rate, sweat, cortisol level in the blood and saliva, adrenaline outpouring, etc... Anxiety is the #1 cause of stress... When you are anxious your body wants to react to get out of the situation: fight, flight, freeze, and some others like fawn, depending on the researcher.

Take a look at this website. It might help explain a few things:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight-or-flight_response

There are additional links at the bottom of the site.

 

[Bill Dickerson]

Can high cortisol and adrenaline levels cause chemical imbalance?

 

[NutritionNerd]

Anxiety is based on fear. Sometimes you generate fear through your thoughts and other times it is generated by your helpful Amygdala.

I think of the Amygdala as your auto pilot - it's mission is to keep you safe, it gets a feed of all sensory inputs just before your conscious brain gets them. If it senses danger that needs to be responded to faster than you can think, it may generate a flood of hormones and basically take over your body. That is how people can respond to emergency situations in such extraordinary ways. There is a feedback loop between your conscious thinking brain (your pilot) and the autopilot. That means you can turn off the autopilot when the alert is a false one, in which case the auto pilot sends out cancel chemicals on it's "flight or fight" response.

I believe that in PTSD that the wiring between the two control pits gets frayed (loss of neurons) so that the messages from the pilot don't get to the Autopilot fast enough to shut it off. I believe generalized anxiety is due to the Amygdala becoming overactive and generating a lot of traffic to the thinking brain (hippocampus) that is unable to feedback as effectively because of loss of neurons.

(I read a website that was someone's interpretation of science papers so I can't vouch for the absolute truth of the above which is why I say "I believe")

There is a really good book called "Why zebras don't get ulcers" that explains a lot of helpful stuff about how the HPA and stress interact to cause a variety of health and psychological problems.

 

[wife of]

In reply to Bill,yes is the short answer as can low cortisol levels,worth getting your cortisol levels checked as prolonged and repetitive stress responses such as flashbacks can cause the adrenal glands to become fatigued causing low cortisol levels (addisons desease) and this can aggrivate ptsd.
Hubby recently diagnosed with addisons and has started cortisol replacement pills which have made a huge improvement in duration and frequency of flashbacks and nightmares.

 

[Bill Dickerson]

What about high Levels or cortisol and adrenaline?

I can understand the extended adrenaline effect. For a couple of years I was always wired with the stuff or at least it felt that way.

For years before that I could go into very stressful situations and I was as cool as a cucumber. Nothing bothered me.

 

[wife of]

Its my understanding that high levels have you "wired" constantly and low levels will leave you fatigued and confused yet still able to kick into fight or flight...

 

[NutritionNerd]

Anytime your body has to overproduce a chemical in its system of chemicals an imbalance is almost guaranteed. For example the synthesis pathway for adrenaline is Phenylanaline->Tyrosine->Dopamine->Adrenaline (epinephrine). So guess what happens to your dopamine levels if you need a lot of adrenaline?? That might explain why high adrenaline feels good - it is preceded by high dopamine.

I can tell when I have low dopamine levels because I will want to do something but not be able to get my "get up and go" going.

I have a paper somewhere that said that high adrenaline lowered serotonin and dopamine availability in the brain. BTW serotonin isn't the innocent "feel good" chemical it's made out to be. It can be involved in making you feel aggressive. I noticed that I got more irritable/reactive after taking 5 HTP supplements post PTSD whereas before I got PTSD I was able to take them for a mood improvement.