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News Physical Brain Changes Cause Ptsd? New Research

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Laura 2

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From the University of California Berkeley, February 2014:

Long-term stress causes changes in the brain’s white and grey matter which could help explain the link to emotional disorders and anxiety later in life.

People who have post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, have higher levels of grey matter in comparison to white matter.

It is thought that a change in the balance between the white and grey matter may disrupt the delicate timing involved in how parts of the brain communicate with each other.

This disruption may well be one of the biological underpinnings of serious mental disorders.

One of the study’s authors, Daniela Kaufer of UC Berkeley, said:

“We studied only one part of the brain, the hippocampus, but our findings could provide insight into how white matter is changing in conditions such as schizophrenia, autism, depression, suicide, ADHD and PTSD.”

The results come from the study of rats and cultured rat brain cells.

The researchers found that chronic stress made stem cells turn into oligodendrocytes, which produce the myelin or grey matter of the brain.

At the same time, chronic stress reduced the number of stem cells that became neurons.

Kaufer explained how this shift in the balance between grey and white matter might affect connectivity in the brain:

“You can imagine that if your amygdala and hippocampus are better connected, that could mean that your fear responses are much quicker, which is something you see in stress survivors.

On the other hand, if your connections are not so good to the prefrontal cortex, your ability to shut down responses is impaired.

So, when you are in a stressful situation, the inhibitory pathways from the prefrontal cortex telling you not to get stressed don’t work as well as the amygdala shouting to the hippocampus, ‘This is terrible!’ You have a much bigger response than you should.”

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Original paper published in Molecular Psychiatry, 11 Feb 2014:
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There is a long-known stress>abdominal fat gain correlate in research dating back to 1997:
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Essentially, when we're stressed we're more likely to get fat not just by comfort eating but through the action of cortisol, a stress hormone.

The UCB researchers propose that stress and trauma induces the brain to store more fat which is great medium for brain signals to zap around in. More and faster signals are not necessarily a good thing: in the case of PTSD and other anxiety disorders the researchers say that brain signals move too quickly and excessively in response to stimuli. Simple.

This could point the way to a whole new raft of treatments to control PTSD by controlling fat metabolism and storage. A PTSD diet plan and, of course, the pharmacos would make $billions if they could produce a pill to do the job of fat reduction!

 
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I find that juicing and eating natural foods (organic if I can) are best for me. My metabolism is very slow and digestive system is off so I tend to not be able to eat 'big foods' as my digestive cannot handle it.

My birth mother had cushings disease @Laura 2. After realizing all that I do about trauma I felt it came to her due to her traumatization of being in Germany as a child through WWII. She eventually died (at a young age) of sudden respiratory arrest. Are there other implications of a lack of cortisol that you know of?

I can attest to the fact that my head zaps like crazy! Thanks for this posting! Very helpful.
 
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Interesting! Fat is a pretty ubiquitous substance that would be really hard to target therapeutically for PTSD (imo), cause if you start messing with myelin you'll end up with something like Multiple Sclerosis. But the stress hormones (cortisol and glucocorticoids) that trigger the switch of neural stem cells into oligodendrocytes instead of neurons... that sounds like a promising area :)
 
My metabolism is very slow and digestive system is off

My birth mother had cushings disease Are there other implications of a lack of cortisol that you know of?

I can attest to the fact that my head zaps like crazy! Thanks for this posting! Very helpful.

I'm not a medic, just an academic, but the pattern of sx could be tied. I became interested in epigenetics several years ago, having taken a uni course in DNA. Epigenetics is the science of DNA changes as they occur due to e.g. diet restrictions, infectious and other diseases, severe stress and conditioning (that is, environmental stressors) and how these can become heritable. That is, can be directly passed on to children, grandchildren and later generations.

I have a close relative who has a serious cortisol and adrenal insufficiency. We are both descended from a grandparent who, like your birth mother, experienced growing up in wartime Germany and got out, whilst some of her relatives were shot or taken off to concentration camps.

All sorts of autonomic (self-regulating) body systems are affected by cortisol/adrenal insufficiency. For instance, low blood pressure and sudden faints are common, along with a gamut of digestive problems, type 1 diabetes and thyroid disease.

Not saying any of this applies to you. But I believe it's worth considering how the experiences of our forebears can have direct effects on us in ways that cannot easily be identified many decades on. As I've said, I just don't believe that 'PTSD' is as simple as a
purely mental condition that somehow arises in some people after a shock.
 
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I look at it in a slightly different way @Laura 2. I wonder to myself, due to the trauma that my birth parents (both of them) experienced during the war whether their behaviour was 'warped' enough and killing me was really 'nothing' to them. They had experienced that type of brutality all of their young lives. So we get to a nature vs. nurture type of thing. The crazy and insane things that happened to me while I was in their care and in foster homes before the age of 2 and then being placed into a fairly stable adoptive home I am guessing is what 'balanced' me for the majority of my life. I was rekindled at 45 through horrendous abuse at the hands of my ex. So to me that means nurture. Would love your take on this however. I am loving this debate! :hug:
 
Interesting! Fat is a pretty ubiquitous substance that would be really hard to target therapeutically for PTSD (imo), cause if you start messing with myelin you'll end up with something like Multiple Sclerosis. But the stress hormones (cortisol and glucocorticoids) that trigger the switch of neural stem cells into oligodendrocytes instead of neurons... that sounds like a promising area :)

@Bronswan - thank you for those points, I think you're right: it's not that simple (and my comments were rather flippant!) There are raw fats that the body assimilates more effectively than others and different types or grades of fat which a healthy body can process better than a weaker body. As we know now, there are 'good fats' and 'bad fats' too.

Your suggestion that neural stem cell switches could be targeted for pharmacopaeic intervention speaks for early diagnosis of PTSD/those at risk of PTSD. Maybe even pre-trauma vaccination type meds!

Overall, I feel this research has quite some potential for direct intervention via diet and/or drugs. The epidemic of PTSD may be a pressure to move forward on such research.
 
Bruce Perry has written an excellent book on how trauma shapes the developing brain - The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog. I'll give it a massive trigger warning though because it's a series of case studies on child abuse and neglect, very sensitively written and in many cases with happy endings, but it's still a book that discusses childhood traumas in great detail.

There are trials going on in hospitals for an immediate post-trauma PTSD vaccine (kinda). Propanolol, it's a beta-blocker that impairs the action of adrenaline and, because adrenaline is needed for memory formation, it might impair formation of the super-strong memories that underlie PTSD. I should do some reading and catch up on how that research is going actually...
 
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