INTRODUCTION
My studies in the science and art of Osteopathy have occupied more than 30 years and I have been privileged to be taught my many of the “great” osteopaths of the last 100 years. These include Edward Hall and Mr Middleton in the manipulation type of approach; Harold Magoun, Rollin Becker, Alan Becker, Ann Wales, Viola Fryman, John Harakal, Robert Fulford and lately Jim Jealous in the area of the involuntary mechanism. It has been a privilege to work in these exciting times of development and expansion in our understanding of the mechanisms that the body uses in resisting trauma and disease in an increasingly hostile environment.
Our course, all the best teachers in the world are of no use without the patients that provide the template for our growth in understanding and I have been very fortunate in the patients that have been sent to me. Dr Rollin Becker used to tell us that we need patients with a T and patience with a C to be an osteopath. Also there is an old truism in osteopathy that we get sent the patients that we deserve.
Dr Rollin Becker was the greatest influence in my professional life and I was lucky to meet him first in 1973-4, just 4 years or so into practice. He was an inspiration in the way that he encouraged us to listen to the patient’s tissues and accept humbly that the patient has the key to their problem (Diagnosis) and the key to the solution to the problem (Therapy) and we have to learn to listen to the process for change in the whole of the patient.
You will all have heard his statement many times that there are three ideas of what is wrong with the patient, firstly the patient’s idea of what is wrong; secondly the therapist’s ideas on what is wrong with the patient; thirdly the patient’s tissues idea of what is wrong. Then in his Texan drawl, he would add “I know which of the ideas that I trust.”
Professionally, when you treated with him, you would start to explain about the symptom pattern of the patient, the meandering of the Primary Respiratory Mechanism, the penetration of the Potency of the CSF into the tissues, the presence of pathological fulcra that were limiting the function of the Master Fulcrum in its attempt to balance the influences of the environment on the genetic and Subtle Body template that we call the patient. In reply he would kindly tell you to be quiet and provide “a listening post” or a fulcrum for the patient so that we can access the living being’s potential for their understanding of their potential for change.
He demanded that we listened to the expression of the Health of the patient as an expression of the Breath of Life and its permeation into the geometrical structure of the physical body and the occupation of space of the Subtle Bodies. He told me that this relationship with the patient is “a One to One relationship; not a One to one relationship.”
This was a tall order for the student that was struggling to develop consistency in their “thinking feeling knowing fingers” that were trying to make sense of the multiplicity of information entering his awareness but Rollin was a kind but demanding teacher.
It was not just esoteric information that he shared, one day we were looking at one of my more difficult patients that suffered from exaggerated involuntary Chorea type movements especially when she was treated. We worked together to find the stillness in her involuntary movements that could allow access to the deep Stillness in the Involuntary Primary Respiratory Mechanism. After a few minutes he asked me if she ever fell off the table, I said “No, not yet!” “Good” he said, “we can work with her”.
Philosophically, we talked about our interest in the Philosophy of Osteopathy, and the Origins of Health in the overall understanding of the function of Man as an expression of the same Unique Wisdom that expresses itself as the Universe.
One of the problems that the Osteopath has as a “Thinker not a Tinker” in his understanding of the patient’s role in their Health pattern is to understand their relationship with “their Innate Wisdom that give the body form and maintains it in existence”[1]. “Our existence is totally dependent on this Original matrix (a complete balance of structure and function) expressing its intention.”[2]
Dr Becker and Dr Sutherland were great friends with Walter Russell (1871-1963) who introduced them to the concept of Oneness of Being.
"Motion is an extension of stillness in all created things"[3]
This enabled them to develop a language that was able to express what they were feeling under their hands such as Reciprocal Tension, Expansion Recession motion as an inherent motion in Being, Self-Knowledge as a guiding energetic principle in our journey in this plane of Being. Walter Russell taught them about Balanced Rhythmic Interchange whereby rhythmic motion was the organisational energy of the whole universe.
Further ideas of Russell were to be developed by Sutherland and Becker that you might recognise:
- LIGHT: “Light is the highest known element”
- LIFE: “Life belongs in principle to motion”
- MOTION: “All motion is periodic and evolutionary”. Evolution is the desire of the One to create the multiplicity from the ONE.
- BREATH: “The universe breathes in inhalation and exhalation”; thus “All motion is oscillatory, as a pulsating inbreathing and outbreathing, as an inhalation and exhalation, which is a characteristic of all motion whether it is in units, or systems, or mass.”
- MATTER: “Matter is light gravitationally assembled into the appearance of form and radically dissembled into the disappearance of form”
One time, we were treating my wife after a day teaching a SCTF course, when he introduced me to the infinity of possibilities inherent in the Stillness that goes both back in time and into the future but at the same time are radically present. We read out aloud his friend Loren Eiseley passage from "The Immense Journey" that to him was an archetypal description for the descent into Stillness.
"Imagine for a
moment, that you have drunk from a magician's goblet. Reverse the irreversible
stream of time. Go down the dark stairwell out of which the race has ascended.
Find yourself at last on the bottommost steps of time, slipping, sliding, and
wallowing by scale and fin down into the muck and ooze out of which you arose.
Pass by grunts and voiceless hissings below the last tree ferns. Eyeless and earless,
float in the primal waters, sense sunlight you cannot see and stretch absorbing
tentacles towards vague tastes that float in water. Still, in your formless
shiftings, the YOU remains: the sliding particles, the juices, the
transformations are working in an exquisitely patterned rhythm which has no
other purpose than your preservation- you, the entity, the amoeboid being whose
substance contains the unfathomable future. Even so does every man come upwards
from the waters of his birth"[4]
This is not idle speculation, the understanding of the process of Being is necessary to fully be aware of the potential in the patient. The understanding of the true form of the individual, that we call a patient, helps us to read the sensory information that our CNS is exposed to in our work.
“When you are dealing with the highest known energy that’s available, it does not want anyone interfering with what it is trying to do.” Becker
The energetic relationship of Man/microcosm to his environment/macrocosm is best understood by looking at the basic tri-gram of the I Ching that places Man firmly between Heaven and Earth:
HEAVEN
MAN
EARTH
OR rather Man acting as an intermediary between Heaven and Earth.
We can also relate the human form to a circle. The circumference of the circle is the physical, the radii are the interface of the sensory and psychic in the individual and the centre is the spiritual. The space between the centre and circumference is the place to which the soul descends at conception.
Our understanding of modern physics helps us to understand the relationship between the physical and subtle energy realms.
The energy of the Physical Body exists in Positive Space and Time, i.e. it travels below the speed of light, whereas the energy of the Subtle Bodies exists in Negative Space and Time, i.e. it travels above the speed of light. The existence of matter travelling faster than the speed of light was postulated by Einstein.[5] The multi-dimensional frequency domains, i.e. subtle body realms, are by definition in a negative entropy state, the energy they exhibit being of the type that pulls matter towards order and therefore these energies are always moving towards a state of balance and order. The energy in the Subtle Body realms will therefore have a harmonizing and balancing influence on the Physical Body.
The knowledge of the physical form is best read at an energetic level in terms of motion. “The physical form is of great importance; nothing can be done without the consociation of the form and the essence. However often you may sow a seed stripped of the pod, it will not grow. Sow it with the pod, it will become a great tree. From this point of view, the body is fundamental and necessary for the realisation of the Divine intention.”[6]
The knowledge of the psychic form is best read through the sense of:
· Common sense which is the ability to perceive the form of things
· Imagination which is the ability to perceive meanings
· Intelligence which is the ability to preserve the form
· Memory which is the ability to preserve meanings
· Active Imagination that perceives both the form and the meaning of the experience; the one without the other is a greatly reduced learning experience. This intuitive ability maintains the balance between sensory data and understanding in our search for the Health in the patient.
There
is evidence of the Wholeness of Being at this point of balance, of the state
associated with the emergence of the Neutral; the Tide starts to manifest areas
of imbalance where it will generate a Therapeutic Process.
The
rhythmic balanced interchange in all the fluids potentiates the self awareness
of the tissues that are not fully functional. Listening and observing the
therapeutic process appears to facilitate the multiple fulcra that the
physiology sets up to increase function in all body systems.
These discussions lead us to the concept of working with the Oneness of the patient in relation to the first differentiation of the Oneness, i.e. the differentiation of opposites which in the Chinese we are used to thinking as Yin and Yang principles.
Therapeutically we consider our position as that of being simultaneously Active and Passive. We are active in our preparedness to listen, our preparedness to conceive of the possibilities inherent in Being, we are passive in our receptivity; what Guerdieff called being actively passive. Ibn Arabi wrote in the Fusus al Hikam “There is no distinction between the two qualities (active and passive), because the receptivity, which is the power to receive, is perfectly equal to the power to act”.
Through the process of understanding this principle started by Dr Still, expanded by Dr Sutherland, then Dr Rollin Becker and continued to be developed by Dr Jealous in the present time, we provide a Neutral point of balance for the active- passive principle in both ourselves and our patient to bring their consciousness into direct contact with their Health pattern.
This neutral point of balance includes the neutral for the form and meaning of the individual, so that their Being is “washed” from the effusion of the Breath of Life that maintains our Being.
This neutral point of balance includes the Sutherland fulcrum that balances the forces operating on the tissues in all planes of Being. Note that the Sutherland fulcrum started at the anterior tip of the notochord at the laminar terminalis before the spiralling of the CNS and takes up its new position of suspension to make the operation of the reciprocal tension membrane more effective.
This neutral point of balance allows us to “shift our perceptual field”[7] to perceive various oscillations of motion in the Being. There are a number of known rhythms that have been elicited which could be evaluated by the following model:
- We start with an ocean of Infinity that just is; there are no attributes such as motion
- There is a differentiation into a drop in the ocean that is our individualisation that never stops being part of the ocean
- This drop differentiates into two potential relative opposites that we call Yin and Yang or the Feminine and Masculine principles
- These differentiate into the 5 elements of earth, metal, fire, water and wood
- These coalesce into the 8 Ancestral channels that are the Seas of energy in the body that have motion in a 60 day cycle
- These energise the 12 main meridians that permeate the whole body, acting as an interface between the dense physical structure and the Subtle Bodies; these have a motion in a 24 hour cycle. These 12 meridians couple into Yin and Yang relationships to form 6 Specific Energies that have a motion in a 2 hour cycle. The Specific Energies are Greater Yang, Sunrise Yang and Lesser Yang in the Yang meridians; Greater Yin, Lesser Yin and Absolute Yin in the Yin meridians. Each Specific Energy consists of a meridian running along the arm and a meridian running along the leg.
- These Specific Energies are in intimate relationship with the lymphatic system at their Hung points with a motion that occurs 6 times in ten minutes (100 second cycle)(Long Tide). Like all the previous rates, it is non variable. The potency of the Breath of Life is perceived directly when our perceptual field is directed towards this motion. This motion is the creator of form and function. Its fulcrum is the eternally present Dynamic Stillness that emanates from the Oneness.
- The neutral state naturally directs the attention to a rate of motion of 2/ per minute. The attention is shifted by the motion within the fluid, whereas in the previous state, the attention was consciousness, the presence of Dynamic Stillness.
- There are other rates that are variable and if correctly assisted towards their neutral, they will express a more integrated and therapeutic rate.
It was not just those rates that Rollin was interested in, we read Loren Eisley again:
"If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water."10
Once in a lifetime, perhaps, one escapes the
actual confines of flesh. Once in a
lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with sunlight and air and running water
that whole eons, the eons that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a
single afternoon without discomfort.
The mind has sunk away into its beginnings among old roots and the obscure tricklings and movings that stir inanimate things. Like the charmed fairy circle into which a man once stepped, and upon emergence learned that a whole century had passed in a single night, one can never quite define this secret; but it has something to do, I am sure, with common water. Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past and prepares the future; it moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of the air. It can assume forms of the exquisite perfection in a snowflake, or strip the living to a single shining bone cast up by the sea."11
It was then that I felt the cold needles of
the alpine springs at my finger tips, and the warmth of the Gulf pulling me
southwards. Moving with me, leaving
its taste upon my mouth and spouting under me in dancing springs of sand, was
the immense body of the continent itself, flowing like the river was flowing,
grain by grain, mountain by mountain, down to the sea....I was wearing down the
face of time and trundling cloud-wreathed ranges into oblivion. I touched my margins with the delicacy of a
crayfish's antennae, and felt great fishes glide about their work.
...I was streaming alive through the hot and working ferment of the sun, or oozing secretively through shady thickets. I was water and the unspeakable alchemies that gestate and take shape in water, ....turtle and fish and the pinpoint chirpings of individual frogs are all watery projections, concentrations - as man himself is a concentration - of that indescribable and liquid brew which is compounded in varying proportions of salt and sun and time. It has appearances, but at its heart lies water, and as I was finally edged gently against a sandbar and dropped like any log, I tottered as I rose. I knew once more the body's revolt against emergence into the harsh and unsupporting air, its reluctance to break contact with that mother element which still, at this late point in time, shelters and brings into being nine tenths of everything alive."12
"I, too, was a microcosm of pouring rivulets and floating driftwood gnawed by the mysterious animalcules of my own creation. I was three fourths water, rising and subsiding according to the hollow knocking in my veins: a minute pulse like the eternal pulse that lifts the Himalayas and which, in the following systole, will carry them away."13
The shift in perception described above allows the Tide to demonstrate a therapeutic process which will often continue after your treatment session has finished. Rollin often stopped the treatment saying time to get off and allow the therapeutic process to continue without our interference. In fact he persuaded me to move from a half hour list to a twenty minute list. In this time I had to be much clearer in my attention and accuracy; and not allow myself time to “windscreen wipe” as he called it.
THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS
The natural
therapeutic process of the Whole being is to Know itself.
This can be at a
spiritual, emotional, mechanical, fluid, biochemical level as expressed by the
Tide.
We evaluate this
process in the Inhalation phase of motion where “phenomena disengage within
their reciprocal tensions during inhalation”
This therapeutic
process starts in the embryo as the breath of Life organises the cells as the
human being is created and continues through life until our death. As awareness
of the areas of dysfunction becomes apparent to the Therapeutic process that
has been initiated in the patient, automatic
shifting occurs moving from one area to another, often continuing long
after the therapist has stopped observing. This automatic shifting occurs out
of the Dynamic Stillness.
“The silence was full and then
something moved, and the movement was Stillness” Krishnamurti
The role of the extracellular matrix
All knowledge is paradoxical, in that if you affirm one statement, you can usually find another piece of information that would guide you towards another point of view. Our understanding of the physics of light is a good example whereby we need both the wave theory and the particle theory to explain all of the phenomena of light. Just one of the theories does not explain all our experiences in relation to light.
In a similar way, however tempting it was to continue to develop my skills in being an actively passive listener to the needs of the patient as the only route i.e. in the way described above, my clinical experiences started me on a tangential hunt for understanding of this therapeutic process.
HOMEOSTATIC MECHANISMS
The organism as a network system:
The human being can be defined as an intermeshed, self regulating system in a state of oscillation and that the whole being functions as a network system that shares information. This network system is of course a subsystem of the environment which is a subsystem of the universe in endless diversity.
This is just what we were saying in the first section but in different language.
REGULATION OF THE ORGANISM AS A CYCLICAL PROCESS:
To BE self regulating there must be a system that recognises deviations from the norm and there must be a system that corrects the deviation, both with minimal loss of energy. These deviations and corrections should be a gentle oscillation of a frequency specific to the tissue’s form and the tissue’s function. This motion should be able to be read and evaluated. If the oscillation is too gross or too rapid, this indicates pathology in that system. This means that the tissue requires too much energy to maintain function.
This can be called a regulatory disturbance, the main causes of which are failure of intracellular communication. Cytokines, neurotransmitters and hormones are the main known methods of cells communicating with each other and the whole organism.
These whole body systems communicate information in two ways:-
· Spatially – i.e. the spread of information in a spatial direction so as to organise tissues
· Temporally i.e. the spread of information chemically to a target cell or a receptor on a cell to tell the cell to alter its chemistry.
We used to consider that this information was spread either chemically or electrically, but in fact, all the information is mediated chemically. The information mediated through the nervous system eventually is mediated by neurotransmitters at the synapse. Even the information travelling down the nerve is a change in the movement of small ions across the nerve membrane.
These communication channels can be modified in several ways such as toxin poisoning of metabolic pathways and various genetic deficiencies. See chart below.
Hans Selye developed the Adaptation Syndrome to describe this process for long term stresses in the system.
Another model that I developed was to think of the body of the individual as a hard drive in a computer. When adaptation occurs, if all the essential components for healing are not available, then a process of adaptation occurs than restricts an area in some way, or restricts a metabolic pathway globally or in specific organ or tissue. An example would be a patient with a viral influenza that had a bad fall. The individual would need ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) for both immune enhancing to both protect and combat the influenza, but would also need the ascorbic acid to heal the trauma to the collagen and other musculoskeletal tissues. If the diet provided enough ascorbic acid then both requirements could be met; but if the diet was ascorbic acid deficient, then the network computer system would have to develop a strategy to cope. Amongst the options would include:
· Restrict ascorbic acid to the immune system
· Restrict ascorbic acid to the area of the musculoskeletal system that had been traumatised
· Restrict ascorbic acid to another area or tissue that the network considers needs it less than the first two areas.
This strategy would work fine, provided that the deficiency was addressed quite quickly or if a series of other adaptations does not occur that overlap this adaptation. If the already weakened area is further traumatised later, then you could have several layers of adaptation that limit the areas ability to resist trauma and disease.
The weakened area of several layers of adaptation could then be likened to an area of corrupted memory on a hard drive on a computer and therefore it would be limited in both form, function and motion and not know how to be corrected. It would not be any good giving ascorbic acid because the strategy to restrict ascorbic acid to that tissue had never been rescinded.
The question was how could I get the body to recognise the problems associated with these adaptations?
As already mentioned, the answer had to be in the area in the way the physical body communicated with itself both locally and globally. So I started to look at the role of neurotransmitters.
Neurotransmitters have a role in the control of the internal environment and could therefore be a key to the modification that the body made in the adaptation process that has failed to be turned off. We already knew that certain acupuncture points on the cranium act as reflex points for neurotransmitters. I started to look at the sensory information that I experienced from the patient with and without touching these reflex points.
What was fascinating was when I started to look at the role of these neurotransmitters via their reflex points, I found that the pattern of the motion of the Primary Respiratory Mechanism was different than when the reflex point was not touched.
Eventually, I began to understand the body’s strategy in that when we listened to the Mechanism normally, we assess data about the global strategy that the body uses to evaluate its physiology and this will lead us to a global still point, a bit like peeling off the concentric rings of an onion.
On the other hand, when we assess data whilst holding the relevant acupuncture point of the neurotransmitter that holds the adaptation strategy of the pathological fulcrum that the body needs to integrate, a causal chain will become more apparent to “our thinking, feeling, and knowing fingers”. This has proved over the last 10 years or so to be invaluable in facilitating both the development of the Neutral, the process of Automatic Shifting and the penetration of the Dynamic Stillness.
These neurotransmitters are designed to be a balancing fulcrum around a setpoint, i.e. the balance between the neurotransmitters that are neuronal activators and neuronal inhibitors. In terms of emotions, when they are in balance, we have appropriate mood, mind, memory, and behaviour, but when they are in imbalance -- too much inhibition or too much excitation -- we can shift either to a depressive disorder or to an excitatory disorder like manic depression or schizophrenia. [8]
The general hypothesis is that the firing of a neuron results from an approximate balance between its excitatory and inhibitory inputs. This depends on the control of serotonin, dopamine, and gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA) neurotransmitters.
Using these neurotransmitter access points we are able to look at the relationship of the dynamic balance of the Mechanism to the general state of arousal of the central nervous system, hormone system and neurotransmitter system.
INTRODUCTION TO NEUROTRANSMITTERS AND ADAPTATION
Spinal display:
· Tissue texture changes
· Altered range of motion
· Altered motility as it expresses the Breath of Life; primary Respiration
· Anatomical asymmetry
· Hypersensitivity to touch
We can use these indicators to measure tissue function and the tissues control by the Whole Being.
The spinal display is largely controlled by the small fibre b-afferent nerve fibres that either non myelinated or slightly myelinated. These respond to nociceptive influences (that is mechanical damage and chemical damage) and have a general adaptation response. They become sensitised by repeated stimulation.
It is important to realise that this stimulation can be below threshold that would produce pain but is still causing sensitisation of neural pathways.
These sensory inputs are from the small fibre innervation of muscle, nerves themselves (they innervate the nerve sheath), blood vessels, capsules of joints, but not cartilage (unless the cartilage has become degenerated or vascularised), into the peripheral / of the intervertebral disc, meninges and viscera.
This increased sensitisation causes an “afferent drive” into the spinal cord so that normal motion, that before did not cause pain, now does. So this process causes pain, altered motion and modified spinal symmetry (ventral horn facilitation) without the initial cause of the pain being present,.
This afferent drive causes CNS facilitation via its ascending connections into the cortex, thalamus and reticular formation (i.e. via spinothalamic tract and spinoreticular tract).
- SEROTONIN (mental and craving patterns)
A kinetic response to Bladder 1 indicates an imbalance in the metabolic pathway of serotonin.
- Implicated in schizophrenia
- 95% of the body's serotonin is in the gut
- 90% in the enterochromaffin cells
- 10% percent in enteric neurons.
- Serotonin is released in response to increases in pressure, glucose, or acid.
- Serotonin has complex actions;
- It can result in smooth-muscle contraction or relaxation.
- It stimulates both intrinsic and extrinsic sensory neurons, modulating sensation via 5HT receptors.
- Regulates appetite, sexual function, and mood.
- Higher postprandial serum levels of serotonin have been observed in diarrhoea-predominant IBS
- Women have only about two thirds as much serotonin in their brains as men and they synthesize only about two thirds as much as men. This may be why the incidence of depression and obesity tends to be higher in women.
- Two types of syndromes of deficiency:
- The mood symptoms are usually depression, anger, sadness, and loss of energy.
- The appetite symptoms are carbohydrate craving and subsequent weight gain.
- Meaney et al.[9] have shown that reduced stress reactions are mediated by increased turnover of serotonin in the hippocampus. If children are stimulated and cared for in infancy and childhood then they have reduced response to stress and fearfulness. "It will be important to demonstrate in further research," according to the editorial, "whether harsh and adverse conditions during early childhood are indeed responsible for the clustering of health-damaging biologic, behavioural, and psychosocial factors among adults with lower SES (socio-economic strata)."
- Children with autism have an elevated serotonin level.
- 100% of blood serotonin is derived from the gut so autistic children have defective serotonin behaviour in the gut so autism is probably a disease of both nervous systems, the CNS and the enteric nervous system (ENS).
- Serotonin is precursor of Melatonin
- Ginkgo biloba and St. John's Wort may influence serotonin metabolism and/or production.
- Serotonin production is severely upset by carbohydrate diets
- Chlorpyrifos, the number one pesticide in your average garden, inhibits the conversion of tryptophan to serotonin in the same way that drugs like Prozac work. The problem is that in the food chain, they are also combined with other pesticides and "inert" ingredients that involve a host of other problems. Many of the so called “inert substances”, for example, include Dieldrin which inhibits norepinephrine and dopamine synthesis in the brain.
- KININS (Inflammation)
A kinetic response to Stomach 1 indicates an imbalance in the metabolic pathways of kinins and histamine.
- These individuals have modified hypersensitivity responses such as allergies and asthma.
- Kinins initiate the release of Substance P from the peripheral end of sensory fibres having a proinflammatory effect on the local tissue i.e. dilating capillaries, degranulating mast cells and attracting lymphocytes and granulocytes (to stimulate collagen to repair), and the release of prostaglandins.
- ACETYLCHOLINE (muscle imbalance, brain ageing)
A kinetic response to Gall Bladder 1 is mostly associated with adaptation to acetylcholine in that individual.
- Acetylcholine is an essential neurotransmitter in muscle function and abnormal re-circulation of acetylcholine is a major problem in sensitivity to pesticides that are acetyl cholinesterase inhibitors.
- Following the MMR vaccine, the measles antigen cross-reacts with the intermediate filaments that are essential for the maintenance of the tight junctions in the gut wall. The mucosal cell integrity is vitally important for absorption of CoA, which is the critical enzyme when choline is converted to acetylcholine, hence blocking the production of acetylcholine? Many of these patients have elevated cholesterol and VLDL/LDL. These are 2-year-old children eating three fruits and two vegetables, and chicken nuggets, and they have serum cholesterols over 200 mg/dl.
- Failure of acetylcholine production in the hippocampus is one of the measurable precursors of Alzheimer’s disease.
- EXCITATORY NEUROTRANSMITTERS
A kinetic response to Triple Warmer 23 is mostly associated with adaptation in the excitatory neurotransmitters; i.e. aspartate, asparagine, proline, cysteine and glutamate. In excess, these neurotransmitters could be seen as neuroexcitotoxic amino acids that could overly stimulate receptor sites on the neurones related to neuroexcitation.
- Clinical conditions that respond to drugs that act on glutaminergic (NB glutamine not glutamate) transmission include epilepsy, amnesia, anxiety, hyperalgesia and psychosis (perhaps even schizophrenia).
- NOREPINEPHRINE (Noradrenalin) (Stress response)
A kinetic response to SI 19 indicates an imbalance in the metabolic chemistry of norepinephrine (b-adrenergic). Pathway goes on to produce catecholamines and tyrosine and hence thyroxine. Norepinephrine is a biogenic amine that regulates both the central and peripheral nervous system. It is produced in the reticular formation in the midbrain, pons and medulla oblongata. Peripherally, they are the ganglionic fibres of the sympathetic nervous system innervating visceral organs, hormone secreting cells, heart muscle, immune system and the lymphatic system.
- Noradrenalin (norepinephrine) increased production is the initial response to stress along with the activation of cortisol from the adrenal glands. Stress can be induced as a result of:
- Opportunistic infections of a chronic nature, viral infections, bacterial infections, parasitic infections in the gut
- Exposure to chemicals
- Psychological stress
- Trauma and inflammation
- Those factors not only initiate even higher levels of alarm hormones and but also oxidative stress which continues the vicious circle, even if the initiating injury or trauma has stopped. This response is dependent on damage to DNA. RNA, proteins, lipids, and cellular organizational materials like phospholipids. These are all associated with ageing.[10]
- Increased norepinephrine production within the brain tends to lower blood pressure.
- Norepinephrine is present in the sympathetic nerves, which can inhibit secretion or GI motility.
- Sensitive to tyrosine or DL phenylalanine nutritional intake
- INHIBITORY NEUROTRANSMITTERS (Stress)
A kinetic response to LI 20 indicates an imbalance in the pathways of the inhibitory neurotransmitters glycine, g-aminobutyric acid or glutamine pathways.
- GABA is an important inhibitory neurotransmitter that helps to counteract cravings and stress in individuals. A pyridoxal 5-phosphate dependent decarboxylase enzyme from L-glutamate forms GABA.
- In schizophrenia the affinity of the MNDA receptor for its natural ligand glutamate, is decreased. Glycine increases the affinity of the receptor for glutamate, thereby increasing glutaminergic neurotransmission. Glycine, given in very high doses, therefore, has been shown to improve function of these schizophrenic patients who did not respond to traditional anti-schizophrenic medications.[11]
- Glycine is also an important Phase II liver detoxification metabolite.
- Glutamate stands at the interface between amino acid and carbohydrate metabolism, playing an important switching role between protein metabolism and carbohydrate metabolism as well as its neurological function. Glutamate neurotransmitter activity is involved in memory, cognition, and spinal cord response to nociception, motor fibre function, and neuroendocrine regulation. Prolonged stimulation of the receptors for glutamate caused the ejection of magnesium and the transmission of calcium into the cell. This is one of the mechanisms of neurotoxicity and the initiation of apoptosis in the nerve cells.
