Dr. Chung
A Brain on Fire - Part II
A Brain on Fire - Part II
Read Part I Here
Anti-inflammatory diet (low glycemic, high vegetable, high omega-3)
Probiotics and pre-biotics
Fecal Matter Transplant (sounds crazy, but it is getting a lot of attention for Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth) However, it should be noted that it can take a long time to create lasting change in the health of our gut bacteria. The HPA Axis The Hypothalamic-pituitary axis is a fancy term for the place where your brain and your endocrine system meet. Your brain has the capacity to regulate hormone function by constatly monitoring the level of hormones in the blood, and getting neural feedback from nerves like the Vagus nerve. It all begins with a chunk of your brain called the hypothalamus. While it's functions and actions exibit an extraordinary amount of complexity, for the purposes of today's explanation, it's like the thermostat for your body. Just like the thermostat of your house reacts to subtle changes to the internal environment and reacts with AC/Heat, your hypothalamus gets signals about your internal environment and tells your pineal gland release powerful hormones into the blood stream. For years, Chiropractors have been using the HPA axis as the model for how the spine can impact other bodily systems.
Movement vs. Pain There are 2 terms you need to be familiar with: Mechanorecption and Nociception
Mechanorecption - is a type of nerve signal that goes up to the brain whenever a joint or muscle moves. For the purposes of this article, we will call it a movement signal.
Nociception - a type of nerve signal that indicates noxious stimulus. It's a signal that fires into the brain whenever there's an indicator that something is wrong. These nerve signals can create a pain sensation, but they are not synonymous. The reason this is important is because both are major inputs into the spinal cord and the brain. Both of these signals are kept in a balance that heavily favors mechanoreceptors or movement when healthy. When you have too much noxious input into the brain, you start to affect the body's thermostat (the hypothalamus) and it disrupts the stress response of the endocrine system.