The human spirit can altar brain chemistry

Body Building

Brain building

You can build the brain by the power of your spirit! "In recent years, however, neuroscientists have discovered that the adult brain is actually very plastic. As we will see, if neural circuits receive a great deal of traffic, they will grow. If they receive little traffic, they will remain the same or shrink. The amount of traffic our neural circuits receive depends, for the most part, on what we choose to pay attention to. Not only can we make decisions by focusing on one idea rather than another, but we can change the patterns of neurons in our brains by doing so consistently. Again, that has been demonstrated by experiments and is even used in psychiatric treatments for obsessive compulsive disorder." (The Spiritual Brain, Mario Beauregard Ph.D., Neuroscientist, 2007, p33)

Introduction:

1. This is all about proving that mental illnesses are problems with the spirit of man, not the brain.
2. It may surprise you, but you can actually exercise your brain and make it stronger, smarter and more efficient!
3. Scientists admit mental illness is triggered by social factors. They also admit that mental illness like schizophrenia are never caused by genetics and brain anomalies as the sole cause.
4. "When we treat the mind as capable of changing the brain, we can treat conditions that were once considered difficult or impossible to treat. But we also need a model for how the mind acts on the brain." (The Spiritual Brain, Mario Beauregard Ph.D., Neuroscientist, 2007, p150)

A. Exercising your brain with your mind!

1. Think of the neuron paths in your brain like the largest and busiest road in the world: The 401 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with 18 lanes of traffic as it passes beside Pearson international airport. That is nine lanes wide each direction!
2. Think of your brain like the 401 highway. A Certain action or thought may only take up one or two lanes of neurons in the brain. But it you start something new, like read 10 large books in a row, take up music lessons etc. the brain will actually start using more lanes of neurons in the brain. It is exactly like body building!
3. fMRI imaging by neuroscientists have proven this is true.
4. This is important because it proves that the mind is distinct from the physical brain.

B. Examples of the thought (the spirit/mind) triggering brain chemistry:

1. Clear evidence that the spirit can effect the chemicals of the body is seen in the fact that adrenaline rushes into the bloodstream just before starting a competitive race or just after a near miss car accident. Alternately, the body secrets endorphins when the mind is feeling love, joy and peace.
2. Nurses are very familiar with the fainting that is induced by the mind at the thought of getting a needle. Vasovagal episodes are where the thought of getting a needle or the sight or discussion of blood can trigger fainting. Since the very thought of getting a needle or seeing blood can trigger a shock like episode in the body, this serves as undeniable proof that the mind can make the body sick.
3. Anticipation of public speaking, a test or a competitive race triggers adrenaline.
4. Mental stress can trigger headaches.
5. A man merely looking at a sexy woman can trigger chemical changes in his brain, that can produce common and natural physiological changes in his body. Sex takes place in the brain, not the sexual organs.
6. Thinking about food can trigger the release of digestive enzymes into the stomach.
7. A sudden fright, terror can trigger a heart attach.
8. The anxiety of realizing that you just lost your life savings in the stock market or gambling can trigger a heart attach.
9. The anxiety of the mind can keep the body from sleeping.
10. Loss of a loved one can make you lose your appetite for several days.
11. Sin can make the body sick as well.

C. Neuroscientists know that the mind can alter brain chemistry:

1. "The time has come for science to confront the serious implications of the fact that directed, willed mental activity can clearly and systematically alter brain function." (Jeffrey M. Schwartz, Psychiatrist, The Mind and the Brain: Netiroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force, 2003, p 54-55)
2. "The mind can cause certain diseases." (Channeling and faith healing: Scam or miracle, Carl Sagan, Parade, Dec 4, 1994, p10)
3. "Though once considered heresy, the notion that meaningful interactions occur between the brain and the immune system has become scientific dogma. This change in scientific orthodoxy results from more than 30 years of research demonstrating that brain-mediated events, such as psychological stress and depression, can alter peripheral immune system functioning and, conversely, that changes in peripheral immune functioning, such as those that occur during illness, can profoundly affect the brain, leading to clinically meaningful changes in mood, anxiety, and cognition. In this chapter, we pro-vide an overview of brain-immune system interactions that are of potential relevance to the field of psychiatry. This effort needs to be understood within the far wider context of psychoneuroimmunology, which is the inter-disciplinary field that focuses on brain—mind—immune system interactions." (Textbook of Psychopharmacology, Schatzberg, Nemeroff, 2002 AD, p 147)
4. "The psychoneural translation hypothesis [PTH] recognizes that mental processes (e.g., volitions, goals, emotions, desires, beliefs) are neurally instantiated in the brain, but it argues that these mental processes cannot be reduced to and are not identical with neuroelectric and neurochemical processes. Indeed, mental processes-which cannot be localized in the brain-cannot be eliminated. The reason that mental processes cannot be localized within the brain is that there is actually no way of capturing thoughts merely from studying the activity of neurons." (The Spiritual Brain, Mario Beauregard Ph.D., Neuroscientist, 2007, p150)
5. "Immune System Assays of Relevance to Psychiatry: A number of quantitative techniques have been used to examine the effects of stress and stress-related psychiatric conditions on immune functioning." (Textbook of Psychopharmacology, Schatzberg, Nemeroff, 2002 AD, p 149)
6. "Despite the fact that a general belief in the ability of psychological states to affect health has been apparent since antiquity, scientific formulations, until recently, have tended to view the CNS and the immune system as separate and noninteracting, with the immune system conceptualized as an autonomous and self-contained entity whose purpose begins and ends with the tasks of protection against infection and malignancy and the repair of damaged tissue. Such a view tends to preclude any physiological mechanism by which mental events might directly affect immune functioning. However, in the 1970s, researchers made the startling discovery that the immune system was amenable to classical Pavlovian conditioning in response to psychological stress (Ader and Cohen 1975). Numerous studies have confirmed and extended this initial insight and established beyond argument the ability of brain states to significantly modulate immune system functioning. The majority of these studies have focused on the effects of stress on the immune response. Virtually every type of stressor, ranging from laboratory stressors (e.g., public speaking and mental arithmetic) to more naturalistic stressors (e.g., bereavement, loneliness, and academic examinations), has demonstrated a measurable effect on the immune response, including effects on various aspects of both innate and acquired immunity (Raison et al. 2002). Although the relationship between stress and immunity is quite complex, more acute and/or mild stressors, in general, tend to be associated with activation of immune responses, whereas more chronic and intense stressors tend to be associated with activated innate immune system elements and impaired acquired immune system responses. The health relevance of these stress- related immune changes has been demonstrated in studies that have shown an association between chronic stress and increased susceptibility to the common cold, reduced antibody responses to vaccination, and delayed wound healing (Cohen et al. 1991; Glaser et al. 1992; Kiecolt-Glaser et al. 1995). In addition, stress, as well as depression, has been linked to increased morbidity and mortality in both infectious diseases, such as HIV infection and neoplastic diseases, including breast cancer and malignant melanoma (Leserman et al. 1999; Raison and Nemeroff 2000)." (Textbook of Psychopharmacology, Schatzberg, Nemeroff, 2002 AD, p 149)
7. "In recent years, however, neuroscientists have discovered that the adult brain is actually very plastic. As we will see, if neural circuits receive a great deal of traffic, they will grow. If they receive little traffic, they will remain the same or shrink. The amount of traffic our neural circuits receive depends, for the most part, on what we choose to pay attention to. Not only can we make decisions by focusing on one idea rather than another, but we can change the patterns of neurons in our brains by doing so consistently. Again, that has been demonstrated by experiments and is even used in psychiatric treatments for obsessive compulsive disorder." (The Spiritual Brain, Mario Beauregard Ph.D., Neuroscientist, 2007, p33)
8. "Immune System Effects of Depression: In psychiatry, the practical import of connections between brain outflow pathways and the immune system has been best documented in the effects of stress-related disorders, especially major depression, on immune functioning. In this section we review these effects, focusing primarily on evidence for immunosuppression, although recent evidence suggests that depressive disorders, as well as other stress-related disorders, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), may also be characterized by immune system activation (see below). Despite a significant degree of heterogeneity across individual studies, significant evidence suggests that patients with major depression demonstrate a number of immune changes similar to those seen in individuals undergoing chronic and/or severe stress (see Herbert and Cohen 1993; Zorrilla et al. 2001). ... Enumerative immune changes shared by major depression and chronic/severe stress include an increase in white blood cell count, with a decrease in lymphocytes, B cells, and T cells, and an in-crease in the ratio of CD4 to CD8 T cells (Herbert and Cohen 1993). ... In addition, the sleep changes common in depression are known to alter immunity, especially NKCA, even in the absence of other depressive symptoms (Irwin et al. 1996). Nonetheless, it does not appear that these factors completely account for the association between major depression and alterations in enumerative and functional immune measures (Herbert and Cohen 1993)." (Textbook of Psychopharmacology, Schatzberg, Nemeroff, 2002 AD, p 150)

D. Mind over matter: "The Placebo Effect"

1. Placebo effect: "Placebo" means "I will please".
2. The placebo effect is the measurable, observable, or felt improvement in health or behavior not attributable to a medication or invasive treatment that has been administered.
3. "The physician's belief in the treatment and the patient's faith in the physician exert a mutually reinforcing effect; the result is a powerful remedy that is almost guaranteed to produce an improvement and sometimes a cure." (Follies and Fallacies in Medicine, Petr Skrabanek and James McCormick, p. 13.)
4. "Janis Schonfeld was a poster patient for this new generation of antidepressants. The forty-six-year-old interior designer, married with a daughter, was contemplating suicide when she found just enough hope to enroll in a drug study at UCLA. She put up with the greasy gel through which the EEG recorded her brain activity for forty-five minutes. But she couldn't wait to get started on those promising new pills. And the pills worked brilliantly. Yes, nausea was a tiresome side effect, but her competent and caring nurse had warned her about that. Much more important, her life got back on track. As Mother Jones magazine put it, Schonfeld seemed "yet another person who owed a nearly miraculous recovery to the new generation of antidepressants." (Gary Greenberg, "Is It Prozac or Placebo?" Mother Jones, November/December 2003) On Schonfeld's last visit, one of the doctors took her and her nurse aside and told them both the truth: Schonfeld had been in the control group. She was taking a sugar pill-in the research lingo, a placebo. Her recovery, the doctor hastened to assure her, was entirely genuine. But the only drug she had received was an immaterial and immortal substance- hope. Schonfeld's main challenge, given that she lived in a materialist environment, was to accept the evidence of her own experience-that a recovery based on her inner resources is real-rather than the urgent cultural messages that only a brain-bending drug could really help her." (The Spiritual Brain, Mario Beauregard Ph.D., Neuroscientist, 2007)
5. "The medical literature is replete with reports on the power of the placebo to help patients with anxiety, tension, melancholia, schizophrenia, pain of all sorts, headaches, cough, insomnia, seasickness, chronic bronchitis, the common cold, arthritis, peptic ulcer, hypertension, nausea, senile dementia, etc. But the placebo is not only able to help, it has also been associated with side effects including nausea headache, dizziness, sleepiness, insomnia, fatigue, depression, numbness, hallucinations, itching, vomiting, tremor, tachycardia, diarrhea, pallor, rashes, hives, ataxia, and edema, to name a few." (Dr. Ben Krentzman)
6. "There are times when doctors have to be arrogant know-it-alls and even bluffers, for it would be distressing if they were to shrug "I dunno" to questions of which they were not absolutely certain. At all the best medical schools this "cloak of competence" is encouraged because it is known that supreme confidence alone often can work wondrous cures." (Martin O'Malley, Doctors, 1983, p. 2)
7. "As we have seen, the placebo effect is actually triggered by the patient's mental state. In other words, it depends entirely on the patient's state of belief. An unconscious process initiated by the brain to manipulate itself (or any other part of the body) is a normal healing process, not the placebo effect." (The Spiritual Brain, Mario Beauregard Ph.D., Neuroscientist, 2007, p148)
8. Not only is the placebo effect a known significant component in any good anti-psychotic drugs do, it proves the mind has power over the brain and body. It also shows that mental illnesses are of spiritual origin not physical!

E. Mind over matter: "The Nocebo Effect"

1. The Nocebo Effect: "Nocebo" means "I will harm.". It is the opposite of the "placebo effect".
2. "Surgeons are wary of people who are convinced that they will die. There are examples of studies done on people undergoing surgery who almost want to die to re-contact a loved one. Close to 100 percent of people under those circumstances die." (Herbert Benson, Harvard Medical School, quoted in Reid, "Nocebo Effect.")
3. Research has...shown that the nocebo effect can reverse the body's response to true medical treatment from positive to negative. (Root-Bernstein 1998)
4. "Volunteers for medical studies who have been warned about the side effects of the medication often develop those effects even though they are in the sugar-pill control group. Pills of a size or color that communicate the wrong "message" may work according to expectation, not pharmacology. Red and orange may stimulate but blue and green may depress, contradicting the chemically expected effect." By contrast, a trusted brand name printed prominently on the side usually helps, even if the pill is only sugar. People who are convinced that they will get an illness are much more likely to get it.6° For example, women in the massive Framingham study, begun in 1948, who believed that they were more likely than others to develop heart disease, were indeed twice as likely to, even when they did not engage in behaviours that promote heart disease." (The Spiritual Brain, Mario Beauregard Ph.D., Neuroscientist, 2007, p 146 , see Thompson, Placebo Effect and Health.)

F. Mind over matter: Tourette's syndrome, like Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) See the case of "Twitchy" See Tourette's syndrome/OCD

1. "When we treat the mind as capable of changing the brain, we can treat conditions that were once considered difficult or impossible to treat. But we also need a model for how the mind acts on the brain." (The Spiritual Brain, Mario Beauregard Ph.D., Neuroscientist, 2007, p150)
2. Tourette's syndrome, like Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and phobias have been cured using mind over brain techniques successfully!
3. "In recent years, however, neuroscientists have discovered that the adult brain is actually very plastic. As we will see, if neural circuits receive a great deal of traffic, they will grow. If they receive little traffic, they will remain the same or shrink. The amount of traffic our neural circuits receive depends, for the most part, on what we choose to pay attention to. Not only can we make decisions by focusing on one idea rather than an-other, but we can change the patterns of neurons in our brains by doing so consistently. Again, that has been demonstrated by experiments and is even used in psychiatric treatments for obsessive compulsive disorder." (The Spiritual Brain, Mario Beauregard Ph.D., Neuroscientist, 2007, p33)
4. "A nonmaterialist [ie. that man has a spirit distinct from his body] approach to the mind is not only philosophically defensible; it is critical to alleviating some psychiatric disorders. Obsessive-compulsive disorder and phobias, for example, may be more effectively alleviated if the mind recognizes and reorganizes destructive brain patterns. This is not to disparage the role of drugs, therapy, or other useful interventions, but ultimately the mind is the most effective agent of change for the brain." (The Spiritual Brain, Mario Beauregard Ph.D., Neuroscientist, 2007, p 126)
5. "And [Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder] sufferers won't get any peace from the panic button squealing in their brains unless they carry them out. Yet giving in to them makes them worse over time; the more they give in, the more persistent the beliefs and behaviors become." (The Spiritual Brain, Mario Beauregard Ph.D., Neuroscientist, 2007, p127)
6. "The key problem with OCD [Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder] is that the more often the patient actually engages in a compulsive behavior, the more neurons are drawn into it, and the stronger the signals for the behavior become. Thus, although the signals appear to promise, "Do it one more time and then you will have some peace," that promise is false by its very nature. What was once a neural footpath slowly grows into a twelve-lane highway whose deafening traffic takes over the neural neighborhood. The challenge is to restore it to the status of a footpath in the brain again. Neuroplasticity (the ability of neurons to shift their connections and responsibilities) makes that possible." (The Spiritual Brain, Mario Beauregard Ph.D., Neuroscientist, 2007, p 128)

G. Mind over matter: Sexual arousal and rape:

1. The bible says to flee pre-marital sex and adultery. This means that the spirit can overcome the desire of the body to act.
2. "To sum up, the belief that men cannot really choose to reduce their arousal, whether based on ancient traditions or modern materialism, is simply mistaken. Penal codes that hold men accountable for sexual assault are based in neural reality, not simple-minded idealism." (The Spiritual Brain, Mario Beauregard Ph.D., Neuroscientist, 2007, p133)

Conclusion:

1. God created the spirit of man in His own image. God placed that spirit into a human body. A person will continue to live, think and reason after the separation of the body from the spirit in death.
2. Modern psychiatry, being grounded in the theory of evolution, rejects that man has a spirit. They view man a nothing more than a random assortment of chemicals. This has led psychologists to ignore advancements in science where the mind can effect changes in the body.
3. The best way to ensure good mental health is to become a Christian and attend church every Sunday. Read the Bible and believe the message of hope, forgiveness and the love of God that will fill your soul with purpose!

By Steve Rudd: Contact the author for comments, input or corrections.

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