Posted by Larry Hoover on November 26, 2002, at 11:36:31
In reply to Re: Anxiety Causes Brain Damage???? » Guy, posted by bluedog on November 25, 2002, at 22:24:06
> > This article seems to say that constant untreated anxiety causes cell death in the brain (i.e brain damage). If so, I musn't have very much brain left! This is the first I've heard of this nasty business. Does anyone have any more info?
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> There appears to be evidence that diet and supplements can play a large role in protecting your brain from problems relating to anxiety.
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> eg.
> 1: FASEB J 2002 Nov 1;
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> Selenium deficiency increases susceptibility to glutamate-induced excitotoxicity.> 1: J Neurosci Res 2001 Nov 15;66(4):612-9
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> Role of taurine in regulation of intracellular calcium level and neuroprotective function in cultured neurons.> I'm sure you'd be able to find may other examples to support this view.
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> I would say that the article I linked to on Klonopin suggests that Klonopin can also be used to assist in protecting the brain by affecting the functions of the GABA and NMDA receptors in the brain. Diet can also help.I was asked to comment on this issue. It's exceedingly complicated. I'm going to try and give a balanced reply.
Many long-held beliefs about the brain are falling by the wayside, as investigative tools (and investigators) become more sophisticated. It was once thought that you were born with a huge number of brain cells, and it was downhill all the way to old age; you kept losing brain cells until your brain just lost functions altogether. That's not true. New brain cells, and new connectivity, arise because of brain stimulation. There is an aspect of "use it or lose it" about the brain, but also "use it and gain".
Some of the newer ideas about brain function have come together under the concept of 'plasticity', the ability of the brain to adapt to the demands placed upon it. A concert violinist will have a physically larger, and more complex, segment of the motor cortex which controls the left hand (in the usual left-fingering and right-bowing model) than your typical person. It gets bigger because of the demand (though it might have been a little bigger to start with).
What happens under stress is also an adaptive process. Having a brain that is alert and responsive to the environment tends to preserve the reproductive potential of the gonads.
The alerting process, though, places demands on other aspects of brain function. There are resources in place whose sole purpose is to protect the brain from it's own alerting processes. These protective resources are finite; they can become depleted. Huge, but temporary stress, or chronic, low-level stress do the same thing, in the end. They both overwhelm defensive mechanisms, those dedicated to shutting down the excitatory alerting processes. In the absence of chemical defenses, the brain will allow cells to die, to protect other cells from injury arising from unbalanced excitation. Unfortunately, the cells in the brain linked to affect are particularly vulnerable to this kind of excitotoxic injury.
There is growing evidence that these losses are not permanent. Given the right kinds of supports, these lost neurons can be fully replaced. It seems that it doesn't matter if the remission is caused by drugs, or talk therapy, or spontaneous factors, the restoration of brain function is visible in brain imaging like functional-MRI and SPECT.
I left the references to nutritional aspects of stress-resistance in place because these are aspects under individual control. You may not be able to control your stress level as much as you can control your diet.
You may recall that I have discussed the methionine/homocysteine cycle, and its relationship to SAMe and depression. Well, there's more to it than that. Sometimes I stop talking about something for no other reason than to reduce the complexity, not because it isn't important.
Glutathione is a major neuro-protective chemical in the brain. It derives from methionine metabolism. Taurine is a major neuro-protective chemical in the brain. It derives from methionine metabolism. What glutathione, taurine and methionine have in common is that they are, or contain, sulphur-containing amino acids. Sulphur metabolism is heavily disrupted by stress. This article does an excellent job of explaining much of the intricacies of methionine metabolism.
http://www.thorne.com/altmedrev/fulltext/homo2-4.html
I strongly recommend that you explore the Thorne site. Just shorten the URL to end at altmedrev/ for example, and look around. Lots of free info.
This one is more specific to glutathione:
http://www.redwings.org/HTMLarts/gshhealtha.htm
One of the best predictors of glutathione in brain tissues is alpha-lipoic acid status. There is a strong, positive correlation. And, surprise surprise, alpha-lipoic acid is a sulphur compound. So is glucosamine.
Then, you have selenium, which is an antioxidant powerhouse all by itself, but which also acts in concert with some of the sulphur compounds, as e.g. seleno-methionine or seleno-glutathione. It is also a key component of enzymes which act synergistically with other antioxidants, like superoxide dismutase (SOD), or glutathione reductase.
I'm just trying to put things in context. Your brain prunes overactive cells. It has to, to control input. You temporarily reduce some functions. But, those functions can be restored by changing the circumstances the brain is functioning under.
There are genetic influences to all of this (can't do much about that), experiential factors (early childhood experience can permanently affect some aspects of susceptibility to stress-overload) which are amenable to cognitive therapy, nutritional factors, and so on.
Everything's got yin and yang. I prefer not to focus on the negative aspects of stress-reactivity. I prefer to focus on those things I can change. Diet certainly falls in the latter category. You are what you eat.
Lar
poster:Larry Hoover
thread:128992
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20021122/msgs/129412.html