Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
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 An enormous amount of research has validated its ability to help people with trauma and ptsd deal with their issues so that previously disturbing memories (and present situations that trigger them) are no longer debilitating and new healthy responses can emerge. Two separate studies have indicated an elimination of the diagnosis of ptsd in
The EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Program (HAP) is a nonprofit organization that has been described as a kind of mental health equivalent of Doctors Without Borders. |
Dawson Church
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 I diagnosed ptsd (moderately severe) and possible attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). I prescribed small doses of Ritalin, as this acts within minutes and, if effective, could provide rapid relief for some of his problems.
He responded well to the medication and was much better able to sit and attend in class, less impulsive, and less forgetful. His other symptoms remained. He also had counseling sessions weekly with a social worker at the clinic where I work, focused on issues of relating to his new family, multiple losses, and ptsd issues. |
Anne Harrington
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 The 1980s saw an astonishingly rapid expansion of the ptsd diagnostic category, much of it driven now by a new wave of feminist activism. In these years, the spotlight was put on the widespread realities of domestic violence, rape, and (perhaps most radically) the rediscovery of the existence of sexual abuse of young children. By the end of the 1980s, battered wives and abused children had been set alongside traumatized soldiers as potential candidates for a diagnosis of ptsd. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Lo and behold, it was ptsd, post-traumatic stress disorder. I grant you, there are a lot of troubling visions and experiences that all men in a war are exposed to, and these cause troubling flashbacks and troubled sleep. But it's not an organic disease of the brain as psychiatry would have us believe, nor are these symptoms inevitable. They would have all the soldiers over there believe that ptsd is a disease with a grave prognosis. |
Jack Challem
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 John's wort) is often associated with anxiety in ptsd, the herb may be useful. Take 300 mg of a standardized St. John's wort product three times daily. If you use a tincture, follow the label directions.
Quick Tip Social Anxiety, Phobia, or Simple Shyness?
In recent years, the medical and the pharmaceutical industries have sought to medicalize many personality quirks. As one example, television commercials promote the drug Paxil (an antidepressant) as a treatment for social anxiety disorder. |
Dawson Church
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| The effects of such improvements in people's lives has great benefit to society as a whole: "A study that tracked the clinical outcomes of 714 patients treated by seven therapists using Thought Field Therapy (TFT) in an HMO setting20 found that decreased subjective distress following the treatment was far beyond chance with 31 of 31 psychiatric diagnostic categories, including anxiety, major depression, alcohol cravings, and ptsd."21 Just imagine if every patient had access to such therapies as a routine part of treatment. |
Jack Challem
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| Helpful Supplements
Because of the severity of ptsd, it would be best for you to obtain a full nutritional workup, including blood chemistry and dietary analysis, from a physician. (See the appendix.) If this is not possible, try the following supplements in the order they're described. These supplements will likely reduce both anxiety and depression. Give each supplement two weeks to determine whether it is helping.
B-complex vitamins. Take a high-potency B-complex (or a high-potency multivitamin) containing 50 mg of vitamins Bl, B2, and B3 and relative amounts of other B vitamins. |
| For example, anxiety is frequently intertwined with depression, and post-traumatic syndrome usually entails both anxiety and depression (although I have placed ptsd in the chapter addressing anxiety problems). I've categorized moods for the purpose of this book based on dominant characteristics.
Get Aware, Get Willing, and Get With It
One key step in improving moods and behavior is being proactive and fighting the inertia that often keeps us from changing our lives for the better. |
| Eating Habits
Though often ignored, a wholesome and nutritious diet should be a fundamental part of any ptsd recovery program. First, healthy foods provide needed neuronutrients. Second, preparing such foods can be a relaxing and meditative experience. Third, eating them in a calm setting can help to lessen feelings of stress and anxiety.
Strictly limit your intake of sugars and carbohydrates, which reduce your body's levels of vitamin Bl. Adhere to the dietary guidelines in chapter 5. |
Marshall Editions
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 Those with ptsd feel estranged or detached from those around them.
Easily startled
Disturbed sleep patterns
Feeling irritable and aggressive
Poor concentration
Feeling guilty, as though responsible for the event
Avoiding memories
Feeling detached
Feeling there is no point in planning for the future
SYMPTOMS
TREATMENT GOAL
Feeling numb
Emotional and physical reactions
Changes in behavior
Nightmares
Intense distress when reminded of the trauma
It can be very helpful for people to share their experiences with others who have been through similar problems. |
The Life Extension Editorial Staff
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 Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Common in those who have served in combat, ptsd is a debilitating illness that can result from a traumatic event. Originally defined as battle fatigue or shell shock, this disorder can be precipitated by any traumatic life event such as a serious accident, crime victimization, and natural disasters. People diagnosed with ptsd may relive the event in nightmares or have disturbing recollections of it during waking hours. Ordinary events can trigger flashbacks that may result in a loss of reality, causing the person to believe the event is happening again. |
Marshall Editions
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| NATUROPATHY
There are no natural cures for ptsd, but there are some natural recommendations that may help ease some of the symptoms of the condition, such as general restlessness, insomnia, aggressiveness, and depression.
Diet: Keep your blood sugar levels balanced by eating small, frequent meals throughout the day. Make sure to eat only when you are calm, however, as eating while depressed or angry may worsen symptoms. Include whole grains such as oats, quinoa, or brown rice with every meal. |
Jack Challem
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| Although studies have not investigated whether the omega-3 fish oils or DHA would be helpful in ptsd, they are likely to be. Take at least 3 grams daily.
5-HTP. This supplement, 5-hydroxytryptophan, is the immediate precursor to serotonin, the calming neurotransmitter that most psychotropic prescription drugs aim to elevate. Take 50 mg, one to three times daily, apart from meals. If you can purchase L-tryptophan, it has the advantage of being more versatile biochemically. The dosage for L-tryptophan is higher, 500 mg one to three times daily, at least one hour apart from meals.
St. |
Marshall Editions
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| Those who suffer from ptsd often have CC symptoms that inhibit the production of digestive juices. Betaine hydrochloride supports q_ stomach acid levels and helps with digestion. Take one to two capsules with each meal. Digestive enzymes also help your body to digest food more effectively, reducing irritation. The enzymes include lipases that digest fat, proteases that digest proteins, and amylases that digest starch. Take 2 capsules or tablets of a full spectrum enzyme product with each meal. |
| PTSD that affects sleep.
Tonics: Herbal tonics, also called adaptogens, are often used to help strengthen the whole body and make it more resistant to the anxiety and overall stress of this disorder. Common tonics are Asian or Korean ginseng, American ginseng, eleuthero (also called Siberian ginseng), and ashwaganda. Most herbal tonics have a variety of effects on several different body systems. For example, they may act as an anti-inflammatory and antioxidant, and affect hormones such as Cortisol secreted by the hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal glands. |
| T
Psychotherapy: The primary treatment for ptsd is psychotherapy. Specific techniques include anxiety and stress management with relaxation techniques, cognitive behavioral and exposure therapy (which involves exposing the affected person to a feared situation, first in the imagination and then in reality, until he or she can tolerate the situation without symptoms), group therapy, education, and play therapy for children.
EMDR: A technique known as eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is relatively new and promising. |
KC Craichy
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 People diagnosed with ptsd may relive the event in nightmares or have disturbing recollections (flashbacks) that may result in a loss of reality and feelings of helplessness, causing them to believe the event is happening all over again. These experiences can affect the developing personality. To make sense of these overwhelming experiences, many people with ptsd will create entire belief systems or world views that cause them constant stress. These five anxiety disorders often require more serious treatment options, such as psychotherapy or cognitive-behavioral therapy. |
Dr. Arthur Janov
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 A key effect of ptsd is the damage that is done to the corpus callosum, which reduces a person's ability to connect to her feelings; or, literally, for the left brain to connect to the right. In an article in Scientific American, Martin Teicher of the Harvard Medical School describes his finding that young boys who had been abused or rejected had significantly smaller corpus callosums than normal children. In girls, sex abuse was found to be associated with a major reduction in the size of the middle part of the corpus callosum. Dr. |
Phyllis A. Balch, CNC
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 The key sign of ptsd involves mentally reliving past traumatic events in a manner and to an extent that this interferes with normal life. (See Is It Stress or Is It ptsd? on page 721.)
Many people attribute their stress-related symptoms to "nerves," and in fact stress usually does affect the parts of the body that are related to the nervous system first, especially through the digestive organs. Symptoms of stress-related digestive disorders may be a flare-up of an ulcer or irritable bowel syndrome. |
| Is It Stress or Is It ptsd?
Posttraumatic stress disorder, or ptsd, is a serious illness that needs professional intervention and treatment. To help decide whether you (or a loved one) might have this disorder, the following five questions are important:
1.
Have you ever experienced or witnessed a life-
Losing interest in significant activities in your life. threatening event that caused you to feel intense fear, helplessness, or horror?
Feeling detached from other people.
Do you reexperience this event in at least one of the
Feeling that your range of emotions is restricted. |
Marshall Editions
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| Anti-anxiety medication such as BuSparฎ and benzodiazepines have also been used to treat ptsd.
TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE
Herbs: The following formula can reduce the stress to your liver, which, according to traditional Chinese medicine, is the organ that is most sensitive to traumatic stress. |
Jack Challem
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| Other people who have experienced or witnessed traumatic events, including child abuse, criminal assaults such as rape, terrorist acts, automobile accidents, and airplane crashes, may also suffer from ptsd. The symptoms include anxiety, which is often intertwined with depression, as well as a tendency to be easily startled, have flashbacks and nightmares, be sensitive to noise, be hypervigilant, feel emotionally numbed, or have panic attacks.
Psychological Tips
Post-traumatic stress disorder is serious. The earlier it is treated, however, the quicker a person's recovery is likely to be. |
Dawson Church
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| He also had counseling sessions weekly with a social worker at the clinic where I work, focused on issues of relating to his new family, multiple losses, and ptsd issues.
At the initial interview, I taught Joe and his {foster} mother to use the butterfly hug {crossing both arms over the chest, hands draped over the front of the opposing bicep}. Joe chose an affirmation about one of the bad memories he had of being left in the dark cellar by his {birth} mother. |
Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
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| But it positively shines in the area of trauma and ptsd. At a recent seminar I attended on the brain given by Amen and largely attended by therapists, I met more than ^ one practitioner who said to me, "I'd never rec- ^ ommend a therapist for post traumatic stress JjO disorder who didn't incorporate EMDR in ^
[his or her] treatment."
Image Therapy for Asthma
THE OTHER DAY a friend of mine, Carole Jackson, the editor of Bottom Line Daily Health News, told me about Jeffrey, the son of a friend of hers who has suffered from asthma for a long time. |
| Two separate studies have indicated an elimination of the diagnosis of ptsd in
The EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Program (HAP) is a nonprofit organization that has been described as a kind of mental health equivalent of Doctors Without Borders. It's a global network of clinicians who travel anywhere there is a need to stop suffering and prevent the aftereffects of trauma and violence. Its trauma recovery network coordinates clinicians to treat victims and emergency service workers after such crises as Hurricane Katrina and the 9/11 attacks. (See Recommended Resources, page 333. |
Dawson Church
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| These practical techniques have been used successfully to:
Alleviate workplace stress
Decrease workplace injuries
Reduce anxiety in particularly stressful situations
Eliminate phobias such as fear of public speaking, or heights Reduce ptsd (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) Improve marital relationships Eliminate allergies Alleviate depression
Produce remission in serious diseases such as cancer
Soul Medicine Institute has also set up the first international database of Energy Psychology case histories. This research tool collects medical and psychiatric diagoses before treatment. |
Rick Levy and Lou Aronica
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 He began sleeping through the night and stopped relying on anti-anxiety meds. His ptsd symptoms went away entirely, and he went on to find a new career and a new love in his life, free from the stress that had plagued him for decades.
How does this story relate to you? Did you experience extreme difficulty as a child, adolescent, or young adult? The battlefield of life snared many of us when we were young. Much of the anxiety and depression we suffer as adults derives from early life trauma that goes unresolved.
Stress has two stages. First comes the stressful experience itself. |
Anne Harrington
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| The expansion of the ptsd category beyond the battlefield and into the home had the effect of creating a substantial cottage industry of self-help books and psychotherapies designed for the thousands of people interested in tracing their chronic neuroses in adulthood to unmastered memories of childhood sexual abuse. The thing was, many of these alleged victims had no clear memories of such abuse. Could they still qualify as traumatized? The answer was yes, because even if their minds did not consciously or properly remember, their bodies most assuredly did. Did a person suffer from colitis? |
Rick Levy and Lou Aronica
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| Decorated for valor in the military, this man embarked on a successful career as vice president of a major electronics firm after the war, fell in love, married, and started a family, but the symptoms of ptsd haunted him throughout. For thirty years after the war, he never slept through the night. He relived difficult battlefield experiences continuously, especially the day his best friend was blown up right beside him. He had never been able to expunge the guilt he felt for not being able to save his friend and other members of his troop. He was anxious and often angry. |
Anne Harrington
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| By the end of the 1980s, battered wives and abused children had been set alongside traumatized soldiers as potential candidates for a diagnosis of ptsd. In her 1989 best-selling book Trauma and Recovery, the activist psychiatrist Judith Lewis Herman made the links explicit:
[This] is a book about commonalities: between rape survivors and combat veterans, between battered women and political prisoners, between the survivors of vast concentration camps created by tyrants who rule nations and the survivors of small, hidden concentration camps created by tyrants who rule their homes. |
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