Gary, thank you for writing this. I wasn't familiar with the habenula or its function, but in reading your article a thought came to mind that I can't help but think might deserve more reflection... I grew up in the Midwest during the 70s. We were taught from a young age self discipline, boundaries, to practice self-restraint, and to set goals and work hard to achieve them (i.e. "hard work pays off"). We were fully immersed and vested in a climate of competition - whether it was sports, academics, trying to make 'First Chair' in the trumpet section of the school band, or winning praise in a family of six kids. Whether that specific cultural environment was more regional, generational, or familial I cannot say, bust most I grew up with seemed to share the same experiences. Has this changed over the decades? Did the pop culture decades of 'Do what feels good,' moral relevance, and every kid gets a trophy contravene what common sense and wisdom had built into our culture? Has the declining size in families effected this? Perhaps we've taken a cultural left turn somewhere along the way?
Well, the world has certainly changed since I was a kid too, and not all for the better for children growing up today, if the record rates of suicides and anti-depressants are to be believed. We are all now bombarded with junk very addictive things, and the children are exposed to these very early now. The subtitle to Dr Lembke's book on addiction is "Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence" and perhaps that say it all. In the end, her anti-dote to addiction comes down to practicing self-restraint and radical honesty. According to Louis Weinstock, a children's psychotherapist, author of "How the World is Making Our Children Mad and What to Do About", helicopter parenting and teaching kids to have a victim mentality is only making things much worse
One thing about teaching self-restraint... It is very difficult (if not impossible) to teach children self-discipline if they grow up in an undisciplined environment (family).
"From the above, I propose the key to happiness is to take pleasure in the pursuit of happiness itself, and that a good life is when we live in alignment with minimizing the time in which our habenula is activated. Meditations which de-activate the habenula, re-framing our goals and purpose from trying to win the finite games to playing the infinite games to the best of our ability"
Interesting essay. In my own very limited experience, I can only refer to my twenty years spent rescuing dogs, which may seem an odd place to go but it's relevant. Dogs, unlike humans, live almost exclusively in the present moment. It is only traumatised dogs whose behaviour is governed by memories of the past in conjunction with the fearful anticipation of the immediate future. Once they can get over that - sadly, some cannot - then they start living in the present, for the present. Nothing else matters. That is why dogs are so happy and content most of the time, just enjoying life for what it is. They play the infinite game because, paradoxically, the present is not bounded, therefore, in isolation, it is effectively infinite. The present only becomes bounded when it is framed in the context of the past and the future. Humans are so good at making the present finite and thus degrading its infinite potential.
Yes! I often looks a dogs as paragons of what we could be. They are the pinnacle of living presently, as you say, but also they ideals of fascia health - note how their skin glides over the bones - we should be the same, but our modern world makes us stuck - literally sticks our skin down like superglue to the bones. They also are exemplar of unconditional love, and they spend a lot of time just relaxing and resting. I think there is much we can learn from our canine friends!
Hmmm. I'm thinking of my sometimes feeling "It's all too much" in the evening, when I look at all I want to get done, maybe at something that didn't go as I wanted it, and so on . . . I know, in my case, what to do. Go to bed. Get sleep. My body resets when I sleep. I wake up. It's a different world. I'm ready to go on, so much feels do-able. Sometimes something has solved itself during the night.
Yes! Good sleep as well as "sleeping on it" are vital for restoration, health and growth. Getting good sleep is my number one priority ... and not getting it is my number negative impactor on my symptoms!
Whether or not you are in accord with Dane Wiginton's and Mike Adam's theory about the hurricane, just finding out about the loss of the citrus crop and the fertilizer plant are immeasurably unsettling. The import of the Nord Stream sabotage will not only have a deleterious effect on Europe, but also the whole world will suffer the dire ramifications. Not to mention the angst, no matter if you have or have not been jabbed, about our future.
Just yesterday, I was talking to an acquaintance about our mutual despair.
But, thanks to you, we have been introduced to the habenula, and we now know that we need to heed its wisdom. Be kind, help one another, and be meditatively contemplative
But, admittedly, it is so very hard- most especially, for me.
Yes, the current factors in the world are not conducive to habenula de-activation, but I also feel a lot of this is manufactured to implicitly activate it in us [not sure if the fear mongers or "nudgers" know about the habenula explicitly themselves, but the effect is the same] it. So resistance is also in not giving in to the fear, as well as speaking out, in m view. When we give in to the fear, they have already won their finite game. It is hard, I know, but not letting the b*****ds win is part of the infinite game we need to keep playing? I will look up the name you mention.
Dane Wigington is from geoengineeringwatch.org Mike Adams, from Natural News, interviewed him about the possible manipulation of the hurricane as apparently it is feasible as it is described in patents to allegedly steer hurricanes as a part of weather modification. In addition, there is a short video to ostensibly offer buttressing proof that said weather manipulation did occur. The OBJECTIVE? An important fertilizer plant, Mosaic, is located in central Florida. Did Mosaic sustain damage? I hope not. Indeed, I hope it is all wrong.
Thank you for the kindness of your reply. ... I just sent your post to two people- both meditators - who are the opposite of the consummate worrier that I am.
Very timely. I have been working on just this myself. I've listened to a bit of Huberman stuff about it, and read a few other articles, and tried to understand the various steps through which dopamine progresses, to see if I can establish where mine is falling over - if that is what is happening. I certainly have very many symptoms of low dopamine. I have too little desire left to conjure up anything I desire, which means I can no longer get reward from fulfilling that desire, so it is not that easy to turn this back on. I started with food, which is the only minimal pleasure left in my life. I tried not eating until I am actually hungry, then thinking through what food I desire, and waiting for the "yum" sensation before I satisfy it. (Although most yum foods are forbidden for those with high blood sugar). But my body has quickly tricked me out of that one. It worked a couple of times then my body simply said, well starve to death then, and refused to give me hunger signals any more, or refused to give me the "yum" at something that should sound delicious but is now "ho hum".
So now I am resorting to supplements. I am using olive leaf extract which is a precursor to both dopamine and serotonin, and have just added velvet bean which is also a precursor to both dopamine and serotonin. One of my low dopamine symptoms is extreme stiffness and immobility of my body, and the olive leaf extract seems to have loosened my body up enormously, but at this early stage, no change to my ability to actually desire anything. So low dopamine production may be part of my problem but not all. I am still playing with this - early days.
You described it well with the issue of too little reward for too much effort - that is the story of my life, and at 73 I have pretty much given up on trying - particularly to achieve the things that really would give me reward. I don't know how to switch what is essentially "hope" back on again - how can you argue with 73 years of losing, most of which time has been spent in severe pain? It's a fact. And as yet, I have not worked out what I want THAT I can actually get, in order to switch this system back on again.
And in addition to that, I have other hormones playing up like insulin and cortisol, and so there is no real way of knowing how to jig or trigger them all back to the point where I am interfacing with life in a healthy way. I think there is possibly a single key but I don't yet know what it is. Further down in this post someone talks about dogs. I was just talking with someone last night about how we see dogs, cats and horses all do this. They can be terrified and simply refuse to engage, for days, weeks and months. And then the miracle happens. From moving away from the person trying to rehabilitate them, they suddenly come to a decision and walk towards that person they have always walked away from. Then they demand snuggles and physical attention. It is as if a switch has just flipped. But the reality for 73 year old women in this culture, is that no-one is going to nurse us and care for us, protect us and coax us for days, weeks or months, and feed us our favorite foods, until we come around. We either perform exactly as they require us to perform, or they walk away. The kindness shown to animals is NOT shown to lonely old people who still have to perform tricks to even be seen. So of course we simply wind down and die. There is nothing else left to do - particularly in this current post covid world of pure awfulness.
As I said in response to another of your posts, this is a pretty scary time to be getting old.
Sorry to hear of your troubles. Can you get hold of this exact brand: https://www.biovea.com/uk/product/detail/16276/mucuna-dopa-250mg-60-vegetarian-capsules - taking one of these should tell you if the problems are dopamine related - your stiffness should melt away for an hour or three [the concentrated active ingredient in this is the same as in Parkinson's meds]. Have you tried talk therapy - this can really help with the right therapist. Lilian Sjoberg has helped me a lot by processing my "body memories".
That particular brand is available here in Australia, but is there something specific about the brand? I have obtained Velvet bean from here: https://herbosophy.com.au/velvet-bean/, and I prefer to take the least manufactured option where there is a choice. Comparing the products, it seems the biovea product is an extract from the velvet bean and standardised, where the herbosophy product is simply ground up velvet bean. So dosage might be quite different. In the meantime, the much cheaper olive leaf extract might be working for me.
There are two sets of symptoms I am tracking, the immobilisation of my body AND the immobilisation of my drive (ie no desire). At this stage the olive leaf extract is working enough to get me somewhat ambulant again, but not having much immediate noticeable impact on desire or satisfaction levels - the taste for life (in my case, walking on the beach and enjoying food).
But it is reasonable to assume that the behavioural change will lag behind the freeing up of the body from the stiffness and pain - the realisation of "oh yes, I CAN do that now" that has to get registered in the body.
This is how I see the cycle working. You have a desire to do something, you try to do it, then your body fails you, so you fail. When you do this enough, you have no choice but to give up the desire to do that thing that is no longer available to you (in my case, walk on the beach). When life narrows enough, you give up on all desires rather than continue to fail, so you are now on a non-stop downward spiral. Then you take a magic pill and your body frees up a bit. But you have already decided you cannot do this thing any more. You have to force yourself over your defeat, and try again. You have to force yourself to go for that walk (or whatever), knowing that all previous evidence indicates that you are quite likely to fail. If you do still fail, the negative dopamine spiral continues, so it is quite a risk. But if you actually find you CAN go for the walk and succeed, you can start the process of rebuilding the dopamine cycle.
Somehow, if you have hit almost total stasis, you have to get that first "win" so that your body gets the longed for dopamine hit from something healthy, and learns it CAN enjoy something again.
And of course, what we don't know without medical confirmation some how (?), is whether the dopamine receptors are still functioning. If they are not, none of this is going to work.
The brand is the one is I found which worked just the same as the pd meds. It has concerntated the levels of l-dopa - for pure bean you need an awful lot to get the same, and because it also has serotonin it counteracts it somewhat. Interesting on the olive leaf - have not heard of this in connection to dopamine - will investigate and give it a try... I also found that passion fruit tincture could ease the stiffness...
I'll keep going with my current tablets till I see how they work over time and/or until they run out, by which time i might have braved going to an incompetent doctor to get the necessary tests done. If there is an issue of taking "medications" a doctor might be much happier with a manufactured product as a substitute treatment than a simple herbal preparation - and by then I presume I will have a way of tracking its success or otherwise. Sounds like a plan.
You may not know that you are helping me talk through how I am going to approach this next health disaster in my life. I am an external processor and when I have no-one to talk to, to help me process my ideas, I make them up from the closest available living model - and currently you are providing the image I am talking to and enough feedback to keep me talking. So thank you.
I am not officially diagnosed with Parkinson's, although, if it is possible, I am living in a "cluster" of two people with Parkinson's, and one with some closely related head nodding disease, all neighbours in a block of flats. I am doing my research and making sure I understand it BEFORE I go to a doctor for an actual diagnosis, so they cannot lead me down endless blind alleys. Most importantly, I must know how to manage it and have some idea of how to cure it, BEFORE I let them anywhere near me with their demoralising prognoses.
I have had Fibromyalgia since I was 14, and what I am dealing with now is a few steps beyond FMS. It's the pain and stiffness of FMS on steroids. So I am thinking that the cause of both might be the same. I've just done the search. Here we go again. Everything I research is related to everything else I research.
"Indeed, among the more recent hypotheses regarding the pathophysiology of the disorder is that fibromyalgia represents a state of dopaminergic hypo-function that develops subsequent to changes in limbic function following exposure to chronic stress."
This makes me furious. I have been chasing FMS for my entire adult life and not one doctor EVER mentioned dopamine as an issue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
I am so glad I followed a link from another Substack to yours! So far in life, I have only been tangentially affected by Parkinson's (a client when I worked as a caregiver - now I understand why the family liked me, I always remained calm & kind no matter what he did; my sister's formerly extremely successful businesswoman sister-in-law) but really appreciate your efforts to learn any possible way to respond to this challenge in your life in a creative way. And the findings about dopamine & disappointment are personally relevant. My life in retrospect seems one grand failure & disappointment; however, this work proposes a completely different view of it! Very interesting!
I was intrigued as well to note you've been following Gerald Pollack, because the Midwestern Doctor also references his work, in his/her (doc is anonymous so I don't know if he or she) discussion of zeta potential and its importance in many health conditions, and especially elderly people. AMD focuses on how Traditional Chinese Medicine's ideas about blood stasis & fluid stasis (including the glymphatic system of the brain) explain many conditions. (I've begun following some of his ideas abt "structured" or liquid crystalline water and lymphatic massage for the head, as I am at risk for the vascular dementia that took my brother's life.)
Yes, I found Pollack's work very helpful for self-understanding, and pragmatic therapies. There is a good book called Quench about hydration which links his work to fascia.
The amount of research and work you put into this is astounding! What a fascinating thing, the human brain - and it’s curious we’ve figured out how to hack this entire system and creative lucrative industries all based on this part of the brain!
I see the newest generation (my kids) reject and rebel against the saccharine adult behaviors. They can smell the lack of authenticity. They don’t want participation trophies. They feel more confident with who they are. Maybe the kids are alright, after all. I have hope!
I think mine are on the cusp of Z and Alpha. But it’s a large portion of gen Z that is doing the quiet rebellion. It’s the high school and college kids who were born into the technological revolution and aren’t so drugged by it because it was always around them and not just the ‘new thing’. The ones that never got into smoking cigarettes. Or weed. The ones that were homeschooled more often. The ones that went undetected because some of their generation was screaming so loud to be seen. We focus on that loud minority that makes TikToks about their pronouns, and we think that’s what the youth is up to, but I’ve met kids in that generation that are a lot more advanced emotionally and spiritually at 12 than us at 30. They exponentially got smarter younger. I feel bad for the millennial generation. That one got really messed up. They were coming of age as we introduced the most life altering tech into their lives and handed over all of our compounded issues.
I approve of the use of visioning. Belleruth helped a particular client with battle-memory to vision new loops to help him out of loops that had repeated for years. Probably, there are more details about this on a current site of hers. I am remembering this from many years ago.
Small triumphs help me. I cannot lose at lottery if I do not play! Moving to a place where I need Spanish-as-a-second-language, has also helped. Just taking a taxi is more difficult than just trudging through for a coffee. Some days, my bike works, so those are cruise days. I learned some time ago from Belleruth Naparstek that trauma occurs in the visioning part of the brain, often, and is thus not as accessible to cognition as some forms of therapy counsel, which is not to say that cognitive has not helped me, as it has. Nonetheless, it helped when my family was somewhat intact. It was of zero use, pretty much, when family crashed.
From my 30 years of self exploring, discouragement, defeat, and disappointment are old feelings out of the past. No human mind gives in to circumstances essentially before they have to and everybody's told not to give in and don't be a weakling. No human mind gives in initial until the defeat is thorough and we were defeated. The thing is to notice how bad it was and discharge on it and not be confused by it. There is no reason to be unhappy, by what we have and what we have done.
After living in a care home for a few years, I noticed that humans are very hard to totally defeat. Even when minds were gone, or folks had totally given and just wanted to die, their hearts keep beating, their bodies kept breathing, taking in nutrients, and eliminating and they survived for years.
The connection between the habenula and pineal is of profound importance for all of us. Joe Dispenza has a pineal activation meditation to access super consciousness. The Bible (and other "sacred" texts) offer an allegorical blueprint to work with our electric body/mind through the pineal also (and "Jacob called the place pineal"). These were never intended to be taken literally, rather as a guide to work with our own light through our photons, bosons, neutrons. Photonic light animates the body just as the light does in photosynthesis, life is created. When our pineal gland is activated, through the rising of energy up the spine (kundalini) just as in Joe Dispenzas meditation and other deep breathwork practices, melatonin flows and we are opened to truth. "If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light ". This is talking about the pineal. All life flows through the mystic, interior channel of the spine. The kingdom of go(o)d is within. This, therefore, begs many questions. Why are we encouraged to trust religious institutions who have interpreted these texts literally? Who would want to harm the habenula, pineal and pituitary? And, for what reasons? In whose interests is it for human beings to stay in the lower mind/body centres disconnect from their higher christic consciousness?
Thanks for this Gary. This is so etching I'm sure we all have struggled with, and to have it explained in such a clear way makes this issue so much easier to deal with.
I asked the creator of the "Brain Tap" therapy app to create a script which talked to the habenula. He never did it, but I agree it would be interesting.
Gary, thank you for writing this. I wasn't familiar with the habenula or its function, but in reading your article a thought came to mind that I can't help but think might deserve more reflection... I grew up in the Midwest during the 70s. We were taught from a young age self discipline, boundaries, to practice self-restraint, and to set goals and work hard to achieve them (i.e. "hard work pays off"). We were fully immersed and vested in a climate of competition - whether it was sports, academics, trying to make 'First Chair' in the trumpet section of the school band, or winning praise in a family of six kids. Whether that specific cultural environment was more regional, generational, or familial I cannot say, bust most I grew up with seemed to share the same experiences. Has this changed over the decades? Did the pop culture decades of 'Do what feels good,' moral relevance, and every kid gets a trophy contravene what common sense and wisdom had built into our culture? Has the declining size in families effected this? Perhaps we've taken a cultural left turn somewhere along the way?
Well, the world has certainly changed since I was a kid too, and not all for the better for children growing up today, if the record rates of suicides and anti-depressants are to be believed. We are all now bombarded with junk very addictive things, and the children are exposed to these very early now. The subtitle to Dr Lembke's book on addiction is "Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence" and perhaps that say it all. In the end, her anti-dote to addiction comes down to practicing self-restraint and radical honesty. According to Louis Weinstock, a children's psychotherapist, author of "How the World is Making Our Children Mad and What to Do About", helicopter parenting and teaching kids to have a victim mentality is only making things much worse
One thing about teaching self-restraint... It is very difficult (if not impossible) to teach children self-discipline if they grow up in an undisciplined environment (family).
"From the above, I propose the key to happiness is to take pleasure in the pursuit of happiness itself, and that a good life is when we live in alignment with minimizing the time in which our habenula is activated. Meditations which de-activate the habenula, re-framing our goals and purpose from trying to win the finite games to playing the infinite games to the best of our ability"
Interesting essay. In my own very limited experience, I can only refer to my twenty years spent rescuing dogs, which may seem an odd place to go but it's relevant. Dogs, unlike humans, live almost exclusively in the present moment. It is only traumatised dogs whose behaviour is governed by memories of the past in conjunction with the fearful anticipation of the immediate future. Once they can get over that - sadly, some cannot - then they start living in the present, for the present. Nothing else matters. That is why dogs are so happy and content most of the time, just enjoying life for what it is. They play the infinite game because, paradoxically, the present is not bounded, therefore, in isolation, it is effectively infinite. The present only becomes bounded when it is framed in the context of the past and the future. Humans are so good at making the present finite and thus degrading its infinite potential.
Yes! I often looks a dogs as paragons of what we could be. They are the pinnacle of living presently, as you say, but also they ideals of fascia health - note how their skin glides over the bones - we should be the same, but our modern world makes us stuck - literally sticks our skin down like superglue to the bones. They also are exemplar of unconditional love, and they spend a lot of time just relaxing and resting. I think there is much we can learn from our canine friends!
Hmmm. I'm thinking of my sometimes feeling "It's all too much" in the evening, when I look at all I want to get done, maybe at something that didn't go as I wanted it, and so on . . . I know, in my case, what to do. Go to bed. Get sleep. My body resets when I sleep. I wake up. It's a different world. I'm ready to go on, so much feels do-able. Sometimes something has solved itself during the night.
Yes! Good sleep as well as "sleeping on it" are vital for restoration, health and growth. Getting good sleep is my number one priority ... and not getting it is my number negative impactor on my symptoms!
Just slept on something - got a couple of great answers and moves forward. Glad this is also vital for you.
Thank you!
Whether or not you are in accord with Dane Wiginton's and Mike Adam's theory about the hurricane, just finding out about the loss of the citrus crop and the fertilizer plant are immeasurably unsettling. The import of the Nord Stream sabotage will not only have a deleterious effect on Europe, but also the whole world will suffer the dire ramifications. Not to mention the angst, no matter if you have or have not been jabbed, about our future.
Just yesterday, I was talking to an acquaintance about our mutual despair.
But, thanks to you, we have been introduced to the habenula, and we now know that we need to heed its wisdom. Be kind, help one another, and be meditatively contemplative
But, admittedly, it is so very hard- most especially, for me.
Thanks again.
Yes, the current factors in the world are not conducive to habenula de-activation, but I also feel a lot of this is manufactured to implicitly activate it in us [not sure if the fear mongers or "nudgers" know about the habenula explicitly themselves, but the effect is the same] it. So resistance is also in not giving in to the fear, as well as speaking out, in m view. When we give in to the fear, they have already won their finite game. It is hard, I know, but not letting the b*****ds win is part of the infinite game we need to keep playing? I will look up the name you mention.
Dane Wigington is from geoengineeringwatch.org Mike Adams, from Natural News, interviewed him about the possible manipulation of the hurricane as apparently it is feasible as it is described in patents to allegedly steer hurricanes as a part of weather modification. In addition, there is a short video to ostensibly offer buttressing proof that said weather manipulation did occur. The OBJECTIVE? An important fertilizer plant, Mosaic, is located in central Florida. Did Mosaic sustain damage? I hope not. Indeed, I hope it is all wrong.
Thank you for the kindness of your reply. ... I just sent your post to two people- both meditators - who are the opposite of the consummate worrier that I am.
Very timely. I have been working on just this myself. I've listened to a bit of Huberman stuff about it, and read a few other articles, and tried to understand the various steps through which dopamine progresses, to see if I can establish where mine is falling over - if that is what is happening. I certainly have very many symptoms of low dopamine. I have too little desire left to conjure up anything I desire, which means I can no longer get reward from fulfilling that desire, so it is not that easy to turn this back on. I started with food, which is the only minimal pleasure left in my life. I tried not eating until I am actually hungry, then thinking through what food I desire, and waiting for the "yum" sensation before I satisfy it. (Although most yum foods are forbidden for those with high blood sugar). But my body has quickly tricked me out of that one. It worked a couple of times then my body simply said, well starve to death then, and refused to give me hunger signals any more, or refused to give me the "yum" at something that should sound delicious but is now "ho hum".
So now I am resorting to supplements. I am using olive leaf extract which is a precursor to both dopamine and serotonin, and have just added velvet bean which is also a precursor to both dopamine and serotonin. One of my low dopamine symptoms is extreme stiffness and immobility of my body, and the olive leaf extract seems to have loosened my body up enormously, but at this early stage, no change to my ability to actually desire anything. So low dopamine production may be part of my problem but not all. I am still playing with this - early days.
You described it well with the issue of too little reward for too much effort - that is the story of my life, and at 73 I have pretty much given up on trying - particularly to achieve the things that really would give me reward. I don't know how to switch what is essentially "hope" back on again - how can you argue with 73 years of losing, most of which time has been spent in severe pain? It's a fact. And as yet, I have not worked out what I want THAT I can actually get, in order to switch this system back on again.
And in addition to that, I have other hormones playing up like insulin and cortisol, and so there is no real way of knowing how to jig or trigger them all back to the point where I am interfacing with life in a healthy way. I think there is possibly a single key but I don't yet know what it is. Further down in this post someone talks about dogs. I was just talking with someone last night about how we see dogs, cats and horses all do this. They can be terrified and simply refuse to engage, for days, weeks and months. And then the miracle happens. From moving away from the person trying to rehabilitate them, they suddenly come to a decision and walk towards that person they have always walked away from. Then they demand snuggles and physical attention. It is as if a switch has just flipped. But the reality for 73 year old women in this culture, is that no-one is going to nurse us and care for us, protect us and coax us for days, weeks or months, and feed us our favorite foods, until we come around. We either perform exactly as they require us to perform, or they walk away. The kindness shown to animals is NOT shown to lonely old people who still have to perform tricks to even be seen. So of course we simply wind down and die. There is nothing else left to do - particularly in this current post covid world of pure awfulness.
As I said in response to another of your posts, this is a pretty scary time to be getting old.
Sorry to hear of your troubles. Can you get hold of this exact brand: https://www.biovea.com/uk/product/detail/16276/mucuna-dopa-250mg-60-vegetarian-capsules - taking one of these should tell you if the problems are dopamine related - your stiffness should melt away for an hour or three [the concentrated active ingredient in this is the same as in Parkinson's meds]. Have you tried talk therapy - this can really help with the right therapist. Lilian Sjoberg has helped me a lot by processing my "body memories".
That particular brand is available here in Australia, but is there something specific about the brand? I have obtained Velvet bean from here: https://herbosophy.com.au/velvet-bean/, and I prefer to take the least manufactured option where there is a choice. Comparing the products, it seems the biovea product is an extract from the velvet bean and standardised, where the herbosophy product is simply ground up velvet bean. So dosage might be quite different. In the meantime, the much cheaper olive leaf extract might be working for me.
There are two sets of symptoms I am tracking, the immobilisation of my body AND the immobilisation of my drive (ie no desire). At this stage the olive leaf extract is working enough to get me somewhat ambulant again, but not having much immediate noticeable impact on desire or satisfaction levels - the taste for life (in my case, walking on the beach and enjoying food).
But it is reasonable to assume that the behavioural change will lag behind the freeing up of the body from the stiffness and pain - the realisation of "oh yes, I CAN do that now" that has to get registered in the body.
This is how I see the cycle working. You have a desire to do something, you try to do it, then your body fails you, so you fail. When you do this enough, you have no choice but to give up the desire to do that thing that is no longer available to you (in my case, walk on the beach). When life narrows enough, you give up on all desires rather than continue to fail, so you are now on a non-stop downward spiral. Then you take a magic pill and your body frees up a bit. But you have already decided you cannot do this thing any more. You have to force yourself over your defeat, and try again. You have to force yourself to go for that walk (or whatever), knowing that all previous evidence indicates that you are quite likely to fail. If you do still fail, the negative dopamine spiral continues, so it is quite a risk. But if you actually find you CAN go for the walk and succeed, you can start the process of rebuilding the dopamine cycle.
Somehow, if you have hit almost total stasis, you have to get that first "win" so that your body gets the longed for dopamine hit from something healthy, and learns it CAN enjoy something again.
And of course, what we don't know without medical confirmation some how (?), is whether the dopamine receptors are still functioning. If they are not, none of this is going to work.
...and lets not forget the overlay of 5G on everything.
The brand is the one is I found which worked just the same as the pd meds. It has concerntated the levels of l-dopa - for pure bean you need an awful lot to get the same, and because it also has serotonin it counteracts it somewhat. Interesting on the olive leaf - have not heard of this in connection to dopamine - will investigate and give it a try... I also found that passion fruit tincture could ease the stiffness...
I'll keep going with my current tablets till I see how they work over time and/or until they run out, by which time i might have braved going to an incompetent doctor to get the necessary tests done. If there is an issue of taking "medications" a doctor might be much happier with a manufactured product as a substitute treatment than a simple herbal preparation - and by then I presume I will have a way of tracking its success or otherwise. Sounds like a plan.
You may not know that you are helping me talk through how I am going to approach this next health disaster in my life. I am an external processor and when I have no-one to talk to, to help me process my ideas, I make them up from the closest available living model - and currently you are providing the image I am talking to and enough feedback to keep me talking. So thank you.
Interestingly, Janice Hadlock of "PD Recovery" says that "talking to an imaginary friend" is the cure for Parkinsn's!!! pdrecovery.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/SOP.pdf
LOL
I am not officially diagnosed with Parkinson's, although, if it is possible, I am living in a "cluster" of two people with Parkinson's, and one with some closely related head nodding disease, all neighbours in a block of flats. I am doing my research and making sure I understand it BEFORE I go to a doctor for an actual diagnosis, so they cannot lead me down endless blind alleys. Most importantly, I must know how to manage it and have some idea of how to cure it, BEFORE I let them anywhere near me with their demoralising prognoses.
I have had Fibromyalgia since I was 14, and what I am dealing with now is a few steps beyond FMS. It's the pain and stiffness of FMS on steroids. So I am thinking that the cause of both might be the same. I've just done the search. Here we go again. Everything I research is related to everything else I research.
"Indeed, among the more recent hypotheses regarding the pathophysiology of the disorder is that fibromyalgia represents a state of dopaminergic hypo-function that develops subsequent to changes in limbic function following exposure to chronic stress."
This makes me furious. I have been chasing FMS for my entire adult life and not one doctor EVER mentioned dopamine as an issue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
https://www.practicalpainmanagement.com/pain/myofascial/fibromyalgia/central-role-dopamine-fibromyalgia
And the current worsening fits with my statement that 5G makes every disease you already have, orders of magnitude worse.
woah! Good find - that is a useful article.
I am so glad I followed a link from another Substack to yours! So far in life, I have only been tangentially affected by Parkinson's (a client when I worked as a caregiver - now I understand why the family liked me, I always remained calm & kind no matter what he did; my sister's formerly extremely successful businesswoman sister-in-law) but really appreciate your efforts to learn any possible way to respond to this challenge in your life in a creative way. And the findings about dopamine & disappointment are personally relevant. My life in retrospect seems one grand failure & disappointment; however, this work proposes a completely different view of it! Very interesting!
Thank you, this is heartwarming for me to hear it is helpful.
I was intrigued as well to note you've been following Gerald Pollack, because the Midwestern Doctor also references his work, in his/her (doc is anonymous so I don't know if he or she) discussion of zeta potential and its importance in many health conditions, and especially elderly people. AMD focuses on how Traditional Chinese Medicine's ideas about blood stasis & fluid stasis (including the glymphatic system of the brain) explain many conditions. (I've begun following some of his ideas abt "structured" or liquid crystalline water and lymphatic massage for the head, as I am at risk for the vascular dementia that took my brother's life.)
Yes, I found Pollack's work very helpful for self-understanding, and pragmatic therapies. There is a good book called Quench about hydration which links his work to fascia.
The amount of research and work you put into this is astounding! What a fascinating thing, the human brain - and it’s curious we’ve figured out how to hack this entire system and creative lucrative industries all based on this part of the brain!
Thanks for this, I’m saving it for reference!
Thank you, that means a lot coming from you.
I see the newest generation (my kids) reject and rebel against the saccharine adult behaviors. They can smell the lack of authenticity. They don’t want participation trophies. They feel more confident with who they are. Maybe the kids are alright, after all. I have hope!
This is hopeful. Which generation is this? Gen Z?
I think mine are on the cusp of Z and Alpha. But it’s a large portion of gen Z that is doing the quiet rebellion. It’s the high school and college kids who were born into the technological revolution and aren’t so drugged by it because it was always around them and not just the ‘new thing’. The ones that never got into smoking cigarettes. Or weed. The ones that were homeschooled more often. The ones that went undetected because some of their generation was screaming so loud to be seen. We focus on that loud minority that makes TikToks about their pronouns, and we think that’s what the youth is up to, but I’ve met kids in that generation that are a lot more advanced emotionally and spiritually at 12 than us at 30. They exponentially got smarter younger. I feel bad for the millennial generation. That one got really messed up. They were coming of age as we introduced the most life altering tech into their lives and handed over all of our compounded issues.
I approve of the use of visioning. Belleruth helped a particular client with battle-memory to vision new loops to help him out of loops that had repeated for years. Probably, there are more details about this on a current site of hers. I am remembering this from many years ago.
Small triumphs help me. I cannot lose at lottery if I do not play! Moving to a place where I need Spanish-as-a-second-language, has also helped. Just taking a taxi is more difficult than just trudging through for a coffee. Some days, my bike works, so those are cruise days. I learned some time ago from Belleruth Naparstek that trauma occurs in the visioning part of the brain, often, and is thus not as accessible to cognition as some forms of therapy counsel, which is not to say that cognitive has not helped me, as it has. Nonetheless, it helped when my family was somewhat intact. It was of zero use, pretty much, when family crashed.
I will look up Belleruth Narparstek. The type of therapy I'm taking is all about visualization. I find it very helpful.
From my 30 years of self exploring, discouragement, defeat, and disappointment are old feelings out of the past. No human mind gives in to circumstances essentially before they have to and everybody's told not to give in and don't be a weakling. No human mind gives in initial until the defeat is thorough and we were defeated. The thing is to notice how bad it was and discharge on it and not be confused by it. There is no reason to be unhappy, by what we have and what we have done.
After living in a care home for a few years, I noticed that humans are very hard to totally defeat. Even when minds were gone, or folks had totally given and just wanted to die, their hearts keep beating, their bodies kept breathing, taking in nutrients, and eliminating and they survived for years.
The connection between the habenula and pineal is of profound importance for all of us. Joe Dispenza has a pineal activation meditation to access super consciousness. The Bible (and other "sacred" texts) offer an allegorical blueprint to work with our electric body/mind through the pineal also (and "Jacob called the place pineal"). These were never intended to be taken literally, rather as a guide to work with our own light through our photons, bosons, neutrons. Photonic light animates the body just as the light does in photosynthesis, life is created. When our pineal gland is activated, through the rising of energy up the spine (kundalini) just as in Joe Dispenzas meditation and other deep breathwork practices, melatonin flows and we are opened to truth. "If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light ". This is talking about the pineal. All life flows through the mystic, interior channel of the spine. The kingdom of go(o)d is within. This, therefore, begs many questions. Why are we encouraged to trust religious institutions who have interpreted these texts literally? Who would want to harm the habenula, pineal and pituitary? And, for what reasons? In whose interests is it for human beings to stay in the lower mind/body centres disconnect from their higher christic consciousness?
Thanks for this Gary. This is so etching I'm sure we all have struggled with, and to have it explained in such a clear way makes this issue so much easier to deal with.
I asked the creator of the "Brain Tap" therapy app to create a script which talked to the habenula. He never did it, but I agree it would be interesting.
Yes, I like Douglas Murray too.
Big hug back! Thanks for the suggestions, I know Tara Brach, and will look up the others too.