Call to Action: Whatever it is that is holding you back, acknowledge it and enter the 3 three doorways for brain health.
The most challenging aspect of brain health is getting people to make the life style change needed to experience a positive turn around.
Why?
When the brain is significantly impaired, a person has a tremendous difficulty instituting the positive change needed to enhance the healing response.
In the mainstream-modern world we call it "non-compliance." It becomes a common term dictated into medical notes when someone continues to exhibit the same symptoms over and over without improvement, especially when someone says, "I don't like how that medication makes me feel and I don't want to take it anymore." Wham-o! Bam-o! Someone has just been labeled as non-compliant distrustful patient.
So, allow me to back track a little bit and describe how brain impairment prevents someone from getting healthy. When the brain is energy deprived, that also means the body is energy deprived. At the smallest level, the cells are dysfunctional, unable to complete a cellular metabolic process resulting in toxic build up and a severe energy crisis.
The book Change or Die, by Alan Deutschman, helps me answer the question why people are stuck and unable to make a change. I has become a classic on my bookshelf.
Check out a book summary here: Change or Die.
He delved in to the stats that showed heart patients after a surgery will not change their life style habits even when told they will die if. Ninety percent of these folks do not follow through and end up going in for repeat surgeries.
People who feel hopeless and not in control feel so demoralized that they believe there is nothing left out there in the world that will work for them. Alan Deutschman came up with three core attributes of practices that help people change and discussed three types of success stories.
From the BFA: Brain First Always approach: We look at nutrient deficiencies, toxin overload, and especially early-learned behavior patterns which are basically attitudes becoming physically expressed in the body as a state of health.
1- People are so sick and weak, they don't have the mental or physical energy to take on new behaviors. New learning requires the pre-frontal cortex to be ready to go. Remember learning to ride a bike? You were shaky and uncoordinated. You didn't trust yourself. You felt a little anxious. That means the pre-frontal cortex is working hard. It takes a good bit of energy and a heightened sense of curiosity to engage like that. You must feel shaky and uncoordinated because you are trying a new activity that is not comfortable because it is new. Something new is very threatening whether it is speaking in public, trying out gym equipment for the first time, going to a job orientation,doing a nutritional detox, trying a new diet, enrolling in college, etc.
New activities "kick in" the Fight or Flight brain response. The sympathetic nervous system releases adrenaline to help you along. In adequate amounts this hormone gives you a sense of excitement and inspiration so you can learn new things. In the right amount, we call it the zone where someone "kicks butt," during a job interview, they "hit it out of the park," during a music performance, or they don't hesitate to help someone in a crisis.
On the opposite end, too much Fight or Flight/Freeze or Faint from the Limbic System (emotion and memory portion of the sympathetics) is very distracting and blocks concentration.
How do we heal the brain in spite of sickness and weakness?
Understanding Leaky Brain will help. Datis Kharrazian, author of Why Isn't My Brain Working? offers great insight to the workings of the brain. He teaches his clients how to address the signs of a failing brain that most of society will blame on aging. Yet, he underscores how important it is to be very deliberate in choosing healthy behaviors since our modern life style, chemical laden processed foods, etc. has been very disruptive. Health recovery is not on auto-pilot. We have to acknowledge the down side of modern life and find a better balance.
Ultimate Healing Podcast: Leaky Brain
Repair a Leaky Brain
2- The new behaviors are so different from current habits, that limbic system emotions of fear and distrust pop up causing someone to exhibit a very strong hesitation.
3- Peer pressure is very powerful at holding people in their stuck states, which is another aspect of limbic system fear.
4- Fear of confrontation in an imbalanced relationship (such as a doctor, or spouse), community peer pressure, also incites the limbic system to stay in a holding pattern.
5- A dopamine imbalance (the motivation neurotransmitter) prevents someone from starting a new life style habit.
6- Lack of appropriate and sometimes correct information leads us to "spin our wheels," wondering why our current actions are not helping, not realizing they are actually hurting. This is challenging because many wrong ideas about diet, health, medical procedures end up in peer reviewed journals and it is taken for granted that the information has been under appropriate scrutiny. (Check out my series on Doctors Who Jumped Ship to learn about the attempts to reform the disingenuous aspects of medical care.)
7- Time also proves to be a serious block to healing. How we fill our daily plate of life, devote hours to our jobs, etc., certainly gets in the way of health. Sometimes I hear people say, "I hope I can make to retirement...." We all have the same hours in a day, as the saying goes, but our time choices also matter.
I invite you to set aside some time to start a coaching relationship with me so you can reorganize your life in ways that help you approach the nagging concerns you know are impacting your brain health.
My calling is to help you live your calling, and you cannot do that with an impaired brain.
Do you want a performing brain?
Check out the BFA Coaching program. I promise it is meaningful and rewarding. You already have the tools. Learn how to use your tools proficiently.
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