the benefit of non-drug treatment

Anxiety and depression are becoming some of the most common chronic illnesses; they are now almost twice as common as heart disease. Of great concern is the frequency of these disorders in adolescents. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration released the 2013 statistics which reported that 2.6 million adolescents were diagnosed with a clinically important depressive episode that year, up from the total of just 1 year earlier.

Anxiety and depression are highly related disorders. Many patients begin with anxiety symptoms and transition to depressive symptoms over time often getting stuck in between with mixed anxiety and depression. This suggests that anxiety and depression may be related brain imbalances which are simply different degrees or stages of brain function caused by the same circumstances.

The commonly used drug treatments attempt to balance neurotransmitter levels in the brain that have been associated with the disorder’s symptoms. Neurotransmitters are the chemical messengers that signal from one neuron or brain cell to the next. Although all neurotransmitters are used for many functions in multiple parts of the brain, certain ones such as serotonin have been found to be more imbalanced in areas of the brain thought to relate to the symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Current research is indicating that the neurotransmitter imbalances in these disorders are likely to occur later in the process from other changes in the brain which trigger the symptoms. As the brain runs “out of balance”, over time the neurons begin to deplete neurotransmitters allowing the disorder to progress. While drugs that try to increase neurotransmitter signaling may help symptoms some, it is typically only moderately and is unlikely to be addressing the cause of the imbalance.

causes

Anxiety and depression are often caused by the same factors and are just different degrees of the same imbalance and often show a heavy overlap of certain symptoms in both disorders.

Extensive research has found several factors which contribute to the onset of anxiety and depression. These factors are inter-related and include:

· Chemical/inflammatory brain stress

· Mental stress

· Abnormal cortisol signaling

Inflammatory stress can be generated anywhere in the body by the immune system. Once the immune system increases inflammatory signaling it occurs throughout the body, and the brain is one of the most sensitive tissues to the negative effects of inflammation. Inflammation has been found to interfere with the function of cells called glial cells that work to keep the neurons adequately nourished and maintained. When this happens the functioning brain cells, neurons, begin to dysfunction.

Food sensitivities are common causes of brain inflammation and thus anxiety/depression. Inflammation activates “danger” signaling pathways in the brain. While this is helpful in short-term situations where danger is real, chronic activation signaled by inflammation trains the brain into an over alert state in which “normal” things trigger hypervigilance or anxiety

One of the more common food sensitivities, gluten sensitivity, has been shown to deplete serotonin in the brain which is a factor in the transition from anxiety to depression. Gluten reaction both interferes with the digestion and absorption of tryptophan, the amino acid that serotonin is made of, but it also causes the brain to use the available tryptophan to make an inflammatory protein kynurenic acid at the expense of making serotonin.

The treatment of anxiety and/or depression is done with a combined program to address triggers that imbalance the brain activation patterns such as inflammation, and neurofeedback or “brain training” to rebalance the abnormal brain activation pattern. Neurofeedback uses a quantitative EEG (QEEG) to examine the patterns of the dominant brainwaves in each area of the brain to look for imbalances.

Anxiety typically activates the front areas of the brain called the frontal attentional network. This is the network that causes the intense focus during danger. With time, the brain learns that activation pattern and begins to process normal information as it would danger. While the frontal attention network is activated, memory processing is inhibited. This is thought to allow the brain energy resources to be devoted to the attentional areas. Memory difficulty is common in anxiety and depression.

Another feature of anxiety is that the brain tends to process too much information through the right side which causes a somewhat more emotional perception of the information being processed. The left side of the brain processes somewhat more analytically and flat. When both sides are balanced in activation, things are perceived with a good balance of emotional and analytical processing.

Anxiety is a disorder classified as “brain too fast” where the brain excessively processes and reacts. This eventually can begin to use up the neurotransmitters the brain uses to send communications from one cell to the next. As the brain begins to deplete neurotransmitters, the brain becomes too slow and depressive symptoms begin. The brain also depletes neurotransmitters in the right side of the brain allowing dominant processing through the left side.

Often the brain will need to be “re-trained” back into a normal activation pattern with procedures such as neurofeedback. However, the source of the ongoing inflammatory activation, gluten, must be discovered and removed.

Once the brainwave imbalance pattern is found with a QEEG brainmap, neurofeedback sessions are done teaching the brain wave pattern to normalize. This typically “rests” the stressed brain allowing the normal restoration of neurotransmitter levels with time. Once normalized brain function is re-established, it remains balanced unless the original stressor such as a food sensitivity is activated again.

Neurofeedback is one of the most established and effective non-drug treatments for anxiety and depression. Combined with nutritional management of the triggering problems it results in a safe, natural and lasting solution.

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