M1 : Lesson-4 : Inflammation and Cellular Danger Patterns – Understanding the Mind-Body Connection
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Transcript
Essence for inflammation, and unresolved danger responses in chronic illness? The number one simple question that is the key to your health status. Can biochemistry versus dose biochemistry, and discharging inflammation to heal the body. So now we’ve learned that an ongoing chronic stress response will keep the body in a state of fight or flight. This will inevitably result in a chronic health condition both physical and mental.
In this section, we’re going to explore why this happens, and I hope to give you a clear understanding that learning to self regulate your emotions and brain state may be the most impactful strategy to improve your well-being. I always tell my clients that a state of their overall health depends on their answer to this question. Alright? You ready? The question is, Am I okay?
Yes. It’s that simple. Ask yourself right now. Am I innately okay? How can it be that simple?
Well, I’m gonna share a diagram that illustrates how it’s your answer to this question that matters the most. This is a diagram that will show the normal progression of how we typically move from a state of health into illness and back into health. In the diagram, I’m attempting to reduce the complex science of psycho neuroimmunology down to a simple question. So let’s begin in the top left part of this slide, where we are in a state of health. This might be when you were younger, this is when before you got sick, this is how we’re typically born into the world.
So we have a state of health. Then what can happen is we get some type of disturbance or an irritation that affects our system That can be some type of pathogen, toxic exposure, trauma, something that irritates us. And what happens is the body has inflammation occur as a result of that disturbance or irritation. That is normal. Now typically, after the state of inflammation, if we do not resolve the inflammation, it can lead to chronic inflammation, degeneration, and chronic illness.
Well, how do we go from a state of health, down to inflammation and back into health again without dropping into chronic inflammation and chronic illness. Well, that answer depends on the question I just asked you. Am I okay? Your answer to this has a meaning inside of you, and there’s a meaning that you are perceiving the symptom or the inflammation or the event to mean. Are you inherently okay?
Or are you in a threat? Now, if you answer, I am okay even though I feel x, y, and z, or even though I have this illness right now or even though I feel this pain or even though I have this relationship issue, I’m inherently okay. What happens is the body discharges inflammation. You go into a parasympathetic state of it’s okay to heal. When you feel okay, you feel innately okay, deep down to the parasympathetic level that says, We can resolve this tension, this stress, this irritation, and come back into health.
This happens when you develop a trust in your body that it has innate intelligence. And a trust in life itself, which I call primal trust. That is the purpose of primal trust in a nutshell is to help you to find an inherent sense of okayness so that your parasympathetic nervous system or your self healing mechanisms can engage, and you can return to a state of health. Now, if you come back to the question of am I okay? And your answer is no.
I am not okay. I am in threat. This is not safe. That leads to fear and suppression of the inflammation inside of you. That suppressed ability to discharge inflammation.
That’s what we need to do. We need to discharge inflammation in the body. Over time, That suppression leads to chronic inflammation, degeneration, and chronic illness. This is the result of not having trust in this experience. And often that trust is broken when we’re younger, which is why emotional issues and trauma have a huge impact in our ability to heal from chronic illness.
This is making sense. The way to discharge the inflammation in your body is through engaging your rest digest repair setting of your nervous system, and that rest digestion repair pathway can only be activated when we feel calm and safe and connected. In other words, when we feel innate, okayness, we’re gonna learn more about this pathway in the next module, module 2. Let’s return back to the core question. Am I okay right now?
Are you starting to see what I’m getting at here to discharge the inflammation in the body so it can heal We have to have an underlying perspective of I’m inherently okay. I am safe in both our conscious and our unconscious mind. Why do we have to get to this point of feeling inherent okayness to have the healing process complete Because your brain needs a sense of safety and the body needs to relax so that your healing biochemistry known as your dose hormones You’re gonna learn about more in a moment can be released. This healing biochemical cocktail will send messages to every cell of your body that it’s time to reach pair, detoxify, and resolve infections because the threat has passed. Unfortunately, we cannot often consciously self talk ourselves into this mindset of I’m okay.
We have to show our nervous system and our subconscious mind that we believe we are inherently okay that there is no danger that we can relax and heal even though we might feel uncomfortable right now. We’re gonna work a lot on that in the regulate program. We truly have a strong mind body connection that greatly influences our ability to heal. And we have this internal sense of I’m okay. I’m safe right now.
Even though I don’t feel perfect, the brain will release dose hormones and many other healing electromagnetic signals that travel through the whole body, and the body’s able to discharge inflammation, detoxify, and self heal. The state of mind that I’m speaking of also regulates your immune function. It’s about finding this paradox of finding okayness and being open to life even when life is not giving you exactly what you want. This is not easy to do. In fact, I know many of you are probably angry at me right now for even suggesting it.
I know I used to be quite offended when I was first to explain this methodology. I couldn’t understand how it was possible to teach my body to feel okay when I simply felt terrible. And I had terrible things happening in my life. But what do you think happens if you perpetually feel a sense of, I’m not okay. I’m unsafe.
And yet you’re doing all these things trying to get your body to get better. That ability to discharge inflammation from the previous graph It’s suppressed because the sympathetic nervous system, your fight and flight response, remains active, and your body is producing the can stress hormones not dose chemistry. The chronic stress response causes inflammation. The cells in the body literally shut down production of energy, and they decrease communication with each other. Think of it as a retreat in hide mode.
The body builds up toxins develops a weakened immune system, digestive system, endocrine system. You’re gonna learn more about all of this under the lesson titled cell danger response in module 1 later on. First, here’s a summary of the healing dose chemistry versus can history. We’re gonna compare the 2 different types of biochemistry again. First, we have stress biochemistry.
This is the feeling of I’m not okay. I’m scared. I need to protect. This is your can chemistry if you remember the cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine. And then we have our safety and joy biochemistry.
I’m okay. I’m safe. Let’s enjoy life. This is our dose chemistry, dopamine, the reward hormone, oxytocin, the love and connection hormone, serotonin, the mood stabilizing hormone, and endorphins, the pain killing hormone. I’d like to describe dose chemistry a bit further and also know that you have a worksheet underneath of this video to help you remember how to produce more dose chemistry in your life.
So dose dopamine controls the brains reward and pleasure center. It’s the motivation hormone that helps you take action, go towards your goals and passions, and meet your needs. This hormone, however, can be cross wired with addiction, addictive behaviors like substance abuse, obsessive screen time, gambling, overeating pornography are all examples of unhealthy dopamine hit addictions. Now there’s healthy ways of improving dopamine, which are exercise, meditation, sleeping, trying new things, organizing, cleaning, getting things done on your to do list, listening to fun music, working towards a goal, and getting outside in the sunshine. The next hormone, oh, for oxytocin, released when we’re connecting and bonding with others, and it increases our ability to handle stress.
Increased oxytocin happens through hugs and touch and intimacy, playing with animals laughing, and socializing with people you enjoy. Serotonin regulates our mood and gives us a feeling of eye matter. We increase serotonin through improving our gut health exercise sunshine, meditation, gratitude, and laughter. And e for endorphins, the body’s natural pain reliever to reduce stress. We increase endorphins through exercise, laughter, dancing, intimacy and enjoyable smells.
It’s obvious that we want dose chemistry to feel good and to heal and find a perspective of I am okay is what’s helpful for you to produce the dose chemistry. Again, we must show our body not tell ourselves to feel safe. So how do we show ourselves this message? Well, that’s the journey I intend to take you with in this program. Also, under this lesson, I have some recommended journal prompts to help you become conscious of any type of I’m not okay type of mindset.