We may have cancer and feel good, or be submitted to substantial disability and suffering without doctors finding any evidence of disease. Medicine gives no acceptable answers to the last situation and arbitrarily appeals to denying the reality of suffering, making the calvary of patients even more unbearable. This blog tries to contribute with the knowledge of the neuronal network, giving a little light to this confusing section of pathology.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Evaluative disfunction as a risk factor


A reasonably healthy body managed by a mistaken, alarmist brain that maintains defensive programs needlessly is an abused body, subjected to physical burdens that undermine its integrity. Defense programs are justified when there is a noxious state or agent.

The program of preventive removal of the ingested (ie nausea to cause vomit) is biologically justified when we have eaten something dangerous, or when an animal stuffs itself with food and then regurgitates it to feed the brood or to hide food in a safe place. Activating vomit during a migraine attack or vertigo only produces discomfort, suffering and loss of energy (food). The body tends to activate preventively the nausea when it assesses internal problems. Germs and toxic substances go in through the digestive tract. If something goes wrong internally, the noxious agent might still be in the stomach, so the stomach-pumping program is turned on. Facial pain, toothache or muscle-skeletal system pain are not accompanied by nausea. The theoretically noxious is still at the entrance (mouth) or is a matter of mechanical stress (muscle-skeletal system). Biologically, vomiting does not make sense.

Keeping the hunger program on and eagerly promoting it despite overweight generates all kinds of physical inconvenience. Hunger is for when there isn’t any food available but can be found if one tries hard enough. It makes no sense if you have any extra kilos or if there is no chance of finding a tiny bite.

Managing the organism healthily involves being right in the decision to turn on and off and maintain programs, obtaining profit from it.

The erroneous assessment of relevant structural damage in the spine ("I have arthritis, pinches, hernias...") involves the turning on of defensive programs that cancel the articular function, contracture of inadequate muscles and increase of mechanical stress with each action. A spine with "wear" needs free joints, little mechanical load, freedom and promotion of movement, trust ... not fear of movement.

The erroneous assessment of disease activates the "sickness response" that promotes the  behavior of feeling "coming down with the flu” (sore, tired, unmotivated) not being sick. In the case of fibromyalgia, the brain maintains discouragement active (fatigue) and punishment (pain) of movement "as if" there was disease. Actually, the disease is generated by an erroneous evaluation of disease, the stubbornness in defending the idea that fibromyalgia is a disease (in the classical way) when the pathogenic state is the mismanagement of a healthy brain "as if" the individual was sick.

The stress program does its job: alerting the individual from an uncoded new incidence, measuring it, evaluating it, giving it relevance, selecting the coping resources and proceeding to activate the most appropriate behavior. After the event, shutting down the program. Stressing out is not working too hard, but doing it with a continuous assessment of shock, threat, catastrophism, subjection to an unknown hierarchy... being helpless...  

The program of feeling depressed makes sense when the reality at that moment is averse and doesn’t offer a solution until either circumstances have changed or a recent negative event has been sufficiently ruminated and digested. Continuous assessment of helplessness, low self-esteem or other’s, in the objective absence of weakness or adversity of the surroundings, cancels the motivational resources and condemns the individual to inaction.

The catastrophist assessment makes sense when there has been a negative factor and must be analyzed to learn how to avoid it or deal with it properly in the future. Once the analysis is done, the reflective period is turned off and the individual gets his or her act together to work towards his or her goals.

- Your brain doesn’t manage the programs properly. It evaluates the organism’s state wrongly. It sees danger, failure, vulnerability, illness, frailty. That’s why you have symptoms... that is, programs ... They are on and should be off.

- I disagree. I'm sick.

- If you think so, you’re feeding your brain’s erroneous evaluations, which is bad.

- I was told that my brain has lost volume in the cortex. That doesn’t seem normal to me.

- The connections between neurons are cheered up with action and turned off with discouragement. Your brain’s cortex has thinned because it has no stimuli. They are discouraged. Pleasure is requisitioned.

Confusing the appearance of disease with actual disease is not harmless. Not considering the brain’s evaluative error as a pathology that must be fought with the restoration of the health belief is a mistake. Defending and claiming the disease condition of a healthy organism is not harmless.

"... migraine, fibromyalgia ... are mysterious illnesses without treatment ..."

When will there be a serious, rigorous consideration of that omnipresent and overflowing category of diseases of cultural mediation?

It doesn’t look good...

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