Saturday, August 10, 2013

Healing without Freud or Prozac

Sunt cărțite care trebuiesc citite, și sunt cărți care trebuiesc învățate. Cartea asta nu mă poate sătura dintr-o lectură, e prea mult bun de învățat din ea. Despre autorul ei, Dr. David Servan -Schreiber am scris și anterior. Îl respect mult și cititindu-i cărțile am senzația că stăm de vorbă, el așa deștept și calm îmi povestește însuflețit despre viață.

Cartea asta se adresează celor ce vor să simtă viața mai plină, mai mustoasă, fără anomalii emoționale, depresii și alte năpăstuiri sufletești. Nu sunt vrăjeli scormonite de vreun doctoraș parvenit. A fost doctor neurolog specializat în psihiatrie...a fost educat și a predat în cele mai prestigioase universități din Franța și SUA, a fost și membru Médecins Sans Frontières...a învins propriul cancer la creier pentru 20 de ani, atunci cînd prognoza lui initițială nu îi oferea mai mult de 2 ani...

Despre carte, Dr. prezintă metode netradioționale de a fi sănătoși fizic și emoțional, dar cartea se orientează cu precădere stărilor emoționale...

1. Cardiac coherence - o metodă ce conservează energia vitală pentru a opri procesul de îmbătrinire.
2. Eye movement desensitization and Reprocessing: cine a privit filmul Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind își amintește cum protagoniștii au încercat să uite anumite amintiri...păi, această metodă e într-un anumit fel similară, doar că ea nu intenționează să anuleze memoria...ci mai degrabă gustul ei. Se eadresează mai ales amintirilor legate de un șoc puternic: accident, traume în urma unor catastrofe naturale/beligerante, divorț, etc.
3. Resetting your Biological Clock: cei care se trezesc supărați, morocănoși, neîmpliniți, nesăturați de somn pot citi acest capitol...Organismul nostru pentru a se trezi proaspăt are nevoie nu doar de ore suficiente de somn, ci și de o pregătire înainte ca să sărim în picioare gata de o zi nouă...de mii de ani, soarele ne trezea...și nu poate o alarmă să înlocuiască ceea ce a fost sădit în ADN-ul nostru de cînd lumea...pe scurt, e un sfat de a recurge la Dawn Simulation. E am văzut că Phillips le vinde, cîteva ori chiar le-am experimentat...lumina se dezghioacă încet, în triluri de păsărele...e ca și cum te-ai trezi într-un cîmp...încercați!
4. Acupunctura: vă voi povesti doar un exemplu pentru a ilustra puterea acestui ”exercițiu”. În Est, disecțiile chirurgicale (de ex. cezariana) se anesteziază doar cu cîteva acușoare...cît de convingătoare mai trebuie să fie puterea acestei metode? Vedeți pe youtube.
5.  Nutriția sănătoasă: Omega -3 unul dintre cele mai puternice antidepresive. Eu am un obicei care precede citirea acestei cărți. De fiecare dată cînd aveam o zi mai extenuantă decît de obicei, sau aveam vreun păs sau pur și simplu o explozie hormonală care îmi dădea peste cap buna dispoziție...mă puteai găsi la Wasabi (un chain de sushi în Londra), cu nigiri de somon în față...
6. Execițiul fizic..asta e demonstrat, dar pentru a demonstra trebuie de încercat. Cei care au încercat știu ce înseamnă ”runner's high”
7. Dragostea...nu neapărat dintre femeie și bărbat...orice relație de afecțiune de împlinește, ne face mai puternici, mai dornici de a trăi..desigur că cea de cuplu e cea mai aprinsă și concludentă uneori, dar nu exhaustivă.

E o carte pe care indiferent la care pagină nu ai deschide-o, e interesantă...să experimentăm? :)


”Keith’s parents seriously started to worry when his teachers suggested that he should abandon his studies because they felt that he could no longer concentrate enough to function in the class. Keith, with his soft features and his sharp intelligence, had not been completely well for more than five years. However, his parents had blamed this lack of focus on a difficult and perhaps unusually long adolescence. In spite of his shyness and his periods of brooding, Keith had always been a good student. He was also very close to his mother and he enjoyed being with her. But, in the last few months, he had started refusing to eat in the school’s cafeteria. He was uncomfortable in front of so many people he did not really know. Then he started to have anxiety attacks when he had to take the subway or get on a bus. His supposed "cowardice" made him very angry at himself, but he felt completely helpless when anxiety overwhelmed him. And he worried a bit more every week.
Soon, Keith started having trouble sleeping, which gave him less and less energy during the day, and his concentration became impaired. His grades started slipping and he was falling seriously behind.
As Keith had always counted on his school work to shore up his fragile self-esteem, he now felt lost and started thinking about suicide. For two years, he was treated unsuccessfully with a whole range of antidepressants and antianxiety medications. When these did not work, his doctors had even tried an anti-psychotic medication, normally used for schizophrenia. Adding lithium to his anti-depressant for as long as two months did not help either. Finally, on the advice of Keith’s psychiatrist, his mother took him to Basant Puri, M.D., Ph.D a specialist of psychopharmacology at the Hammersmith Hospital in London.
Dr. Puri was very worried about the severity of Keith’s symptoms. Keith’s score on a standard measure of depression was the highest he had ever seen. Moreover, Keith now openly talked about committing suicide. He did so with uncanny detachment — as if it were the only and most obvious solution to his suffering — that made Dr. Puri shiver when listening to him. "Since I have to die some day anyhow," he said, "why wait any longer ? Why should I suffer like this much more ?" And as Dr. Puri tried to argue his point he interrupted him : "Let me die. Please. Out of charity."
After all the failed treatments, his new psychiatrist knew that only one intervention had a chance of overcoming such a deep and prolonged bout of depression : electroshock treatments. But Keith and his mother adamantly refused.
Dr. Puri took stock of the situation. Given the severity of Keith’s condition, it was perfectly justified to hospitalize him against his will and that of his mother. It was also justified to submit him to electroshock treatments, in his own best interest, since practically every other treatment had already been tried. Time was running out to protect Keith from his self-destructive urges. Dr. Puri was getting ready to pursue this course of action when another, distant possibility came to his mind.
As Keith had not responded to any treatment, Dr. Puri thought, perhaps there was something defective in the very constituents of his nervous system. Dr. Puri remembered the intriguing results of a study, to which he had contributed, of omega-3 fatty acids in schizophrenia. In that study, the patient’s depressive symptoms had improved significantly. He also remembered reading Dr. Stoll’s book and learning about his results with bipolar patients.
With these thoughts in mind, Dr. Puri offered a deal to his young patient. He explained to him that he had reasons to believe that a new treatment, based on purified fish oils, might help him. Benefits remained very uncertain since, to his knowledge, Keith might be the first patient with a severe and chronic depression to be treated with fish oils. However, if Keith could promise that he would not try to harm himself, under any circumstances, for the next two months, and if he could promise to remain under the constant supervision of his mother, he, Dr. Puri, would be willing to take the risk of putting the electroshocks on hold for the time being, and trying the new treatment instead. Keith agreed.
The psychiatrist eliminated all of Keith’s medications except for the last antidepressant Keith had been taking for ten months. He then added a few grams per day of a purified fish oil, with the aim of regenerating Keith’s neural membranes.
The results were spectacular. In a few weeks, the suicidal thoughts that had haunted Keith continuously for months disappeared completely. His discomfort in public places also vanished, and he started to sleep soundly again. Nine months later, all the symptoms of his seven-year depression had disappeared. His score on the severity of depression scale was now zero.
In addition to being a psychiatrist, Dr. Puri is a mathematician and a researcher in functional brain imaging. The Hammersmith Hospital in London is also one of the leading research centers in this field. Before treating Keith, he had obtained several MRI scans of his brain. When the same tests were repeated nine months later, they revealed a completely different picture. The membranes of Keith’s neurons appeared strengthened, and they no longer showed any evidence of leaking valuable constituents. The very structure of Keith’s brain had been modified.
Keith’s mother was delighted. Her son, the one she knew and whose loss she’d mourned, was back, transformed. Dr. Puri was so impressed by this transformation that he published a detailed description of the case in the Archives of General Psychiatry. He also initiated a multi-center study — as yet unfinished as I write these lines — on the effect of the fish oil extract on the most severe and most deadly of all brain illnesses : Huntington’s disease.”

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