Stockwell's Biochemistry Of What You Feel

Excerpt from “McGill's Hypnotherapy Encyclopedia” Creativity Unlimited Press
© Shelley Stockwell-Nicholas, PhD

Did you ever think, “What makes you think?” Have you ever said, “What made me say or do that?” Ever wondered about at what made your emotions?

Your biological self! It recognizes, perceives, processes, remembers, learns and creates your every behavior. This same biochemistry decides what you consciously notice and what remains unconscious. To a hypnotherapist the conclusion is clear: your body IS your mind! How this happens is what this article is about.

You were born instinctively knowing how to lift your head, roll over or walk. It was hard-wired into your thoughts and neurology. So was your ability to speak. Your ear canals filled with sound amplified amniotic fluid were do finely tuned that from birth to four months you could distinguish some 150 sounds that make up human speech. These miracles came with you as pre-programmed behavioral instructions. As you evolved and grew, you learned and honed additional behaviors that dramatically sculpted your molecules, neurons and structural development. Each biological adjustment in turn affected who you are and what you feel, think, say and do.

HOW YOUR BRAIN PROCESSES THOUGHT

Your awesome brain is primarily made of water, fat and protein. No two brains are the same, and your brain is not the same moment to moment. Your brain hemispheres differ in size and distribution of gray and white matter, chemistry and structure. The very structure of your brain is influenced by how you use it.

Everything you create begins as a conscious or subconscious thought manifested in your neurology. Every instant, your brain electrochemical alters neurons and their countless links. Puberty, pregnancy, aging, past events and memory cause helpful structural brain function changes. Your internal and external environment sends a message to your cells. The cells, receptors and their ligands then modify according to the information received and every modification affects your emotion and physiology. A cell and its modifications influence other cells.

Ever notice how your heart beats rapidly and your breathing changes when you are excited, angry or in love? Have you observed how your thoughts turn you on or off sexually? Consider how depression makes you feel physically rotten, super sensitive, or numb and how happiness makes you free, easy and more vital.

Emotion is “e-motion” or “energy in motion.” Each conscious or subconscious emotion is the result of an intricate biochemical action inside yourself that then inspires the next thing you feel. What you think emanates from inside your bio-computer. So does what you choose to do. In other words, what you do and how you feel is biologically intertwined.

What you see, hear, smell, taste, feel and intuit is received in within a millisecond and placed into your memory. This, in turn, affects your decisions, feelings and imagination and colors what next you see, hear, smell, taste, feel and intuit.

“The first symptoms of poor blood circulation” says Dr. H.A. Parkyn “appear in your head.” Poor memory, the inability to concentrate, sleeplessness, nervousness and headaches result and then your mental computer further reduces circulation.

Physical environment affects your energy. Breathing stale air in a poorly ventilated room can make you feel mentally sluggish. Physical indigestion can cause mental depression. Conversely, depression can cause illness and illness can cause depression. Arthritis-like symptoms, digestive problems, (gastric ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, colitis, constipation, diarrhea, sinus problems) headaches (migraines) difficult breathing (upper respiratory infections asthma), heart palpitations, dizziness, arthritis, fibromyalgia, shingles and chronic fatigue result from, contribute to and activate depressing changes in brain chemistry.

“The mind, once expanded by a new idea, never returns to its original size.”

The average brain weighs approximately three pounds, or 51 ounces. You can figure out the weight of your brain by multiplying your weight by .01. Most of us lose about 4% of brain weight per decade. However, the smarter you are, the more elaborate the network between cells and the more your brain weighs. In a University of California study of 11 gifted peoples' brains, Albert Einstein had four times more oligodendroglia (glial or brain cells) than any other and some “childlike” smoothness not usually seen in adults! The visual cortex in the brain of someone with a photographic mind is twice the thickness of a “regular” brain.

The number of possible nerve cell interactions exceeds the number of particles of matter in the universe!” -Richard M. Restak, Neurologist

Neurons are the basic unit of your nervous system and transmit billions of messages per second. These messages allow you to collect, integrate, send and store data and enhance or inhibit thoughts, feelings, behavior and bodily function. Neurons communicate electrically and chemically and constantly change and modify themselves. Neuro-peptide receptors (of your nucleus-of-barrington) process, filter, switch and modify sensory input (in-formation)

Dark in color, neurons cluster and appear gray. That's where we get the notion of gray matter .

To date, science has counted more than one hundred billion neurons. The quantity is so vast that new numbers bigger than a zillion like petabytes, exabytes, yottabytes and zenabytes have been invented. To get idea of how vast these numbers are; an exabytes would be all the words ever uttered by everyone who ever lived!

You were born with twice as many brain cells than you had at age three. With maturity, neuron loss is more gradual and as an adult, you have about fifty thousand, to one hundred thousand (50,000 to 100,000) less then when you arrived. MSG, drugs or alcohol, can cause you to lose more than that. But don't despair, your brain likes to “clone around” and throughout your life it can generate new brain cells and bio-chemicals.

A neuron is composed of a central cell body with branches, called dendrites. Dendrites receive information aided by receptor “ligands.” Ligands determine and fingerprint your behavior, physical activity, mood, and emotion.

Neurons also have long tendrils, called axons. Axons are thought to communicate by electrically pulsing and releasing small packets of chemicals throughout the body. These chemicals are called “information substances” or “IS.” From the time you initially formed, your brain produced these chemical-bioelectrical impulses as communication links from one neuron to another.

Synapses are a sort of telephone line that communicates and stores information. If a synapse is destroyed, usually the information it stored slips your mind. In-formation that neurons send and receive travel long distances and form complex networks. Networks of brain cells and synapses are called a neural web.

A single neuron can receive more than fifteen thousand connections from other cells. Over 100 trillion neural connections have been counted; more than the number of galaxies in the known universe. As you age, and neuron numbers dwindle, and remaining neurons send out more dendrites, axons and bio chemical messengers. As you get older, it's good to have connections.

HYPNOTICALLY SOOTHE YOUR NEURONS

You know how important touch is. Without it a baby dies. Your skin is highly concentrated with receptors. Touch and acupuncture activates your touch receptors. So do verbal suggestions like, “Focus your attention on your stomach and soothe that place with a pleasant glow of relaxation.” A hypnotherapist healing someone with IBS would call this a gut specific suggestion.

Someone gives you a pat on the back and you feel a rush of pride and confidence. You are feel timid about speaking in front of an audience and you break out in a cold sweat. Someone you find attractive comes into the room and you get a flush of excitement surging through you. How in the world does do these things happen?

Your sensory receptors take and give “in-formation” to determine how you feel, act and react. And how you feel act and react determines the structure and function of your sensory receptors. How your sensory receptors take and give “in-formation” also determines what remains unconscious, and what is moved to conscious priority.

Why do you get a chill up your spine when you are surprised, startled or thrilled? Your spinal cord is loaded with receptors and millions (or perhaps billions) of neuro-peptides in the rows of nerve ganglia. They instantly receive and return your brain messages.

These amazing sensory receptors aren't only in your brain; your solar plexus and the ends of your organs (where you see, hear, taste, smell and touch) also sport the highest concentration of them.

Receptors are on their surface of your cells and act like little satellite dishes. Just as your eyes and ears scan and sense, receptors scan or sense the right chemical messenger (neurotransmitters, hormones and tropic factors) that swim up to them. When the perfect chemical messenger “key” fits into their special keyhole they bind. This binding adds energy to the receptor molecule causing it to fidget, wriggle, wiggle, shimmy, bend and purr as it dances and modifies back and forth between two or three favorite shapes or arrangements.

Have someone stand up and gently tap the bones of the spine, up and down and down and up.

“Stand up, close your eyes and imagine that you or someone else is gently tapping your spine up and down and down and up on your spine. Notice what that is like for you.” (Pause to give time to process this thought)

“You have used the power of suggestion to activate the receptors and ligands that make you healthy, happy and full of pep. This powerful mind/body suggestion changes you emotionally, can stop discomfort and heal ailments. Activate a receptive nodal point and your body' intricate neural network influences all parts of self.

Now, for fun, have someone gently tap the bones of your spine, up and down and down and up and notice how quickly it affects your emotional tone. Or, just think about someone gently tapping the bones of your spine, up and down and down and up. How does that feel?”

CYBERNETIC BIO-FEEDBACK

Structure Influences function and function Influences structure

Emotions and body responses are the same. Jumping when startled or instantly “chilling out” when you hear good news is almost instantaneous feedback. Yogis control heart rate and blood flow with thoughts; so do you. But to do it consciously, you need to stay mindful and learn to control your thoughts first.

Every physical change creates an emotional change and every emotional change creates a physical change. Receptors interactively give and receive messages with the brain and other receptors.

Repetitive thoughts and feelings can cause a body-wide neurological-biological cocktail. Over time you can become so addicted to thoughts, feelings, actions and reactions that you may habitually evoke the biochemical brew you crave. To control your thoughts, imagine yourself easily and powerfully resisting the seduction of any habitual neural thought/craving. Then choose thoughts that create proactive thoughts, feeling, actions and reactions. Then back up the pattern with a positive physical gesture, sit up straight, take a deep breath, look at something beautiful…perhaps your smiling face in the mirror.

This chemical key that turns on your receptors is called the ligand . The word comes from the Latin ligare meaning, “that which binds.” Ligands are molecules on the surface of a protein. They enter and tickle the molecule to rearrange until, SNAP! It opens information into the cell and dramatically shape shifts changes within itself. The entire life of your cells is determined by the receptors and ligands upon it. If a cell was a computer, the receptor would be the keyboard and the ligand would be the fingers that get things going.

“Peptides are the sheet music containing the notes, phrases and rhythms that allow your orchestra (the body) to play like an integrated entity the music that results in the tone or feeling that you subjectively experience as emotions.” -Candace Pert, Neuropharmacologist

Biofeedback, yoga and hypnosis, breathing rapidly or holding your breath cause your brain's naturally occurring painkilling peptide opiate endorphins to disperse throughout your cerebrospinal fluid.

Peptides: Peptides act upon brain receptors to pep you up and represent 95% of all ligands. The Scottish research team, who isolated the ligend for opium produced within the body called it an enkaphalin (Greek for “from the head”). An American research team renamed it “endorphin.” Endorphines/enkaphalins are a great example of a peptide.

Peptides like endorphins can be made in the brain or by white blood cells. Interferon is a peptide made by blood that releases mood altering endorphins as well as ACTH, a stress hormone once thought only to be made by the pituitary gland.

Nueropeptides: Nueropeptides can alter blood flow from one part of the body to another.

Polypeptides: Polypeptides are larger (usually comprised of 200 or more amino acids) yet still smaller than proteins. They protect your nerve endings with swelling if you are injured. That is why a hypnotic suggestion, “Let your body's chemical messengers, your polypeptides, subside so that the tissue remains in its normal state as you heal ” is very effective.

Angiotensin, both a hormone and peptide, mediates thirst. Even if you are well-watered, apply a drop of it to the receptors of your lungs or kidney and within ten seconds you'll crave water and your whole system will work together to conserve water. Immediately, your lungs exhale less water vapor and your kidneys hold back urine.

These small units generally carry information across the synapses or gaps between neurons. Neurotransmitters are simple amino acids, acetylcholine, nerepinephrine, dopamine, histamine, glycine, GABA, and seratonin.

A cell's behavior; respiration, digestion, excretion and movement are coordinated by proteins.

Steroids start out as cholesterol and transform into the sex hormones testosterone, progesterone and estrogen, and steroid hormones like cortisol, which is secreted by the outer layer of the adrenal glands when you are under stress.

Science is still deciding how this factor in.

Ancient people honored the mind/body/environment connection. Chinese medical and indigenous traditions still correlate organs and illness with specific mental/emotional states. The idea is to return one to holistic balance. The Ancient Greek, Hippocrates, often called the father of medicine believed like other physicians in his time “that veins carried air, not blood and that illness was caused by vapor secreted by undigested food from unsuitable diets.” His Hippocratic oath is still administered during graduation ceremonies at many medical schools.

Western medical doctors ask about symptoms and then prescribe drugs. Using mind to understand body is generally labeled “ unscientific” and mind affecting body “psychosomatic. ” Psyche means the mind or soul, and soma, means body. “The brain and body are separate entities” is a most prevalent and, in my opinion, peculiar paradigm.

Blame it on 17 th century, Frenchman, philosopher and another highly touted “father of modern medicine,” Rene Descartes. He's the fellow who wrote: I think therefore I am.' Descartes wanted to dissect dead human bodies. To get the powerful Pope to agree, he had to make this deal: “Mind is all things that are not matter” And “as mind is separate from the body…anything to do with the soul, mind or emotions, I leave it to the clergy. I will only claim the realm of the body.”

Can you imagine the declaration he made after his agreement? “To not make clergy madder, and because it matters to me to cut apart matter, I declare material matter immaterial and leave mind matters, which really matter, to the Mater church.”

Also in the seventeenth century, the “father of modern science,” Sir Isaac Newton, said the universe too is a “matter” machine. His “Newtonian construct” said matter is real and all that really mattered.

To this day the medical Cartesian/Newtonian Construct regards the body as physical, and the mind (or spirit) as immaterial…two distinct, separate and unrelated substances. “Your body is a mechanical, reactive machine; a predictable mass of matter and energy. Thoughts and behavior are just hardwired reflexes caused by electrical stimulation across synapses,” “pathogens cause disease, drugs and surgery fix them” “either your illness can be physically determined or it's all in your head” and “to understand a human all you had to do is take one apart and study its physical components” claims this antiquated paradigms.

In the 1920's Dr. Walter Cannon, a physiology professor at Harvard University , coined the phrase “homeostasis” from the Greek word “homoios” meaning “similar” and “stasis” meaning “position.” His studies revealed a relationship between emotions and perceptions and the physical fight, flight, fright response. A new paradigm was emerging: the brain is hooked up to the body and the body is hooked up to the brain! About the same time, Hans Selye noted that animals under stress had weakened immune responses. These ideas led to the modern science we call psycho-neuro immunology, which studies the inter-relationship of mind, and body wellness.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers, with their well-controlled medical industry, have been happy to keep the old “body-machine” attitude. “If you hurt, take this pill then come back next month so we can sell you the perfect drug or implant the perfectly engineered mechanical part or gene and make you as good as new” is their message.

Genes separated from a living organism can be legally patented by the US Patent Office. Of the thirty-to-forty thousand genes isolated by the multi-billion-dollar congress funded genome projects, twenty thousand genes (and related molecules) are now patented. The idea is that if you own the gene and drugs that influence that gene, you can introduce it into the body to generate the right instructions to the protein receptors.

“When a gene product is needed, a signal from its environment, not an emergent property of the gene itself, activates expression of that gene.” -H.F. Nijhout, BioEssayist

Genetic theory implies that DNA and genes in the cell nucleus, is the control central of your emotion/thought. So what happens if we remove the nucleus (de-nucleate) the DNA and genes from a cell?

If you remove receptors from your cell, the cell dies . Are receptors the control center of your mind/body; not genes? And where do the receptors get their information? They get their information from the environment (your interior environment and the environment of the everything else in the universe.) And armed with these environmental signals, the receptors regulatory proteins control the expression of the genes. All genes are controlled by signals from the environment via receptors. Receptors alter genes, not the other way around. It is the proteins receptors that turn genes on and off. Cancer may correlate to a specific gene but a specific gene does not cause it. So much for the genetic determination theory.

Proteins are the orchestra that plays your song of life. A cell is only alive because protein pathways regulate and integrate its function. Proteins structure and move all the cells in your body and coordinate their behavior; respiration, digestion, excretion and movement. They control the firing of neurotransmitters that allow you to think, your muscles to move, they switch your genes on and off and bind your DNA.

Marc Wilkins of Australia coined the word “proteome” at a scientific conference in Italy in 1994 to describe “all proteins expressed by genome, cell or tissue.” Proteins are composed of some 20 different amino acids (as apposed to just 4 building blocks of the DNA of your genes). And we are clueless as to their astronomical numbers. At this time, there is no simple way to identify, or characterize them. The “proteome project” is now attempting this feat. Between June of 2000 to October of 2001 more than $700 million poured into “proteomics” companies from venture capitalists and IPO's.

The primary structure of protein looks like a “pop-it” bead necklace. Each bead contains twenty different amino acids in specific sequences. These beads, along with electromagnetic charges, determine its shape. The charged molecules resemble magnets! Mesmer was right! We do have a natural “animal magnetism.” Dr Mark George, Neurologist at London Hospital confirms that magnets applied at first about two inches above the left ear (making the thumb jerk) and, then moved forward three inches of so along the skull to the frontal cortex, helps depressed folks sleep better, cry less and eat more.

Thousands of times a second, charged proteins bind to molecules and other proteins and alter their electrical charge distribution as their bead-like “backbones” adapt with specific movement. When the bind is severed, a protein usually re-expresses itself back to its original shape and configuration.

In October of 2001, the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) awarded a five-year, $34-million “glue” grant to a 54-member Consortium for Functional Glycomics to identify carbohydrates (simple and complex sugars) that are known to combine with proteins and fats on cell surfaces and “influence” cell-to-cell communication. Next to bring in the big bucks bid will most likely be a study to categorize fats (lipids).

In the 1970's, neuro-biology student, Candace Pert was laid up in a hospital bed enjoying regular shots of Talwin (a morphine derivative). She so liked the opiate's “wonderful feeling of being deeply nourished and satisfied” she considered taking the drug with her when she was discharged from the hospital. Though she resisted that urge, her intense, physical and emotional experience fascinated her. She wasn't alone in her intrigue. Hippies and scientists wanted to know why heroin, marijuana, Librium and PCP (angel dust) elicited such radical emotional changes.

Candace wanted to identify the biochemical ligand behind her feel good reaction to drugs. A ligand she surmised, only binds with a receptor that is perfect for it. This is called receptor specificity. A Valium receptor ligand would then only attach to a Valium or Valium-like peptide. An opiate receptor ligand, would then only attach to the perfect opiate group, like endorphins, morphine or heroine. The thesis; opium excites a specific ligand that binds to a receptor and changes the neuron.

She knew that when opium enters the body, it generates a ligand that binds to a receptor for only a brief time before it exits as urine. How could Candace identify such a small unit that comes and goes so quickly? British scientist, W.D.M. Patton's “ping-pong” theory gave her the solution. His approach explained how two similar drugs bind with the same receptor: one drug, the agonist , enters the receptor and creates cell changes, while the other drug, the antagonist, blocks the receptor by occupying it. The magnitude of a drug reaction is proportional to how many times a drug hits (or pings) the receptor, and therefore remains on the receptor.

This idea gave her more time to observe the process. She knew that a few injected milligrams of the drug Naloxone reversed heroin overdose effects, so she used Naloxone, (labeled with a radioactive isotope) to act as the antagonist to bump up the heroin from the receptor. And on October 25, 1972, the brilliant Candace Pert measured a cell's opiate receptor ligand, in a test tube! This put opium receptors into the realm of science for the first time. The book, Molecules of Emotions, tells of Pert's personal challenges in trapping the morphine molecule on its receptor.

It is now known that you don't have to take a drug to get high. Your brain naturally manufactures its own endogenous , (from within) morphine. How we and why we do this goes back to how we receive and interprets energetic input from the inside and from the vast universe

1. Everything you create begins as a conscious or subconscious thought manifested in your neurology.

2. There is a direct relationship between emotional states and the physical body. A physical change creates an emotional change and an emotional change creates a physical change.

3. Neurons and their receptors create the billions of messages per second that allow you to collect, integrate, send and store data and enhance or inhibit thoughts, feelings, behavior and bodily function.

4. Environment and your reaction to it, creates your biological actions and reactions.

5. Survival requires effective and accurate receiving and interpreting environmental signals.

6. Homeostasis and wellness reflect your bio-energy attunement to resonate rapidly and efficiently on the molecular and environmental level.

7. How your receptors take and give “in-formation” determines what remains unconscious, and what is moved to conscious priority.

Excerpt from “McGill's Hypnotherapy Encyclopedia” Creativity Unlimited Press

© Shelley Stockwell-Nicholas, PhD
President of the International Hypnosis Federation and hypnosisfederation.com
I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to contact me with your feedback at IHF@cox.net