The brain can heal itself through hypnosis
Wow! That sounds like a new age faith healer's comment if I ever wrote one! I am not going off the deep edge or giving my personal opinions (just yet) but quoting some pretty impressive neurologists.
A recent case that has made the news is Terry Wallace. He suffered brain trauma in a car accident and only showed minimal brain cell activity. He was in a coma for three years, then suddenly woke up with clear speech and a memory. The doctors are studying Terry's brain cell activity and his restored function. The brain scans show that his brain fibers have reconnected
Daniel Amen
A popular psychologist and author support the theory that the brain can not only heal itself, but that you can help a traumatized brain through the healing process. Through thousands of brain scans, Amen reports that your brain is capable of improving energy, mood, attention span, sleeping patterns, and more without medication. An amazing natural therapy offered by Dr. Christine Kraus at the Amen Clinics helps you train your brain so you can reduce symptoms associated with anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, autism, Aspergers, ADD/ADHD, some sleep disorders, headaches and more. The treatment plan involves anti-oxidants, amino acids and healthy eating for brain power. It also emphasizes that the brain can be re-trained through meditation and hypnosis, and exercise.
It still does not explain why some people recover from brain trauma and some people do not. Dr. Norman Doidge, Toronto psychiatrist and researcher is one of the pioneers who studies neuroplasticity, the study of the human brain, and its ability to rewire itself.
I love any new findings about the brain and how it works, and now I will humbly give my opinion on brain trauma and recovery. I think it depends on the degree of the damage and how healthy the brain was to begun with.
I can only speculate on the will of the individual to fight for his/her life.
I can remember (way back, I mean Viet Nam war way back) I was a flight supervisor on my first overseas flight. Leaving Cambodia, a soldier had a stroke and was not responding. People around him starting shouting "we are losing him, he is dying" his heart rate dropped I remember from basic nurses training that the last thing to go is hearing, so I cleared all the seats around him, closed off the area and in my frantic state grabbed his lapels and whispered in his ear. "Now listen to me sir, I don't want to fill out the paper work and delay this flight because of a dead person. You have to make it back to the states to see your wife and your new baby, we are on a mission and you are coming back!" Obviously, the soldier and I were lucky, he responded to oxygen, and I didn't have to fill out paper work. That was a form of hypnosis Perhaps he was buying into the voices that said he was dying, perhaps my desperate message of return now and go to your family reached him, whatever happened, he healed himself enough to make it off the plane in a wheel chair,not a body bag..
I wonder if the same messages reach people in trauma, in comas? Perhaps they can hear their loved ones talking to them, praying with them, asking them to come back. perhaps the brain is more advanced that we realize and the subconscious has some great healing power past our current knowledge. Look for more articles on neuroplasticity, we are just learning about the power of the mind and its healing potential.
Here's to your physical and mental health
Doc Judie
775 782-3889 judie@docjudie.com
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