Today, when people talk about stress reduction, the words
“medication” and
“psychotherapy” are being heard less and less, and the words
“mindfulness” and
“neuroplasticity” are coming up more and more. Really, the search is on for something better, as medications and therapy have not lived up to their billing as first rate solutions for chronic stress.
For acute stress, like the loss of one’s job, yes, but for the kind of stress that goes on for years and decades, and which functions as an addiction to outmoded behavioural patterns, not really. Unless one is psychotic (not tuned in to the real world) in which case, medications do help, drugs are a stopgap measure that often either don’t work, or work only until we stop them. Yes, people (including our patients) are still searching for a better answer! Our mandate is to provide one...
Mindfulness....
So, what about
mindfulness? The chief proponents of
mindfulness, the
Center for Mindfulness founded by
Dr. Jon Kabbat- Zinn at the
University of Massachusetts Medical School began offering their eight week program in 1979, and it is now offered in over 200 medical centres, hospitals and clinics around the world as an eight session training costing
about $500. Notably,
mindfulness was picked up by the psychotherapy community, chiefly by
Dr. Dan Siegel whose
Mindsight Institute at UCLA has given psychotherapy for longer term mental and emotional distress in younger patients a needed boost, through adding
mindfulness to its therapeutic process.
Dr. Siegel advocates, as a preventive strategy adding to the 3 R skills of
reading, writing and ‘rithmatic the skills of
reflection, relationship and resilience, an advocacy we can readily support. I’ll come back to this, as these are skills which bubble up readily and in short order during
AcuDestress.
We are now measuring mindfulness scores of our clients, who average 27-30% prior to coming to an AcuDestress session, rise to 57-59% within the first month and then to 86-9% six months later, then stay there.
Neuroplasticity ...
And what of
neuroplasticity? Though it’s been quietly researched for some time,
neuroplasticity the newly observed capacity of the brain to renew itself, emerged powerfully with a 2007 book by Toronto psychoanalyst,
Dr. Norman Doidge,
The Brain That Changes Itself. It is the notion, indeed the demonstration, that the brain, long thought to be hardwired and nonmalleable, and pretty much incapable of change is much more capable of change and recovery of function than we ever imagined. Researchers are now having stroke victims long considered to have exhausted their possibilities of recovery spring back to full function.
Doidge calls this the most important medical discovery in 400 years, as it fundamentally alters the way we think about treatment.
Time magazine produced a great article on it in 2007. We are now measuring the Locus of Control scores of our clients and note a marked shift from External Locus of Control to Internal Locus of Control.
Frans Johannson in 2004 published an intriguing book
The Medici Effect, which demonstrates that the most exciting advances in science today occur at the
intersection of two existing disciplines, by which something really new makes an appearance. He compares it to the era beginning about 1450 when the super-rich
Medici family of Florence decided to pay artists with different backgrounds to interact with those whose artistic skills had a different origin, thus creating a megaexplosion of culture now called
The Renaissance.
Johansson teaches people to find
intersects - demonstrating that we are in such an era again at this historical point, with so much known about fields of knowledge that their
intersection is bound to spawn newness.
LIncoln Hospital in New York City’s
Dr. Michael O. Smith’s ear acupuncture treatment of substance addiction (
AcuDetox) opens the door for
mindfulness to
intersect with
neuroplasticity, giving rise to a powerful and solid ability to manage stress. To learn the fMRI and PET scan science behind how this powerful
intersect happens
CLICK HERE.
Enter AcuDestress ...
On March 10th 2013 CNN went on air with a blockbuster two hour show called Escape Fire, which laid out both the problems and the opportunities in today’s health care system. As you watch this trailer (on the right), note the short segment where you see five point ear acupuncture. While this use of ear acupuncture by the US military, considered a breakthrough by CNN, is slightly different than AcuDestress (AcuDetox adapted to stress management ), Col. Charles Engel has been researching ear acupuncture for PTSD patients, finding it twice as effective as mainstream methods now in use. The work presented here, initiated and sustained by Dr. Brian C. Bailey after Dr. Smith’s encouragement brings mindfulness into contact with neuroplasticity - in short order (3-4 weeks.) It is every bit as powerful as the battlefield acupuncture used by the U.S. military. CLICK HERE to see our use of it....
