Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

When I was reading the book Toxic by Dr. Neil Nathan, I learned a little about the cell danger response. He talks about how Dr. Robert Naviaux research addressed this phenomenon. I stumbled across an article entitled The Cell Danger Response: The New Disease Paradigm (100 Chronic illnesses such as Diabetes, ME/CFS, Autoimmune Diseases and more) by Dr. Veronica Mead who also uses studies done by Dr. Robert Naviaux a UC San Diego professor to describe what’s happening in the body when the body goes into this state. Mead says, “The cell danger response is a natural process by which our mitochondria protect and defend themselves and our bodies from threats such as infections, toxins, physical and psychological trauma and other environmental stressors.” https://chronicillnesstraumastudies.com/author/vermead/ .

Jessica and I both have had issues with mitochondria that has shown up on lab tests. In Dr. Robert Naviaux research Metabolic features and regulation of the healing cycle—A new model for chronic disease pathogenesis and treatment from the journal Mitochondrion Naviaux says, “Chronic disease results when cells are caught in a repeating loop of incomplete recovery and re-injury, unable to fully heal. This biology is at the root of virtually every chronic illness known, including susceptibility to recurrent infections, autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, diabetic heart and kidney disease, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Alzheimer’s dementia, cancer and autism spectrum disorder.” https://www.sciendirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567724918301053.

From the article above the doctor also says that if healing is incomplete between injuries severe disease is produced. That is a very scary statement to me because my daughter Jessica has had recurrent illnesses since she was 8 months old. It seems I address a few things at a time on each lab and then more things show up next time. it’s like I can’t correct something fundamental and I haven’t been able to figure it out. It’s possible the description of what’s happening in the cell danger response might be happening with my daughter.

There is a paragraph that may also shed some light on what might be going on with my daughter from the above article from Mitochondrion, listen to what Naviaux says about cell communication, “All chronic disease produce systems abnormalities that either block communication (signaling) or send alarm signals between cells and tissues. Cells that cannot communicate normally with neighboring or distant cells are stranded from the whole, cannot reintegrate back into normal tissue and organ function, and are functionally lost to the tissue, even when they are surrounded by normal mosaic of differentiated cells. As this process continues, two different outcomes are produced, depending on age. If the block in cell-cell communication occurs in a child, then the normal trajectory of development can be changed, leading to alterations in brain structure and function, and changes in long-term metabolic adaptations of other organs like liver, kidneys, microbiome, and immune system.” The article then talks about adults and that performance is altered over time and degraded and can turn into disability.

What that article says in the above paragraph is also very concerning in that if these cell communication issues happen in childhood it’s more concerning and can affect the child’s health long-term. Dr. R. Naviaux also was involved in a research study of chronic fatigue syndrome which myself and my mother have both been diagnosed with. 2 million people in the U.S. have CFS. Their study showed that patients with CFS showed abnormalities in 20 metabolic pathways. A somewhat long but good description is as follows, “chronic fatigue syndrome is a multisystem disease that causes long term pain and disability. It is difficult to diagnose because of its protean symptoms and the lack of a diagnostic laboratory test. We report that targeted, broad spectrum metabolomics of plasma not only revealed a characteristic chemical signature but also revealed an unexpected underly biology. Metabolomics showed that chronic fatigue syndrome is a highly concerted hypometabolic response to environmental stress that traces to mitochondria and was similar to the classically studied developmental state of dauer. This discovery opens a fresh path for the rational development of new therapeutics and identifies metabolomics as a powerful tool to identify the chemical differences that contribute to health and disease.” www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1607571113. They describe dauer as a well-studied, long-lived survival and persistence state triggered by environmental stress. They also say, “Interestingly, we found that the direction of CFS abnormalities was opposite to metabolic syndrome and opposite to the metabolic response to infection, inflammation, or environmental stress that has been called the CDR. For example, cholesterol, phospholipid, sphingolipid, and purine metabolism are all decreased in CFS and dauer but are increased in metabolic syndrome and the stereotyped CDR.

In dealing with CFS for many years myself I have seen the multi organs that have been affected by what seems to be some type of shut down of my system. I’ve had issues with my digestion or lack thereof, thyroid, adrenal function, autoimmune issues with the new diagnosis of EOE eosinophilic esophagitis, lungs with asthma, and brain neurotransmitters, sleep and melatonin issues and the list could go on.

We have been testing metabolites for me and Jessica for quite some time and the lab test we’ve been using is Great Plains the OAT test which stands for organic acid test which is tested through the urine. The above research study says, “Metabolites reflect the current functional state of the individual. Collective cellular chemistry represents the functional interaction of genes and environment. This is metabolism…the metabolic state of an individual at the time of illness is produced by both current conditions, age, and the aggregate history, timing, and magnitude of exposures to physical and emotional stress, trauma, diet, exercise, infections, and the microbiome recorded as metabolic memory. Analysis of metabolites may provide a more technically and bioinformatically tractable, physiologically relevant, chemically comprehensive, and cost-effective method of diagnosis of complex chronic diseases. In addition, because metabolomics provides direct small-molecule information, the results can provide immediately actionable treatment information using readily available small-molecule nutrients, cofactors, and lifestyle interventions. Our results show that CFS has an objectively identifiable chemical signature in both men and women and that targeted metabolomics can be used to uncover biological insights that may prove useful for both diagnosis and personalized treatment.”

Dr. Nathan in his book Toxic recommended a book by Annie Hopper entitled Wired for Healing which goes into more detail about the brain and how once the body has been exposed to a trigger which could be a virus, bacteria, mold, chemical or other psychological thing that the brain goes into hyperdrive and hyperalert and literally gets rewired like in the example of PTSD. She explains the limbic system here, “The limbic system interprets all of our sensory information which, in turn, decides how our bodies should respond to external stimuli. The limbic system is also involved in our response to stress, in our emotional responses to events around us, and in our involuntary protective mechanisms (like ‘flight or flight’ response). It is particularly active when we are under stress or we are feeling anxious or threatened. The limbic system however, is also engaged symbiotically with the rest of the body and responds to our physical well-being, our thoughts and our emotions. When the limbic system is not functioning properly, threat mechanisms can overfire and distort the interpretation of sensory information. Any form of accumulative stress can cause limbic system damage that leads to dysfunction and to neurological disorganization. Many forms of stress can affect this system, such as chemical, bacterial, viral, fungal, physical, psychological and emotional stress. Often it is a ‘perfect storm’ of stressors that create limbic system disorganization (also known as cross wiring). This neural disorganization establishes involuntary trauma patterns in circuits of the brain that over activate threat, protective and survival mechanisms.” Pg. 4.

Annie talks about how she had been trained to be able to look at emotional or trauma patterns to analyze negative emotions or patterns, observe them and in the act of observation they would dissipate but she says that, “The negative emotion that would normally dissipate with attention and acknowledgement in a traditional therapeutic model, actually grow stronger in the case of a limbic system injury. The more attention you give to an established trauma pattern, the more rooted it becomes as a dysfunctional pathway in the brain…observing thoughts and feelings wasn’t enough.” Pg. 10

Annie explains a limbic system impairment, “A limbic system impairment is psychoneuroimmunological (PNI) in nature which means it involves psychological processes as well as the nervous and immune systems of the body. Consequently, a limbic system impairment expresses itself via the central nervous system, which can affect our state of physical, psychological, and/or emotional health…the brain gets ‘stuck’ in an unconscious state of chronic emergency that perpetuates illness and inflammation. This typically involves the central nervous system, the musculoskeletal system, the respiratory system, the immune system, the digestive system, and the endocrine system. No wonder the symptoms seem unrelated, even to medical professionals!” pg. 22

I don’t know any of the details of Annie’s program to rewire the brain from damage but I have done a bit of research on brain plasticity which she talks about. Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to change to literally be rewired. Before that last several decades it was believed that the brains of children were always changing and growing but not in adults. This has been shown to be not true. The mind can change the brain structure. Pg. 26 The Brain’s way of Healing.

A more complicated description from Encyclopedia Britannica says, “Neuroplasticity, capacity of neurons and neural networks in the brain to change their connections and behaviour in response to new information, sensory stimulation, development, damage, or dysfunction. Although some neural functions appear to be hard-wired in specific, localized regions of the brain, certain neural networks exhibit modularity and carry out specific functions while also retaining the capacity to deviate from their usual functions and to reorganize themselves. Hence, neuroplasticity is considered generally to be a complex, multifaceted, fundamental property of the brain.” https://www.britannica.com/science/neuroplasticity

In the scientific study entitled what is neuroplasticity they describe it as the following, “”Neural plasticity” refers to the capacity of the nervous system to modify itself, functionally and structurally, in response to experience and injury. As the various chapters in this volume show, plasticity is a key component of neural development and normal functioning of the nervous system, as well as a response to the changing environment, aging, or pathological insult.” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29080018/

One other scientific study entitled neuroplasticity describes it this way, “Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity or brain plasticity, is a process that involves adaptive structural and functional changes to the brain. A good definition is “the ability of the nervous system to change its activity in response to intrinsic or extrinsic stimuli by reorganizing its structure, functions, or connections.” Clinically, it is the process of brain changes after injury, such as a stroke or traumatic brain injury (TBI). These changes can either be beneficial (restoration of function after injury), neutral (no change), or negative (can have pathological consequences).

Neuroplasticity can be broken down into two major mechanisms:

• Neuronal regeneration/collateral sprouting: This includes concepts such as synaptic plasticity and neurogenesis.
• Functional reorganization: This includes concepts such as equipotentiality, vicariation, and diaschisis” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32491743/

The book The Brain’s Way of Healing by Norman Doidge, M.D. gives two amazing examples of neuroplasticity with an example of Michael Moskowitz, M.D. and his water-skiing accident and another example of a older middle age man diagnosed with Parkinson’s who experiences very little symptoms because of his aggressive way of bypassing his brain’s normal way of doing things that would produce symptoms.

Moskowitz said, “One of the laws of neuroplasticity is that neurons that fire together wire together, meaning that repeated mental experience leads to structural changes in the brain neurons that process that experience, making the synaptic connections between those neurons stronger. In practical terms, when a person learns something new, different groups of neurons get wired together.” Pg. 8

Plasticity can be a blessing or a curse. Two other doctors Doidge talks about Wall and Melzack showed that a chronic injury could not only make cells in the pain system fire more easily, “…but can also cause pain maps to enlarge their ‘receptive field’ (the area of the body’s surface that they map for), so that we begin to feel pain over a large are of our body’s surface.” Pg. 9. “The external areas of our body are represented in our brain, in specific processing areas, called brain maps.” Pg. 7

Moskowitz defined chronic pain as ‘learned pain.’ Chronic pain doesn’t just indicate an illness but is an illness. “The body’s alarm system is stuck in the ‘on’ position, because the person has been unable to remedy the cause of an acute pain, and the central nervous system has become damaged. ‘Once chronicity set in, the pain is much more difficult to treat.’”

Moskowitz in an attempt to get control of his own chronic pain read fifteen thousand pages of neuroscience. He wanted to understand neuroplastic change and put it into practice. After analyzing the areas of the brain that fire chronic pain, “he observed that many of those areas also process thoughts, sensations, images, memories, movements, emotions, and beliefs—when they are not processing pain.” Pg. 11

Moskowitz has an inspiration from all he was learning. Competitive plasticity. He would force himself to perform activities no matter how intense the pain was. “He would force those brain areas to process anything-but-pain, to weaken his chronic pain circuits.” Pg. 13

He used visual activity first because a very large part of the brain is devoted to visual processing. Every time he experienced any pain, he immediately started visualizing first the damaged brain and then the healthy brain. “Then he would image the areas of firing shrinking, so that they looked like the brain when there was no pain. ‘I had to be relentless—even more relentless than the pain signal itself,’ He greeted every twinge of pain with an image of his pain map shrinking, knowing that he was forcing his posterior cingulate and posterior parietal lobes to process a visual image.”

“Repeated visualization is a very direct way of using thought to stimulate neurons—neurostimulation.” Pg. 21