I am sitting in an apartment in Paris with a clip on my earlobe, watching a trace of my heart rhythm on the screen of a laptop, and the doctor has just told me to deduct seven from 1,533 and then keep going. It is all in the interests of reducing my stress levels, but it feels as though it is going to put them through the roof: mental arithmetic has never been my strong subject, and I am panicking.
Fear not, says David Servan-Schreiber: his technique, something called heart coherence, really does work. What is more, it has no side-effects and it will make me feel in control of my stress.
In fact, he goes on, it is positively insane that something so effective isn't more mainstream. But then again, his book, Healing without Freud or Prozac, has sold more than a million copies worldwide, so the word is spreading fast.
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The heart coherence software isn't measuring my heart rate per se, it is measuring the variation in the rhythm of my heart rate, which alternates between what is referred to as chaos and coherence: the aim being to learn how to keep the heart in a state of coherence.
"OK, not bad," Servan-Schreiber says.
Despite my fears I realize that by concentrating really hard I can relax and focus. When I look at the trace again, my heart coherence has improved and it is immensely reassuring to discover that I can learn to influence my heart's rhythms, and be able to relate what I see on the screen with how I feel, and remember that feeling as a future reference point.
"The more training we have in using this technique, the easier it becomes," Servan-Schreiber says.
All of which goes some way in explaining why major corporations such as Shell, BP, Hewlett Packard, Unilever and HSBC in the UK have instigated training courses in heart coherence for their employees.
Studies have shown that the effects of heart coherence on lowering blood pressure, lowering the damaging stress hormone cortisol (associated with poor concentration, memory loss and skin aging) and raising levels of the "youth hormone" DHEA (dehydropiandrosterone) are significant.
It seems that we are actually built to manage stress, because of the two aspects of our nervous system -- the sympathetic nervous system that works as an accelerator, releasing hormones necessary for "fight or flight" and the parasympathetic, which acts as a brake, releasing calming hormones that promote relaxation. The body's ability to manage this fluctuation is key to both good mental and physical health which has long been known but, crucially, is now easier to learn with a simple technique like heart coherence.
But what led Servan-Schreiber, with his medical training, more than 90 published research papers and a doctorate in cognitive neuroscience, to look beyond the conventional wisdoms of his professional and clinical practice? It was in part his work with Doctors Without Borders (the US arm of Medicin Sans Frontieres, of which he was one of the founding directors) where his experience with traumatized refugees in places such as Tajikistan and Kosovo began to influence his ideas.
"I saw things that seemed to work, but which were very puzzling to me as a western physician and scientist, then I looked in the literature to see if there was anything about it. And what stunned me was to discover that there existed natural methods of treatment, documented in the scientific literature, and when I tried them with patients I found that not only did they work, but they often worked better than conventional treatment."
One of these natural methods of treatment Servan-Schreiber came across was EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), where the stimulation of eye movements while awake, that are similar to the Rem (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep during which the brain processes material, helps the brain connect and process remnants of traumatic experience. It is particularly useful in cases of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), where the "knowing" brain seems to disconnect from the "feeling" brain in order to avoid being overwhelmed by the experience, leaving the trauma unprocessed and unresolved.
"It is insane that it's not mainstream," says Servan-Schreiber again, with an expression of exasperation, "especially when the eye movements of EMDR seem to accelerate the natural recovery from psychological trauma.
"It's recognized by the American Psychiatric Association guidelines for the treatment of trauma, and by NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) in the UK, and the French equivalent. In the US, if you have a medical plan that pays for psychotherapy, it is covered by that. But that doesn't happen in France or the UK, where generally it is only available privately," he says.
And it is not only our own physical and mental health that can be at risk if we don't deal with trauma, but that of our unborn children, if new research from New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine is to be believed. Here, babies born to pregnant mothers who were in or near the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 are showing lowered levels of cortisol, a marker for stress, in their saliva samples.
What the outcome of this might be isn't yet known, but given the levels of stress, anxiety and depression under which many live, passing on the deficits to a future generation is an added concern.
Currently in the UK about 1,025,000 people are claiming incapacity benefits for stress and depressive illnesses, while spending on antidepressants has rocketed from ?80 million (US$148.7 million) to ?390 million over the past decade. What is it that is so challenging to mental health today?
"Mental health is something that needs to be sustained from many different angles, but if I had to pick one which is the most important factor in mental health, it is the nature of your relationships with other people," says Servan-Schreiber.
"I have to say that this is so critical. We are highly social animals -- I talk in the book about how we have two brains, the cognitive brain that we are very familiar with for language and thought and planning, and then there is the emotional brain that controls everything to do with our bodies and, of course, our emotional state," he says.
"That emotional brain is totally tuned in to how we are connected with folks around us, especially those we love and care about -- but also how we contribute to our community, whether we are valued by the group as a whole -- that emotional brain is extraordinarily sensitive to that, which is why we now see that people who do community work, for example, have better health," he says.
"People who are isolated -- by circumstance, by working too hard, by avoiding intimacy -- actually have very impaired emotional, and even physical, health," he says.
"If the emotional brain is going awry, the whole physical state is going awry as well. I think of us as emotionally illiterate. I think we all learn how to count, and read and write, but we don't learn the very basics of how to manage our own emotions and then how to manage other people's emotions," he says.
It is not that Servan-Schreiber is opposed to medication and psychotherapy where warranted, it's just that he has come to believe that for many of us the solution lies in quite simple but highly relevant changes.
"I started to integrate these natural methods of treatment into my practice, and realized that they worked so incredibly well it was insane that nobody would talk about it, and for a while I concentrated on trying to push this through the medical community," he says.
"I did research, I published articles in the scientific literature, but after a while I thought the way to make things move at all is to release this information to the general public so that people can start using it for themselves. Which is why I wrote the book," he says.
Healing Without Freud or Prozac by Dr. David Servan-Schreiber is published in paperback by Rodale.
Managing your mental health
1. Practice heart coherence
Use it during tricky times to protect emotional and physical health.
2. Address painful memories
Identify past events that trigger painful emotions, for which eye movement desensitization and reprocessing can be helpful.
3. Manage conflict
Identify chronic conflicts that can pollute your emotional ecosystem, and deal with them.
4. Enrich relationships
Learn to be an effective emotional communicator, it helps.
5. Maximize Omega-3s
Increase your intake of Omega-3 essential fatty acids.
6. Get ``high'' on exercise
Regular exercise, for 20-30 minutes, at least three times a week helps lift and stabilize mood.
7. Wake up to the sun
Regular sleep patterns also help to stabilize mood.
8. Tap into your meridians
Acupuncture is of particular value to those who suffer from anxiety and depression related to chronic physical pain.
9. Seek a larger connection
Feeling comfortable in and making a contribution to the community in which we live gives a feeling of connection that can give meaning to life itself.
source: the GUARDIAN
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