Editor’s Note: This is a continuation of a series of articles by Willaim Clearfield, D.O., breaking down his 10 steps for healthy brain function. Visit www.hbmag.com to read parts 1-5.
We’re now 60 percent through our “10 Steps to a Healthy Brain” series. So far, we have covered:
- Keep Your Blood Sugar Balanced
- Eat Healthy Fats
- Get Adequate and Restful Sleep
- Enough (but not too much) Vitamin D3 is Essential for the Brain to Function Properly
- Get Your Gut In Order
- Maintain Adequate Methylation.
Step 7 is “Balance Your Hormones.” Traditionally, we think of hormones as being generated in the organs associated with them.
Thyroid hormone, as everyone knows, germinates in the thyroid gland. Testosterone and estrogen, the testes and ovaries respectively, and the adrenal glands produce the stress hormone cortisol.
In 1990, French scientists, Baulieu and Robel stood the neuropsychiatric world on its ear by demonstrating that certain hormones, produced via the same pathway as takes place in the peripheral glands, are independently generated within the brain, according to The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Designated as “neurosteroids,” these hormones have the same excitatory and inhibitory effects on neurons and are implicated in the control of behavioral activities.
Meanwhile, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, in the 1990 published artucle “Neurosteroids: a new brain function?”, balancing growth hormone, thyroid hormone and estrogen/progesterone/testosterone axis hormones immediately after a head injury (within 48 hours) decreases mortality by 50 percent.
In fact, according to a 2006 study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine journal, 56 percent of all traumatic brain injury victims exhibit hormone abnormalities three months after the incident. Left unattended, more than a third of these patients still exhibit hormone deficiencies.
And there you have it. It matters not the severity of the injury — psychotropic drugs do not address the underlying cause trauma to the brain. When you hear of a veteran or anyone who suffered a head injury, no matter how distant from the time of the incident, suffering from bizarre, out of character psychological disturbances, go hormonal on them.
Next month we will review Step 8 — “6 Fixes for A Healthy Heart.”
