Addiction
Written by Lee Gerdes, CEO and founder of Brain State Technologies
As a friend of mine is given to say, "none of us gets out of this life alive." Top of mind today are the soldiers and others who are valiantly fighting for our freedom. They have chosen an endeavor where danger, crisis and trauma surround them. But in life – as in war – there are no unwounded soldiers. Our police and firefighters experience physical and psychological wounds each day. Those of us going through life in a more "ordinary" way – mothers, fathers, bankers, laborers, athletes, children – also face our share of challenges. For many of us, the scar tissue grows, but for far too many of us, the pain doesn't heal.
It is a rare individual who escapes the travails of severe trauma. Traumas can be physical or emotional. They can happen before birth, at birth, or anywhere along the way. My own work with Brainwave Optimization™ began when I experienced trauma – four youth with a baseball bat assaulted me when I was locking a churchyard gate. For nearly a decade, I was a prisoner of PTSD: jumpy, irritable, quick to anger, headache-y, sweaty at night, hope-deprived, and sleepless. I was increasingly detached and depressed. I tried everything you can think of with very little relief. Throughout it all, I knew that the person I had become was not the real me. That's when the search for a solution began.
Nearly every one of our 35,000 clients today comes to us as a result of trauma. They ostensibly come to us for addictions, depression, anxiety or stress, sleeplessness, impaired thinking, chronic pain or concussion – but in the end, all of these are the result of a trauma - or several traumas. Many think they are abnormal or weak; some even have been told they are "crazy" – or to just get over it. When we are able to show them a picture of their brainwave patterns, there is often tremendous relief that the cause has been identified – and even moreso when they understand that there's a likely solution.
When we begin to understand brain functioning, we begin to understand that not all PTSD is alike. Some of us have an escalated parasympathetic nervous systemthat causes us to go into a freeze response. This is because we have experienced atrauma of abandonment; a situation we could do nothing about. Perhaps in war, it was being near a buddy who was killed and not being able to do anything about it. In life, it can be emotional detachment from an alcoholic parent.
Others of us have a heightened sympathetic nervous system that causes us to go into fight-or-flight behaviors. This is because we experienced a trauma of infringement; one in which something or someone threatened or abused us to the point we wanted to fight back or run away. The majority of people with PTSD are sympathetic dominant.
Either way, the brain assumes the patterns it needs to survive - the nervous system responds and physical and emotional disruption occur as automatic responses from the brain.
I am living proof that this is a prison you can escape. But not with "outside-in" treatments like pills, alcohol, marijuana, talking about it, or physical exercises that excite the sympathetic system.
The most harmful of current "treatments" are exposure therapy or virtual reality exposure therapy. Contrary to some long-held beliefs, re-living the trauma does not make it go away. In most cases, it only serves to further embed the trauma, and hence, the destructive patterns. We see this as plain as day when we look at brainwave patterns and view the degree of functional imbalance caused by these modalities.
It's only in very recent years, that science has come to understand the brain's role on behavior. With Brainwave Optimization, we focus on the role of the brain in one's ability to regulate behaviors. It was only in 1998 that a researcher (Panskepp) connected neural structures with specific emotional systems. From there, others like Stephen Porges and Peter Sterling began to understand that it was not only those internal connections, but also how readily we were able to adjust our behavior to the situation at hand that made all the difference.
Brainwave Optimization understands what's going on inside the brain that drives certain behaviors and increase the brains resilience so it can adapt to external demands.
The only way to escape the prison is to directly and effectively address the source of the issue – your brain. According to a 2004 study by Cloitre, et al, "routine psychiatric interventions are quite ineffective in helping people manage their emotions and the best that medications generally can do is dull emotional arousal of any kind, thereby robbing people of pain and pleasure simultaneously."
Returning soldiers, veterans from prior wars, those who have been raped, abused or assaulted – or who have witnessed an assault or death – often do not want to talk about it. That's your brain protecting you; telling you not to talk about it. With Brainwave Optimization, there is no need to talk. You relax in a chair while your brain "speaks" to itself. In fact, we help you "get your head out of the way so your brain can do the work."
We have made huge steps in just the past decade in understanding the brain. It is time for us now to step out of age-old "treatments" that just don't work. New knowledge calls for radical shifts in how we heal ourselves – and ultimately, how we heal the world around us.
References:
Scottsdale Firm Treats Addictions As Brain Disorder
August 17, 2011 - Article Appeared on Fox NewsRadio 550 KFYI
http://www.kfyi.com/pages/local_news.html?feed=118695&article=8980732
Brain State Technologies helped set stage for reclassification of addictive behavior.
Now that the American Society of Addiction Medicine has changed its definition of addiction to that of a brain disorder, rather than "bad behavior" which can be changed through willpower or punishment, a Scottsdale company says the reclassification is in agreement with the work it's been doing for the last ten years.
Lee Gerdes, founder and CEO of Brain State Technologies, says their research revealed years ago that scans of a person's brain show different patterns of brain activity that are indicative of different types of addictive behaviors, such as drugs, alcohol, shopping, gambling, etc.
"We contended over the past 6 or 7 years that addictions weren't a behavioral issue all. They were a brain functional pattern that was stuck," he told KFYI News. "You've heard people say, who were addicted, 'I don't know why I do this.' And they're telling the truth. They don't understand it. It's an automatic function" over which they have little or no control.
Rather than punishing the bad behavior of an addict, which Gerdes says doesn't work, he says addiction should be treated by re-programming the brain. He says Brain State Technologies uses an EEG-based treatment called "brainwave optimization": "We put sensors on the scalp. Those sensors feed data from the brain to a computer. The computer analyzes the brain pattern and responds back to the client with sound" via headphones.
Gerdes says for some reason, the brain responds to the sound, which acts as a mirror image, showing the wayward parts of the brain how they should look or respond. Then, the brain teaches itself and the addictive behavior fades.
In a 2005 study of drug addicts who were registered with the Yavapai County Probation Department, Gerdes says their success rate for the treatment was 100%.
Information about Brain State Technologies: www.brainstatetech.com
American Society of Addiction Medicine claims ‘addiction is a brain disorder’
"The behavioral problem is a result of brain dysfunction," agrees Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). She explains further that "the pathology in the brain persists for years after you've stopped taking the drug."
Gerdes has developed an advanced neuro-technology called Brainwave Optimization™ that has been used by nearly 34,000 clients at about 150 centers in 16 countries throughout the world.
“At latest count, we’ve worked with more than 2,500 addicts who report that after Brainwave Optimization™, they no longer crave their substance of choice,” said Gerdes. In a study conducted with the Yavapai County Probation Department in May 2005, Brainwave Optimization was used to reduce repeated substance abuse infractions by adult probationers.
According to Billie Groban, chief probation officer at Yavapai County, “the success rate was 100 percent – unheard of with methamphetamine addicts. At the end of the three-month period, all probationers were drug-free based on testimonies and random urinalysis.” YAVAPAI STUDY
“My hope is that this important announcement from the addictions community will help more people understand the reality behind addictions and point them in the direction of help that gets at the root cause: brain function,” said Gerdes. “We know there are many more people we can help. It isn’t about willpower; it’s about brain power - changing the way the brain functions.”
- ASAM's definition of addiction: http://www.asam.org/DefinitionofAddiction-LongVersion.html
Lee Gerdes developed Brainwave Optimization after being assaulted by four youth, and wrestling with the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder for nearly a decade. Conventional modalities, medications and sheer willpower didn’t help him overcome the paralyzing effects of PTSD. It wasn’t until he identified the disruption in his own brain patterns that he was able to get to the root cause and change his thinking – and behavior. Gerdes shares his experience in Limitless You: The Infinite Possibilities of a Balanced Brain, available now in paperback at Amazon.com
Orginal Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ileBiXpDz9zZaBqwyvmJx-5Mzlmw?docId=cf6b85bae54c43ea8624c8bd257752b7
