How mind, traumatic memory and the mitochondrial shutdown affects health.

1. MIND, MEMORY AND
MITOCHONDRIA

2. TODAY..
• A definition of mind
• Stress, trauma and implicit memory formation
• The mitochondrial link to chronic illness
• EMDR Demo
• Further implications; treating chronic disease &
dysfunction (if time)
Are you ready to find out the link between mind,
memory and mitochondria?

3. ABOUT ME
• Scientist, health researcher.
• Suffered chronic illness, exhausted the medical solution.
Tried Chinese medicine in desperation. It worked.
• Changed my mind. Studied: Nutritional medicine, Clinical
massage, Reiki, EFT, and Hypnotherapy.
• Now a natural health practitioner, author, wellbeing coach,
specialist in chronic pain e.g. anxiety, back pain, auto-
immune, CFS, Fibromyalgia, etc.
www.alchemytherapies.co.uk

4. What is it?...
Neuroscientists - sum total of the flow of information along
neural pathways in the brain and spinal cord
Psychologists - seat of human consciousness and thought
housed in the brain - separate from the body?
Medicine - only deals with the body so avoids the question
Metaphysics - brain = a radio receiver tuning into an external
consciousness and mind is simply the result
THEORIES
OF MIND

5. Freud’s theories of the psyche: Superego, Ego, Id in conflict,
some
• Conscious - only about 5%
• Sub (pre) conscious
• Unconscious
A metaphor?
MIND

6. THE TRIUNE BRAIN: ORIGIN
OF UNCONSCIOUS THREAT
subconscious - we are not aware of them;
our survival mechanism – 90% our function

7. THE UNCONSCIOUS
BRAIN
The limbic system and brainstem
are part of the autonomic
nervous system (ANS) which
automatically controls our
essential functions (including
survival) without our conscious
involvement
Amygdala = smoke alarm
Thalamus = ‘cook’, sifts data
Hippocampus = context stamp & memory encoding
Hypothalamus – stress response

8. THE HPA AXIS AND
THE STRESS
RESPONSE
STRES
S
Hormonal and
neurological
cascade
mediated by
hormones &
neurotransmitter
s glutamate,
noradrenaline,
cortisol and
dopamine.

9. MIND AND
BODY: ANS
Head and neck: eyes, ears,
Tongue and facial muscles
Internal organs of
circulation,
Respiration, digestion,
excretion, reproduction
Polyvagal theory
3 levels of response to
threat
Fight, flight and freeze.

10. THE MIND AND THE
BODY
Now we have a process which explains the unconscious
operations of the mind (brain) with those of the body
Mind and body are one. ‘Descartes’ error’
Emotional states are felt in both the mind and the body
Recorded by the limbic system for future avoidance as
‘implicit’ memory formed early in life (pre-verbal stage)

11. MEMORY
Short term vs long term
2 types of long term memory:
Explicit / Narrative / Declarative/ Implicit / Procedural/ Emotional /
Body
Time bound – exist in the past Perpetual present
Hippocampus ‘tags’ a memory and
stores it within cortex
Stored in limbic system (amygdala)
during trauma
Conscious recall with narrative
structure (beginning, middle and end).
Subject to bias and distortion so that
memory changes over time i.e.
decays.
(what, when)
Unconscious recall via unconscious
‘triggers’ (sounds, smells, visual
stimuli that remind the brain of the
originating event. Persistent; never
varies or decays. (how)

12. IMPLICIT MEMORY -
TRAUMATISATION
Developmentally, implicit memory is first to develop in human
baby – before cortex comes online at 7
A survival mechanism for a human so is extremely robust
Does not decay with time
Memories are:
• Present
• Persistent
• Pervasive
Brain defaults to this type during trauma

13. MEMORY
CONSOLIDATION
• A memory is stabilised by chemical
encoding of the memory trace –
consolidation of neural pathways
• In traumatisation the memory
becomes permanently encoded in
amygdala
i.e. when triggered by similar events,
you re-experience the emotions as if
they were happening today without
knowing why.

14. IMPLICIT MEMORY
Stored in the mind & body as an uncompleted emotional
response or movement – e-motion (emovare)
Can manifest as;
• Flashbacks (PTSD)
• Anxiety
• Phobias
• Chronic Pain
• IBS and gut problems
• Facial ticks, tinnitus, vertigo,
• Fatigue (CFS), etc

15. STRESS, TRAUMA AND
UNRESOLVED EMOTION
Stress & unresolved emotional trauma are major
contributors to your health
Interpreted by your subconscious brain as a threat to
survival
3 levels of the threat response: (ANS)
1/ seek attachment – Social engagement
2/ then escape (fight or flight) (HPA – sympathetic
nerve) and finally, if all else fails
3/ ‘freeze’ response* – reptilian parasympathetic –
dissociation, shutdown of body systems)

16. TRAUMA:
DEFINITION
• Any unresolved event pathologically /permanently
encoded memory causing emotion/symptoms in the
present
• Can be physical (e.g. accident) or psychological e.g.
abuse or poor parental attachment. Usually in
childhood/young adulthood, linked by emotions &
memory in the subconscious.
• The meaning we attribute to the event not the severity
of the event itself. So can be simply lack of
love/support, feelings of abandonment, etc.

17. WHY IS TRAUMA
IMPORTANT?
• Traumatic memory becomes a self-perpetuating
cycle of internally generated subconscious
stress which makes further trauma more likely -
kindling
• Unresolved emotional memory triggers
physiological effects in body e.g pain in
Fibromyalgia, fatigue, etc
• All sorts of medically unexplained symptoms
(MUS) may be due to this unconsolidated
memory trace
* Trauma heightens sensitivity to physical pain neurologically (Howard 2000)

18. THE MINDBODY
CONNECTION – THE
CELL

19. THE MINDBODY
CONNECTION -
MITOCHONDRIA
The
‘powerhouse
of the cell’
Does it remind
you of
anything?

20. EVOLUTIONAR
Y ORIGINS
2 million years ago a unicellular organism (an
Archaea) engulfed a bacterium to create the first
multi-celled organism – eukaryote in order to use
rising O2 levels
Eventually the bacterium became a mitochondrion but
it kept:
• Its own DNA (separate from DNA in the nucleus –
handed down from the maternal line)
• A different form of metabolism (aerobic respiration
using oxygen)

21. AEROBIC
RESPIRATION
• Aerobic – uses oxygen and produces ATP – the energy
molecule
• ≈30 ATP per molecule of O2 within the mitochondria

22. MITOCHONDRIA
UNDER STRESS
• Conditions of low oxygen (obesity), toxicity or stress (conscious or
unconscious) activates the Cell Danger Response (CDR)
• Body switches to anaerobic energy production in cell cytosol
• Much less efficient: only 2 ATP per O2 molecule (15 x less!)
• Mitochondrial dysfunction (mitochondriopathy) is at heart of most
chronic disease e.g. auto-immune, AZ, CFS and cancer.
• Reversing the message of threat is the main priority in healing

23. TREATMENT:
REACTIVATION
AND RE-
CONSOLIDATION
• Reactivation of these traumatic implicit memories
via recall of emotion makes these pathways
alterable
• Neurons that ‘fire together wire together’
• Via disruption of the pathways during recall (touch
or visual stimulation) the memory and its emotion
can be dissociated – extinction and
reconsolidated into explicit memories
In order to heal:
we need to make the unconscious conscious

24. THE 3 PILLARS
OF
TREATMENT
• Psychotherapy: talking therapy which aims to
understand origin of problem and in ‘re-framing’ it to
resolve it. Largely unsuccessful.
• Psychopharmacology: symptom suppression with
pharmaceuticals. Limited success.
• Psychosensory: use of sensory stimulation to re-
configure the brain’s response to stressful memory.
Moderate to Extraordinary success!
• Uses notion of neuro-plasticity, mind and body

25. PSYCHOSENSORY
APPROACHES
• EMDR – Eye movement desensitisation and
Reprocessing- Bilateral stimulation
• EFT – Emotional Freedom Technique – tapping with
self-affirmation
• Havening – eye movements and self soothing
• Hypnotherapy – e.g. Lightning process –
hypnotherapeutic intervention

26. EMDR: EYE
MOVEMENT
DESENSITISATION
AND REPROCESSING
USES:
• Panic Attacks
• Anxiety
• Anger
• Chronic Pain
• Relationship issues
• Limiting beliefs
Is context free i.e. you don’t have to talk about it!

27. EMDR - DEMO
Any volunteers?

28. HOW DOES EMDR WORK?
Several theories:
• Bilateral stimulation – right and left hemispheres
resolves and integrates memories in midbrain (limbic
system). Like in REM sleep – memory is ‘pruned’ &
digested. Via dopamine
• Change memories from implicit to explicit
• Maladaptive links into adaptive network (facilitates
insights), becomes less volatile
But basically brings the cortex (frontal lobe) online and
allows processing of the thought/emotion.

29. CHRONIC FATIGUE,
PAIN AND AUTO-
IMMUNE
SYNDROMES
These are 21st century epidemics caused by:
• Toxicity of the food supply and environment (pesticides,
antibiotics hormones)
• Nutritional deficiency
• Chronic stress
• Emotional isolation and lack of support
• Personality type – driven, people-pleasing, etc. Ignoring
your own needs in pursuit of ‘success’

30. TREATING
CHRONIC
ILLNESS
• Understanding this is a mindbody problem
• Reducing the stressors: understanding your history
and personality type to release your past
• Refocussing on recovery not the symptoms
• Changing the terrain of the body to gear it towards
healing; reducing toxicity via nutrition, emotional
healing, detoxification

31. MORE
INFORMATIO
N
• Patricia Worby – The Scar that Won’t Heal
£7.99

32. Thank you for listening
Thanks to all my clients, who are my best teachers..
Clinics
• Peartree Clinic, Bitterne (home)
• Romney Centre, The Avenue, Portswood
Patricia Worby PhD (pending) MSc. ACMT, HPD, GHR
@patriciaworby
Patricia Worby Alchemy Therapies

33. OTHER BOOKS
• James Alexander- The Hidden Psychology of Pain
• Peter Levine - In an Unspoken Voice, &'Waking the
Tiger'
• Gabor Mate- When the Body Says No
• Robert Sapolsky - Why Zebras don't get Ulcers
• Robert Scaer - The Trauma Spectrum
• Ronald Ruden - When the Past is Always Present
• Dr John Sarno - The Mindbody Prescription
• Bessel Van der Kolk The Body keeps the Score

34. THE ELECTRON
TRANSPORT CHAIN
• Within the mitochondrial membrane a series of protein
complexes transfers electrons, protons and photons (light) to
produce energy
• The adenine molecule of ATP harvests light, (+ other
molecules in the diet like DHA and chlorophyll) to drive
energy production