Tag Archives: Brain activities

substance-use

Bipolar disorder and substance abuse

December 22, 2016
Bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder and substance abuse without establishing the brains specific roles in fighting addiction, it may not be easy to overcome this problem

Bipolar disorder and substance abuse: Addiction an Energy disease

Bipolar disorder, commonly known as manic depression, is a serious mental disorder characterized by sudden and intense shifts in mood, behavior and energy levels. Like substance abuse, bipolar disorder poses a risk to the individual’s physical and emotional well-being. Those afflicted with bipolar disorder have a higher rate of relationship problems, economic instability, accidental injuries and suicide than the general population. They are also significantly more likely to develop an addiction to drugs or alcohol. In a study conducted recently:

  • About 56 percent of individuals with bipolar who participated in a national study had experienced drug or alcohol addiction during their lifetime.
  • Approximately 46 percent of that group had abused alcohol or were addicted to alcohol.
  • About 41 percent had abused drugs or were addicted to drugs.
  • Alcohol is the most commonly abused substance among bipolar individuals.

If you are struggling with bipolar disorder alongside drug or alcohol problem, it is possible that you have a dual diagnosis of bipolar disorder and substance abuse. Having a dual diagnosis, or a co-occurring disorder, can make recovery more challenging. Bipolar patients may experience periods of intense depression alternating with episodes of heightened activity and an exaggerated sense of self-importance. This emotional instability can interfere with your recovery program, making it difficult to comply with the guidelines of your treatment plan. And to address that, doctor Dalal Akoury MD, President and founder of AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center, created this establishment with a sole objective of transforming each individual’s life through increasing awareness about health and wellness and by empowering individuals to find their own inner healing power. Besides that, doctor Akoury’s practice also focuses on personalized medicine through healthy lifestyle choices that deal with primary prevention and underlying causes instead of patching up symptoms. This makes her the ideal professional for ally your treatment needs and you can call her on telephone number 843 213 1480 to schedule an appointment now.

The relationship between addiction and bipolar

There is no easy explanation for the high rate of substance abuse and chemical dependence among bipolar individuals. One reason for this phenomenon is that a large percentage of individuals attempt to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol in an effort to numb the painful symptoms of their bipolar disorder. Symptoms of bipolar disorder such as anxiety, pain, depression and sleeplessness are so alarming, that many individuals will turn to drugs and alcohol as a means for offsetting the discomfort, if only for a little while.

Age and gender may play a part in the relationship between addictions and bipolar. According to the journal Bipolar Disorder, substance abuse is more common in young males than in other population groups.

Clinical researchers believe that brain chemistry may influence both bipolar disorder and substance abuse. People with bipolar disorder often have abnormal levels of serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. These chemicals affect vital functions like appetite, metabolism, sleep and your body’s response to stress. They also affect mood and emotions. Heavy use of drugs or alcohol can interfere with the way your brain processes these chemicals, causing emotional instability, erratic energy levels and depression. People with bipolar disorder may turn to drugs or alcohol out of an unconscious need to stabilize their moods. Unfortunately, substance abuse has the opposite effect, making the symptoms of bipolar disorder worse.

Addiction an Energy disease

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brain

Healthy brain activities that eliminates addiction

November 10, 2016
Healthy brain activities

Healthy brain activities that eliminates addiction

Healthy brain activities that eliminates addiction: Finding solutions of addiction from the brain

It is no secret that life stop the moment the brain stops? Many people often feel the heart to confirm death yet the heart doesn’t drive your life. As a matter of fact it is only the healthy brain activities that drives the functions of your life. Any distortion of the brains health brings all other things to a halt. In order to understand this better, we want to use this plat form to educate us about the need of keeping our brain healthy as a solution to drug addiction. As we continue with the discussion, we want to invite you to join us as we engage the services of addiction expert of several decades doctor Dalal Akoury (MD) and also the founder of AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center. Ideally this facility was formed out of the deepest concern doctor Dalal Akoury after seeing and attending to many addicts of different substances. You can become a part of the solution to this problem by calling doctor Dalal Akoury for a more in-depth and professional redress.

Doctor Akoury reiterates that the concerns of many people is that for any addictive behavior, a good place to start the journey of recovery is and should always be at the end of your fork. Remember that any effort towards beating an addiction and staying committed to sustained recovery will heavily depend on your optimal and perfection of your mental health, besides that there are scientific evidence that your mental health will be affected powerfully by what you feed on. A path to recovery from destructive addictions, including those to drugs, alcohol, compulsive eating or gambling, could start at your next meal. It is therefore very important that no time is wasted in dealing with all manner of addiction. The moment you notice signs of addiction, it is only fear that you seek for treatment immediately before it is too late to make any significance change.

Healthy brain activities that eliminates addiction: Effects of relapse

In my several decades of working with patients, I have seen how the 12-step approach can be very effective when the patient is willing to recover. Alongside that I have also established that without dietary changes being implemented on the part of the victim, any attempt of abstinence and recovery is needlessly more vulnerable to relapse. At the heart of the problem are a new set of dietary choices. And because many people are currently feeding on highly-processed foods, foods which are not originally designed by nature but designed in the laboratories, this can cause life to be very complicated in the long run. Remember that the main ingredients of such foods are sugar, refined carbohydrates, and vegetable oils and besides, the producers of such foods have designed them primary to taste good and appealing to the eye for the purpose of luring client into more consumption that is to say they are more of profit oriented than health. Professionally doctor Akoury is of the opinion that feeding on this kind of food will only succeed in lighting up the same pleasure-rewards areas in our brains that are activated by drugs like cocaine and heroin as well as by a variety of addictive behaviors. Ingesting dopamine-triggering foods, in other words, subjecting your brain to the ups and downs, highs and lows, of any addictive substance or activity since you are stirring the same neurochemical pot (no pun intended).

Healthy brain activities that eliminates addiction: Finding solutions of addiction from the brain

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Why medical detox is necessary to addicts

Brains specific roles in fighting addiction

November 8, 2016
Brains specific roles

Without establishing the brains specific roles in fighting addiction, it may not be easy to overcome this problem

Brains specific roles in fighting addiction: To fight addiction, feed your brains

As the nerve center of human life, the brain is very essential in very many ways. Nothing will happen in the body without it being registered in and from the brain. The brain therefore plays an integral function in keeping the body communications to various parts of the body. Having known the importance of the brain, we now want to narrow our discussion to some of the brains specific roles in fighting drug addiction while focusing our attention to the fact that fighting addiction begins in the brain. With that said, the next thing is to ask how this is possible and what do we know about the brain, addiction and effects of addiction to the brain? These are very fundamental questions of concern which we want to address progressively as we settle into the discussion. To help us in this, we are going to seek the professional opinion of experts from AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center under the able leadership of doctor Dalal Akoury (MD) and founder of the same. To start us off, doctor Akoury shares with us her personal experience with her clients over the years as follows.

Brains specific roles in fighting addiction: Denial and denying the brain the essential fats

As we have said time and again that denial is the biggest problem we all face when dealing with addiction, that fact is very evident in most clients that I have been privileged to help get through their addictive situations. At one point I was attending to a client who for purposes of confidentiality I will refer to as Miss Agnes. Ideally if you met her, you might presume she had everything to live for. And just to share briefly about her in her early thirties she was doing well as a junior executive who was married with two young children. Yet when Agnes opened up as she sat on my couch during a session, she narrated how her troubles at home and work had brought her, more than once, to put a killer knife at her wrist and imagine ending her emotional pain forever.

For over a decade Miss Agnes disorderly drank bottles of wine every night and regularly smoked marijuana alongside taking pain killers. Even though she knew her actions she denied it first to herself, her family and to me (her doctor) that substance abuse was a part of her problem. “I’m not an alcoholic,” she said with a lot of confidence. Because she was such a long way from even addressing her addictions, I inquired about what else she was ingesting and so I ask “What did you eat for breakfast?” That question revealed to me that she wasn’t just intoxicating her brain but she was also starving it of the essential nutrients. It was almost a routine for her skipping breakfast most days and when she took it will be only a cup of coffee or glass of juice once in a while. According to her, she put soy milk in her coffee because she thought that all dairy and meat products were unhealthy. She also avoided fat in all her foods because she believed fat would make her fat. What she didn’t know is, the brains rely on healthy fats for their functioning and for that reason two fats, EPA and DHA, are known for their mood-boosting qualities. By avoiding any fats she was literally avoiding foods that would provide her brain with these natural essentials and therapeutic molecules.

Doctor Akoury continues that realizing all these she asked her to go to a local lab for some blood test. We talked about her making some dietary changes, especially the merits of nutrient-rich brain foods, such as eggs and fish. She admitted in a guilty whisper, “I’ve been craving a hamburger” and you will agree with me that wasn’t really surprising. Like a good number of other women of reproductive age, there was great deficiency of iron in her blood further explaining what was lucking in her body to function well. With this deficiency she actually felt listless; she lacked the energy to cope with her demanding job and a family as well. Many are following the steps of Agnes and even as we continue with Agnes’s story, if you are in the same position, you can talk to doctor Akoury for professional advice today.

Brains specific roles in fighting addiction: To fight addiction, feed your brains

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Healthy weight

Certifying brains nutrients needs to defeat addiction

November 8, 2016
Certifying brains nutrients

Certifying brains nutrients needs to defeat addiction quickly

Certifying brains nutrients needs to defeat addiction: Brains specific roles in fighting addiction

A while ago in our previous article we were talking about one of the clients doctor Dalal Akoury help in her addiction recovery process. For confidentiality, we named her Agnes (not her real name). With so many challenges standing in the way of recovering from addiction, the simplest first step is to stop depriving your brain of good and necessary food nutrients. Experts from AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center are very categorical that recovery will partly depend on developing new chemical pathways by which the brain overcomes habitual behaviors. This we want to emphasis that you owe it to your recovery as it will nourish the brain to poise it for better learning, stable moods and less intrusive cravings. Even though there are so many bad things Miss Agnes did, the good news is that eating to support recovery need not be a deprivation: It can be delicious and remember that when you feed your brain with essential nutrients from their natural sources, you are taking better care of yourself, which is a fundamental step in rebuilding your brain and your self-esteem. Besides that is a clear process of certifying brains nutrients needs in defeating the scourge of drug addiction.

Certifying brains nutrients needs to defeat addiction: The content of a diet that stabilizes moods and minimizes cravings

In the process of certifying brains nutrients needs, it is important to appreciate that, a diet geared to stabilize mood and minimize cravings will be high in omega-3 fats from fatty fish, folates from leafy greens, vitamin B12 from eggs and meat, and the many brain-healthy nutrients amply found in colorful fruits and vegetables. Instead of the sugar (dopamine) rushes from eating simple carbohydrates, the sustained feeling of fullness from healthy foods can fortify you in your recovery.

Finally when Miss Agnes changed her diet, her moods stabilized and her suicidal thoughts dissipated. The killer knife was now used properly for cutting meat, fish, and vegetables. The conclusion of my therapy with her was that a better-nourished brain and taking control of her eating habits were very instrumental steps in addressing her alcohol and drug problem. At this point she could now listen to the concerns of family members about her addiction. She became more responsible and registered with a support group. She stuck with her diet and got in the habit of regular exercise instead of daily sugar or alcohol. Miss Agnes is now celebrating many years of sobriety a recovery journey that began when she took her first bite of real food for breakfast. You can also benefit from the same by scheduling for an appointment with doctor Dalal Akoury today for the commencement of your recovery program.

Certifying brains nutrients needs to defeat addiction: Brains specific roles in fighting addiction

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addiction

Brain pleasurable principle and drug addiction

October 15, 2016
Brain pleasurable principle

Brain pleasurable principle and drug addiction needs to be distinguished for proper treatment

Brain pleasurable principle and drug addiction: Neurotransmitter

One of the functions of the brain is to registers all pleasures as they happen and in the same way, irrespective of their origin. That is whether they are associated with a psychoactive drug, a monetary reward, a sexual encounter, or a satisfying meal. The fact is in the brain pleasurable priniciple has a distinct role which is the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, a cluster of nerve cells lying underneath the cerebral cortex. Dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens is so consistently tied with pleasure that neuroscientists refer to the region as the brain’s pleasure center.

All drugs of abuse, from nicotine to heroin, cause a particularly powerful surge of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens. The likelihood that the use of a drug or participation in a rewarding activity will lead to addiction is directly linked to the speed with which it promotes dopamine release, the intensity of that release, and the reliability of that release. Therefore addictive drugs provide a shortcut to the brain’s reward system by flooding the nucleus accumbens with dopamine. The hippocampus lays down memories of this rapid sense of satisfaction, and the amygdala creates a conditioned response to certain stimuli.

Brain pleasurable principle and drug addiction: Learning the process

Previously it was believed that an experience of pleasure alone was enough to compel people in to consistent seeking of addictive elements or activities. However new research findings indicates that the situation may be more complicated. This is because dopamine’s are not only responsible for the experience of pleasure but are also playing a role in learning and memory which are the two key elements in the transition from liking something to being addicted to it. Currently the philosophy about addiction is that dopamine interacts with another neurotransmitter, glutamate to take over the brains system of reward related learning. Remember that this system has an important role in sustaining life because it links activities needed for human survival (such as eating and sex) with pleasure and reward.

Finally, it may interest you to note that the reward circuit in the brain may include areas involved with motivation and memory as well as with pleasure. Addictive substances and behaviors stimulate the same circuit and then overload it. And therefore repeated misuse of any addictive substances or behavior will cause nerve cells in the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex (the area of the brain involved in planning and executing tasks) to communicate in a way that couples liking something with wanting it, in turn driving us to go after it. That is, this process motivates us to take action to seek out the source of pleasure. This can be very unhealthy more so if the source of pleasure is drugs. Many often run to drugs for pleasure and as such, the prevalence of drug abuse is on the rise. We can choose individually and collectively to correct this by scheduling for an appointment with doctor Dalal Akoury MD, who is a veteran addiction expert and also the founder of AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center for help today.

Brain pleasurable principle and drug addiction: Neurotransmitter

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