Trauma : Solutions by vibr8 Blog entry

Blog: Vibrational Health Village
by vibr8

Trauma : Solutions

Isn't it wonderful when doctors understand and promote real healing?

Date: 8/24/2005 6:24:23 PM ( 20 y ) ... viewed 2263 times

Many lifetimes ago, it seems, I was working at a hospital. This hospital was quite progressive--serving vegetarian food and offering non-pharmaceutical alternatives for pain control, among other advances that were quite unusual for the 1980s.

There's a Neurologist who recently retired from this hospital who has just published a book about Trauma. He has done immense research to write this excellent book, which offers unique insight and potential solutions for those who experience the long-term effects of past trauma. Here's an article from the August 15 issue of the Daily Camera:

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MEASURING TRAUMA’S TRUE TOLL by Lisa Marshall, Boulder Daily Camera

A childhood beating. …..The sight of a fallen friend on the battlefield. …..A car accident. ….

It's widely accepted that such traumatic life experiences can have lasting, psychological effects. But could these and other seemingly minor life traumas also be to blame for an epidemic of such chronic illnesses as fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome or migraines?

Boulder neurologist Robert Scaer thinks so, and he's spent the five years since his "retirement" trying to convince others. He has testified for traumatized Iraq war veterans seeking disability compensation, taught courses to military counselors about the physical ramifications of wartime trauma and at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 23 will sign copies of his second book, "The Trauma Spectrum; Hidden Wounds and Human Resiliency," (Norton, 2005). The book signing will be at (location).

"What we call psychological trauma causes changes in our body that are real, permanent and can lead to a whole lot of diseases we don't understand very much," says Scaer, 67.

Scaer's fascination with trauma began late in his career, with whiplash victims. He was the first neurologist in Boulder, and served as medical director of Boulder Community Hospital's Mapleton Center for 20 years. Yet he was confounded by the fact that despite the absence of sprained ligaments or head injuries, many were still plagued by chronic pain. After referring several to Lyons psychologist Peter Levine, a pioneer in the burgeoning field of "traumatology," Scaer saw remarkable results.

Scaer went to Levine himself, for answers about neurological tics and unexplainable back pain, and came away convinced that they were remnants of a terrifying eye surgery as a child.

"I had stumbled upon something that was not in the medical literature," Scaer says. "The prevailing thought was that people who have psychological trauma tend to be hypochondriacs, that it is all psychological and there is no physical correlate to it. What I say is, it is from a basic underlying disregulation of body processes."
Like a bird that crashes into a window and goes into shock, lying still on the ground, humans also physiologically "freeze" after traumatic experiences, he says. But the bird often "shakes it off" and flies away. Many times, humans don't, and are instead caught in a "fight or flight" state, with stress hormones coursing through the body, taking a toll on the organs.

At a time when 60 percent of doctor visits result in no diagnosis, and chronic disease is economically crippling the U.S. health care system, Scaer maintains that "almost all chronic disease is based on this."
He doesn't stop there. His new book takes the premise into realms that will likely raise the eyebrows, and ire, of many obstetricians or working moms.

He counts our nation's "traumatizing birth technology," a hospital environment that "creates helplessness" in patients and the tendency for working mothers to put their child in daycare at infancy among life's "traumas" that can have lasting physical effects.

Take that, or leave it.

But at a time when no fewer than 30 percent of U.S. troops returning from Iraq suffer from mental health problems, Scaer's work cannot be ignored.

Think the cost of health care is out of control in the United States now? Just wait, he says:

"If we acknowledge this and have to do something about it, it will make warfare very (economically) inefficient."

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For more information about Dr. Scaer's book:

http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/spring05/070466.htm