CYCLE OF FEAR IN THE BRAIN

 WHAT IS FEAR? Well, first of all, I would like to define fear as an unpleasant emotion caused by any uncomfortable or distressing situation, such as a threat of danger, pain, or harm. Fear can transform into anxiety, a subjective state of unpleasant restlessness, tension, and apprehension that makes it difficult to relax or find calmness and peace.

All of us are aware of the fact that fear and anxiety have survival value to an animal under threat. The response to these emotions, an increase in alertness, respiration rate, heart beat rate, and muscle tone, prepare the animal for FLIGHT OR FIGHT response.

In humans fear and anxiety can be a healthy response that enables people to avoid danger or unsuitable situations or to achieve high levels of performance. But have you ever noticed where these emotions arise, well the answer is that these emotions arise from a part of your brain called AMYGDALA, from here your response of flight or fight generates. If you are strong enough to fight your fears then it is good for you but if you take a flight response then your flight will take you to the next level where your BASAL GANGLIA is affected causing tremors or stiffness in the muscles of the face, neck, shoulders, back and limbs. After that, your flight will reach another level where your BRAIN STEM gets disturbed and your flight is stuck up in turbulence and your inner weather will be imbalanced, causing you to breathe fast, your heart rate to go up, your BP to get affected, there be perspiration, alertness is increased, sleep goes away. After your flight is out of turbulence then your BROCA’S AREA is affected by getting your speech disturbed leading to aphasia or repetitive speech.

But if the state of fear and anxiety becomes chronic or out of proportion to the stimulus, this state can become pathological. Over-alertness may progress to mental strain, insomnia, and exhaustion, raised breathing rate to dyspnoea or panic attack, raised heart rate to palpitations, and increased muscle tone to muscular tension, pain, or tremors.
CEREBELLUM deals with learning and attention abilities, so whenever you see a patient with learning and attention problems must be disturbed by fear and anxiety. Children who have dyslexia must be having cerebellar dysfunction.
FRONTAL LOBE does a lot of work for you but in my opinion, fear can play havoc on this part of your brain in the long run, your decision-making could be affected, and your problem-solving and thinking could get cloudy apart from that your intelligence, attention and language processing could be disturbed.

LIMBIC SYSTEM is a group of structures including the amygdala, hippocampus, and hypothalamus that are involved in processing and regulating emotions one of them is fear and anger also. It plays an important role in regulating emotions. Mood disorders, bipolar disorders, and schizophrenia have been strongly linked to abnormalities in the limbic system. Who knows that chronic fears might be responsible for these incurable disorders? Fears and anxieties in a chronic state can lead to depression and the limbic system has been linked to depression and response to anti-depressant treatment.

FEAR AND THE HEART SYSTEM:
In Chinese medicine, fear is linked with the heart and kidney systems. It may be linked with other heart emotions, such as agitation, panic and hysteria, Insomnia, palpitations, hypertension, cardiac pain, pallor, and cold extremities.
FEAR AND KIDNEY SYSTEM:
Kidney fear with the marked feeling of apprehension, the fear that something terrible is going to happen, or anxious premonitions. Urinary infrequency or loose stool may occur.
Fear may give rise to both anxiety and anger, involving the kidney, heart, and liver systems. These three emotions may each cause mental, emotional, and physical tension.
Fearful apprehension associated with the kidney system and anxiety may also be linked to worry for the present and future, and anticipation of problems that may never occur.
The lung system may be involved with the kidney and heart in situations where there is great insecurity and fear of loss.
In Traditional Chinese medicine fear and anxiety is a manifestation of a disturbance of the heart's vital energy. This disturbance and irregularity of vital energy or what we say Qi may derive from EXCESS, DEFICIENCY, OR STAGNATION.
In excess types, heart fire, stomach fire, and liver fire may lead to anxiety or manic behavior. It can come from the suppression of emotions or a busy lifestyle.
In stagnation type your heart and liver energy could get blocked or stagnate leading to anxiety and fear.
In deficiency, anxiety increases when the energy is low, when there is a deficiency from lack of sleep and rest, overwork, stress, illness, malnutrition, and so on.

FEAR AND HOMEOPATHY:
In homeopathy, fear is written down as a symptom in the mind section where it is described as fear of places, people, or animals. fear of death or disease or evil, fear of falling, fear of business and future apart from that fear of ghosts, anxious premonitions, of being poisoned, fear of robbers. There are a few remedies also for specific fears like Aconite for sudden onset of fear, another remedy is Arsenic where the patient has this peculiar symptom where he/she predicts his/her death. Many remedies can help to overcome your fears.

In this way, by combining Acupuncture and Homeopathy we can put our approach towards healing our patients in the best possible through the right methods of proper diagnosis and appropriate treatment, as Acupuncture and Homeopathy both believe in the same fundamental logic and principle. Acupuncture defines Qi as vital energy and in homeopathy same thing is called vital force