Original thread with personal stories etc. has been moved to the member's only area HERE. This thread will be for links, resources or other helpful information. Thanks!
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Heyltslori
Moderator
09-15-2001
| Tuesday, October 16, 2007 - 6:18 am
Original thread with personal stories etc. has been moved to the member's only area HERE. This thread will be for links, resources or other helpful information. Thanks! 
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Dolphinschild
Member
06-22-2006
| Tuesday, October 16, 2007 - 8:42 am
As per requested the Member's only PTSD thread was moved to the Carying Place for more privacy. This thread is created for those of us who wanted to also educate those who do an internet search on PTSD and who would hope to find this to help them with their quest of getting help, and information. It is ok to add personal stories when giving information, but the main sharing the PERSONAL STORY should be shared in the PTSD Caring Place thread. I hope this makes everyone happy and we all achieve out goals in sharing and helping 
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Dolphinschild
Member
06-22-2006
| Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - 10:18 am
Here is some information about Medications and why Medications and Therapy are necessary to treat PTSD. There are medications that are needed to take for PTSD. The most common one is an antidepressant to bring your Seretonin up. With PTSD our Seretonin in our brains drop down really bad. It is what causes severe PMS in woman, Rage, Insomnia, Anxioty, Migraines, etc. This would be why you just snapped one day. The seretonin levels being so low and the rage, anxioty, stress went up because of it. I was on an anti-depressant for almost 2 1/2 years and now I am able to be without it. After my gall bladder surgery I found out that the anastecia caused my Seretonin level to drop again, so I only had to be on it for a month, then was able to get off it again. I haven't been on it since in 3 years. To treat PTSD, there is a need to go to councelling and take the meds to bring your Seretonin level up. Need the brain to get what it needs while we work through the emotional and mental. There is light at the end of the darkness and there is help for this disorder. It takes time and taking the medicine and doing the work in councelling is what brings you out of the pit of hell as I call it. Being PTSD does not mean you are crazy. It means you have a way of life that is normal for you, which are survival mechanism you picked up to survive. WE carry these behaviors to keep us alive and surviving. What happens is after awhile they don't work for us anymore and we keep struggling to hold on. Our bodies finally say enough is enough and it starts to break down. So what your goal is while doing the work, is you will never be completely healed, but you will find to live with conentment and quality of life. You will learn to break down old patterns and build new healthy ones. You will always be PTSD, but learning to recognise your triggers and how to deal with them, gives you quality in life. If PTSD is caught early, you won't have residual health effects like those who have went many years without treatment. Once we get to that stage, it is again, learning to heal where we are at and finding our triggers and building a life with quality. Being PTSD is our body is always stuck at the fight or flight mode and our body is always pumping more Adrenalin and the other chemicals our body produces. It is the over dose of these body chemicals that start to break down the body. We will always be at fight or flight, but it becomes normal for us, so we have to becareful of extra stressors. Such as watching horror films can cause us to get physically sick, because our body doens't know the differnce between what kind of anxioty we are having. Also happy events can cause us to get sick. Our bodies doesn't know the difference between good stress and bad stress, it reacts the same and pumps the same chemicals in our system for both. I tell people winning the lottery would probably put me in the hospital lol. Here is information on how our Flight or Fight response works. Our flight or fight mode is our Neuron-transmitters working. How my professor in college explained it is this: You are a young kid who comes from a nice warm and loving home. The inside of your house has yellow walls and Mom is in the kitchen cooking spagetti and Dad is sitting in his chair and drinking a beer. What your Neuron-transmitters grab is the color of the wall, the smell of spagetti and beer. It remembers these colors and smells as a warm and loving atmosphere. 25 years later, you go to a friends house, you don't recognise these things, but your Neuron transmiters do. They have the same yellow walls and she is cooking spagetti and he is drinking a beer. Your Neuron-transmitters tells you this is a loving, safe environment, so it feels safe here. BUT what you don't know is that in their basement they have a torture chamber and they are actually serial killers. Our triggers come from events that cause our Neuron-transmitters to respond. Good and BAD. I can give you two examples of mine. AS a kid my parents faught/argued all the time. So now when someone raises their voice, I start shaking uncontrolably. I have to remind myself that this is a trigger, so I can get it to calm down. Depending on the yelling, I might not be able to get it to stop until I am out of the situation for a while. My body responds to it automatically. Example number 2: In the Navy they used baby blue, baby yellow and pea baby green paint on all their walls and a certain grey from the ships. I go into a building with them colors and I start nutting up as you put it flight mode kicks in. I am edgey, nervous and about to have a fit. Once I realized what my triggers were, I was able to control my response better. It does help when we have understanding people who support us when we react.
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Dolphinschild
Member
06-22-2006
| Wednesday, October 17, 2007 - 10:29 am
For Vietnam Veterans, or any other War time Veterans, here a book that address' PTSD and your experience. Jonathan Shay is a Veteran Psychiatrist, well known for his work. He is also a PTSD advocate. I read some of this book myself and it helped me understand things better. There is a lot of information here, even for non-combat related PTSD I was told. My VA councellor recommended I check it out about 5 years ago. I loaned my book out to someone who I thought needed it more then I did, so that is why I never finished it. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (Paperback) by JONATHAN SHAY
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Dahli
Member
11-27-2000
| Thursday, October 18, 2007 - 7:47 am
For me meditation not medication along with lifestyle changes, such as exercise (yoga)diet (healthy fats) Reiki, hypnosis and EFT are very very effective. Quick Lesson in Meditation Meditation is said to be a great stress reducer. The first significant studies, in the '60s and '70s, proved that meditators could get themselves so deep into trances that they wouldn't react when they were prodded and burned. Another study showed that meditators, unlike marksmen, didn't flinch at the sound of a gunshot. And a Harvard Medical School professor studied 36 meditators and found that they used 17% less oxygen, lowered their heart rates by three beats a minute, and increased their theta brain waves -- the ones that appear right before sleep -- without slipping into actual sleep. A later Harvard test showed that the EEGs of meditators were significantly different than those of a control group. Later studies became more sophisticated with brain imaging. One study showed that the brain doesn't shut off when it meditates but rather blocks information from coming into a certain portion of it -- the parietal lobe. Another study showed that meditation slows blood flow to all portions of the brain but the limbic system, which generates emotions and memories and regulates heart rate, respiratory rate, and metabolism. For 30 years, meditation research has told us that it works beautifully as an antidote to stress," says Daniel Goleman, author of "Destructive Emotions." "But what's exciting about the new research is how meditation can train the mind and reshape the brain." Tests using imaging techniques suggest that it can actually reset the brain, changing the point at which a traffic jam, for instance, sets the blood boiling. Good news: You don't need a guru, weird clothes, or a monastery to meditate. It's pretty simple: 1. Find a quiet place and turn out the lights. 2. Close your eyes. 3. Inhale slowly and deeply through your nose. 4. As you exhale (slowly), say a word or phrase that has a soothing sound. 5. Repeat. Start with 10-minute sessions. If desired, increase gradually.
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Dolphinschild
Member
06-22-2006
| Thursday, October 18, 2007 - 7:27 pm
More evidence sought on PTSD treatments By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer WASHINGTON - There isn't enough evidence to tell if most treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder work, says a scientific review that highlights the urgency of finding answers as thousands of suffering veterans return from Iraq. The one proven treatment is exposure therapy in which PTSD patients are gradually exposed to sights and sounds that essentially simulate their trauma, to help them learn to cope, advisers to the government reported Thursday. The lack of evidence for other therapies doesn't mean patients should give them up — they still should get whatever care their personal doctors deem most promising, stressed Thursday's report from the Institute of Medicine. "The take-home message for patients should be that they seek care," said Dr. David Matchar of Duke University, who co-authored the report, which was requested by the Department of Veterans Affairs as it struggles with an influx of patients. "That is the way medicine is practiced — we do the best we can with what we've got," Matchar added. But, "we need better." While PTSD was first recognized in Vietnam veterans, war is far from its only trigger. Crime, accidents and other trauma can cause it in civilians, too. Sufferers experience nightmares, flashbacks and physical symptoms that make them feel as if they are reliving the trauma, even many years later. "Not only veterans, but millions who have been exposed to trauma suffer from PTSD," noted Dr. Alfred Berg of the University of Washington, who chaired the Institute of Medicine panel. "Research on this disorder should be a high priority, and VA should take the lead to ensure that the specific needs of veterans are addressed adequately." Today, PTSD is the most commonly diagnosed mental disorder among veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, affecting an estimated 13 percent and 6 percent of them, respectively, the report found. Delays in care for both mental and physical health problems plague many injured veterans, as the Pentagon and VA struggle with backlogs in processing disability benefits and in coordinating services. Ensuring prompt PTSD care was a key recommendation of a presidential panel appointed last summer to investigate those problems. Thursday's report addresses a somewhat different issue: Once a patient arrives for treatment, what to offer? The VA asked the prestigious Institute of Medicine to review the scientific evidence for medications and psychological treatments — before the department updates its own treatment guidelines. Exposure therapies already are offered in the VA system, and "we will redouble our efforts to ensure our mental health staff are trained to provide these effective psychotherapies," said Antonette Zeiss, a clinical psychologist who is deputy chief of VA's mental health services. Other existing treatments will remain, too, she said, but VA officials planned to meet Thursday to begin planning new research to better prove their value. "The other treatments have not definitely been shown to be effective. That's different from being shown to be ineffective," Zeiss cautioned. "They are some of the best clinical tools we have. But we should continue to try to understand them better, understand for whom they work." Aside from exposure therapies, most of the research so far done on other treatments has been of poor quality, Berg said. Some studies had huge numbers of participants drop out, for example, meaning there's no way to know if they left in frustration or because they felt better. Many lumped together patients with varying degrees of PTSD, spurred by very different traumas, making it hard to tease out effects. Few studies even have tracked patients for longer than six or 12 months to see if any treatment effects last, even though PTSD in many people lasts far longer. "It's the poster child for difficult research," Matchar said. Aside from which treatments truly work, the report raised a list of additional concerns: _It's not clear if veterans and civilians need different types of therapy. _Depression and other co-existing problems may complicate treatment. _It's not clear if treatment works best soon after symptoms begin, or is equally effective later. yahoo news link
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Sunshyne4u
Member
06-17-2003
| Thursday, October 25, 2007 - 12:27 am
www.EMDR.com my doctor wanted me to try this.
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Dahli
Member
11-27-2000
| Thursday, October 25, 2007 - 11:33 am
Cool doctor... the eye movement process is often a part of EFT as well. I noticed mention of tapping in the FAQ's as well. Are you going to do it?
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Sunshyne4u
Member
06-17-2003
| Saturday, October 27, 2007 - 12:15 am
not sure would have to really trust the Person doing it...and that wont happen easily LOL Get migraines and have visual disturbances already. Something like this sounds like it could put me over the edge and back into weekly crippling migraines! I used to get them really badly when working under florescent bright FLICKERING lights.
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