So I’m a therapist who works with trauma and emotional release. It’s a joy but also hard work and I am limited in the number of people I can see in a week (and the toll on me is obviously quite hard). So, I recently decided I need to...
Resilience film Q&A – how being ACE aware changes everything
I recently attended the London screening of the wonderful film Resilience about how Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) affect you and how you can heal. I have written about this extensively elsewhere in my blog (attachment trauma is the one I work with most) and in my book, The Scar...
Vitamin K – new discoveries
Vitamin K was discovered in 1929 by a German scientist Heinrich Dam and named K for blood ‘koagulation’. How it does this is via activation of a Vitamin K-dependent (VKD) ‘gla’ proteins which stimulate various factors to make the blood clot. However this is now known to be only...
Trauma informed practice – why it’s an essential understanding for everyone
A few years ago trauma or PTSD was a very rare condition limited to soldiers returning from war, members of religious cults, those who had been kept hostage etc. Few people outside the psychiatric professions had any knowledge of it, and indeed most of us didn’t come across anyone...
Fear and Loathing in a Lost Vagus
Well I had to give my blog that title – it’s brilliant isn’t it! Actually it’s very apt because when your vagus nerve (the largest nerve in the body – also called the wanderer for how far it goes) is ‘lost’ i.e. dysregulated, nothing works. Not your digestion, your heart and...
towards a new view of mental health
There has been much talk recently of increasing awareness of mental health issues1 – but of course most of the discussion is centred around mental illness – not health. There are valid points to be made: we need more resources on a par with physical health. We need to...
The Importance of the Appendix
The human appendix, a narrow pouch that projects off the caecum in the digestive system, has long been known as a vestigial organ with unknown function. It is largely ignored until it gets inflamed (causing appendicitis) when it can cause high fever and a lot of pain leading, usually, to...
Breaking the sleep deprivation/anxiety cycle.
One of the worst symptoms of anxiety, sometimes preceding it, is insomnia – a difficulty getting to sleep or staying asleep. When I was suffering from my CFS in my mid-30’s, this was the first symptom to arise. I now know, my stress ‘cup’ was overflowing and my adrenals...
Epigenetics and detoxing the cell
Recently I got my genome sequenced by the company 23andme.com – on the advice of a nutritional therapist who is helping me look at my genetics – specifically how it interacts with the environment. Working on the ideas of Dr Ben Lynch, author of the course and book ‘Dirty Genes’,...
How to self-publish a work of non-fiction; pitfalls and handy tips Part 2
In Part 1 of this blog I talked about the trials of putting together a manuscript for print publication, and how using Word and Createspace (an amazon self-publishing imprint) I put the first book together. Well, that was in 2015 and a lot has happened since then so I thought I’d...