I recently finished reading the book “The Angel and The Assassin” by Donna Jackson Nakazawa, an award-winning science journalist who’s writing makes a difficult subject both accessable and enjoyable to read.
The basic message I took away is that the brain is not separate from the body but is intimately interrelated. The brain is in fact a sensitive immune organ in its own right, and immune or inflammatory triggers from the body can trigger the brain’s immune cells to change and shift – often leading to destructive remodeling of our synapses. This is not just a chemistry problem but a physical one.
These cells are known as microglia and they can either keep the brain’s pathways open and clean (the angel) or devour them much like macrophages in the body (the assassin). This back-and-forth communication between our body’s immune system and the brain is in fact our “seventh sense” through which our brain is constantly assessing the activity needed for self-preservation. There is a constant communication through the lymphatic system into the brain’s meningeal system through which these tiny microglia are activated. When microglial cells become overly excited they begin engulfing and destroying synapses, leading to hundreds of disorders and diseases being treated downstream but not at their source – the immune system of the brain.
The long-term result of trauma, it turns out, is often experienced in the brain as well as the body. Physical and chemical triggers in the environment or mental-emotional trauma can all trigger our brains to either heal or break-down. Mental health disorders can be biological disorders stemming from changes in brain circuitry and neural structure. So figuring out how to treat circuitry problems, and not just chemical imbalances, should be the goal. Runaway microglial inflammation, triggered by environmental exposures, life experiences and genetics offers clues to how to treat chronic brain problems.
As a holistic chiropractor, I work with physical, chemical and emotional physiologic imbalances via the Triad of Health, addressing the weak link that affects the others. In this way, I am very familar that chronic stress changes the body and brain. Toxic exposures, unhealthy diets, chronic stressors all add up, affecting the brain’s microglial inflammatory immune response.
This explains why so many treatments in so many fields fail to help those with chronic pain or chronic anxiety, depression or other psychiatric or neurodegenerative conditions. that said, this book offers hope, showing us aproaches and ways to focus on the brain to address this synaptic destruction via overly excited microglia.
Some common triggers which are now known to set off inflammatory cycles in the body, and now known in the brain include diet and social stressors.
Diet: processed food diets affect the gut’s microbiom and trigger the brain.
Social stressors: social media bombardment, especially for teenagers, are constant and ruthless. Levels of inflammatory cytokines stay elevated, potentially triggering microglia in ways that can contribute to depression. Entrenched emotional patterns can over time affect specific areas of brain circutiry.
Nakazawa goes through the current cutting-edge science and outlines for us available or soon-to-be-available treatments that are coming about from this new understanding of the role of microglia in the brain, taking us on a tour of the fields of neuroscience, genetics, psychology, psychiatry, medicine and immunology. They all overlap when looking at brain health as interrelated to physical and mental health, and a wholistic approach is clearly what is needed.
Some of the treatment methods discussed in this book include both expensive and experimental methods as well as readily available ones. These include Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), which uses electrodes placed on the cranium to read qEEG activity and location of different types of brain waves. Neurofeedback and sLORETA (standardized low-resolution electromagnetic tomography) are ways to stimulate these parts of the brain. Breathwork can also help calm neural firing patterns.
A brain hacking method showing promise with Alzheimer’s patients is called GENUS (gamma entrainment using sensory stimuli) or more commonly known as gamma light flicker therapy, is looking very promissing in stimulating microglial activity to change destructive patterns or placking. Optogenetics is a way of using light pulses to this effect.
In summary, when the brain or the body’s immune system register stress, trauma, infection, illness, toxicity or gut microbial imbalance, the brain can be triggered to shut down synaptic activity. This in turn can effect mood, sleep, stamina, concentrtion and cognition. Happy microglia help keep the brain and mind healthy by nourishing synaptic health but when negatively triggered become the assassins of the brain.
One big take away of this book is to appreciate how disorders of the mind are really immune disorders that reflect alerations in the brain’s basic immune health, and that any effective treatment will need to be both wholistic and will need to address the physical andchemical components of the brain.
I highly recommend this book.