Word: ptsd
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...some degree," says Bruce McEwen, a neuroendocrinologist at Rockefeller University who has spent decades studying the biology of stress, primarily in animals. So just because you see an imbalance in one area doesn't mean you understand why it is happening. "We're learning that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), burnout, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia are all related in some ways," McEwen says. The next step is to figure out if there are any genetic predispositions that tip the response to stress toward one set of symptoms or another...
...happening in burnout victims. But rather than finding a prominent cortisol peak, investigators discovered a shallow bump in the morning followed by a low, flattened level throughout the day. Intriguingly, such blunted cortisol responses are also common among Holocaust survivors, rape victims and soldiers suffering from PTSD. The difference seems to be that people with PTSD are much more sensitive to cortisol at even these low levels than those with burnout. "We used to blame everything on high cortisol," says Rachel Yehuda, a neurochemist and PTSD expert at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City...
...some of them propranolol, a drug that interferes with adrenaline uptake. The rest got placebos. He also had them tape-record accounts of the traumas. When he played back the tapes eight months later, eight of 14 placebo patients developed higher heart rates, sweaty palms and other signs of PTSD. None of the patients on the real drug had such responses...
Other researchers are looking at PTSD as well. Michael Davis, a professor of psychiatry at Emory University in Atlanta, is about to launch a study of at least 120 soldiers returning from Iraq to see whether a compound called D-cycloserine could help prevent PTSD. This compound activates a protein that helps the mind form new, less emotional associations with the original trauma, letting patients tolerate the memory better. Studies in rats and humans have shown that it can work--and, says Davis, "psychologists are very excited...
That's because the theory behind D-cycloserine's action is totally consistent with old-fashioned talk therapy, and especially with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), currently the most effective nondrug technique dealing with phobias, PTSD and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The idea behind CBT--which first appeared in the 1950s, long before neuroscience could explain such things--is that the patient examines upsetting ideas and consciously assigns new, more positive associations to them. Even old-fashioned Freudian psychotherapy might fit in with this model. By dredging up forgotten memories, it may achieve the same thing, albeit in a much less efficient...