You may have noticed that I’ve been writing a lot about the physiological effects of crying, tantrums, laughter, play, shaking and sweating last week.
Physiology is not my area of expertise, particularly not psychoneuroimmunology – so I asked a dear friend and colleague, Clare-Louise Brumley, who is highly qualified and experienced in this area, to write an article about it.
I’m so grateful that she was willing to! Here it is!
Potential Psychoneuroimmunology Impacts of Aware Parenting.
Dr Clare-Louise Brumley OLY
PhD, PostGradDip (Integrative Medicine), PostGradDip (Nutritional Medicine), B. Occupational Therapy
‘Knowledge is the precursor to a greater experience’ (Dr Joe Dispenza).
Aware Parenting is a constant reminder of this. Our experience is not as great when we lack information; when we have unmet needs; or when we have painful feelings that get in the way of feeling connected and open.
Being aware of what we are doing and how we are feeling holds great power – because then we can change it. This is what I love about the ‘aware’ part of Aware Parenting.
Recently I attended Joe Dispenza’s week long retreat in Australia and decided to do my own bio-marker testing. I chose secretory IgA – an antibody that plays a crucial role in mucosal membrane immunity. High levels are very protective against viruses (e.g. colds). After the week which was full of meditation and heart-centred practices, my post-test results were 120% higher than my pre-test results.
The value was so elevated and unusual that the pathology lab didn’t even report the actual figure initially.
I am sharing this because there was something more profound in this result than I initially realised and it had to do with evidence. I was looking for some kind of proof that what I was doing was having a biological effect.
The interesting part is that I didn’t ‘do’ the retreat anywhere near ‘perfect’.
At times I felt overwhelmed and tired. I missed sessions, my mind wondered and often I felt like I was just ‘hanging on for the ride’. And yet, it proved to me that doing something – anything – that holds loving intention – has the power to change us biologically and significantly so!
Loving compassion is the focus of Aware Parenting. The more we feel it, the more connected we are to it. It’s a moment to moment awareness. It bring us presence. It brings awareness.
Feeling our body and feeling our children in all their expression brings us to a greater sense of wholeness. It is the pathway to being open, clear and aware. I suspect that the psychoneuroimmunological impacts of Aware Parenting are immense.
We don’t have much research on the biological effects of Aware Parenting at present. I am excited to see how this may unfold in the future. However, we can make predictions by overlapping Aware Parenting frameworks with an understanding of primary endocrine pathways.
My intention is that this information may fuel our desire to parent (our children and ourselves) with more trust, compassion, and presence.
I have chosen two biological pathways to explore here: the stress-response and sleep.
Stress-response: Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis (HPA axis)
This is our inbuilt ability to run from a tiger.
It is a mechanism designed to save life and be short in duration.
Blood rushes away from the neo-cortex (we can’t ‘aware’ parent when we are in this place!) to skeletal muscle; digestion slows or stops; blood sugar levels spike (providing energy to muscles); we have tunnel vision, and are object focussed. This is not a biological recipe for compassionate presence.
The primary physiological mediators are: catecholamines (adrenalin, noradrenaline), cortisol, and cytokines (inflammatory molecules – to mend the body from potential wounding).
Ideally, safety is returned quickly and the human animal shakes, cries, rages, laughs and makes meaning of what just happened with the support of others. Homeostasis returns. Releasing this build-up of energy is critical to restoration of health.
However, when this release doesn’t occur, the effects of chronic stress can damage many parts of the body.
A significant part of the damage is due to the effects of sustained stress hormone release. This is because of the function of stress hormones in directing resources away from maintenance, regeneration and reproduction, towards systems that are required for active movement.
Furthermore, in the long term, cortisol and adrenalin/noradrenaline start to fail because receptor sensitivity occurs and the whole parasympathetic nervous system down regulates – stealing from many of our natural restorative and reparative mechanisms.
Aware Parenting centrally recognises the role of crying, raging, and tantrums in arms/connection and attachment play and its effects on releasing stress. Each of these states are often accompanied by the production of tears.
Humans appear unique among the mammal world in their production of tears when feeling emotions.
There is little research available that has explored the physiological function of tears, and yet, in the biological world, no function is without reason.
Back in the 1980’s researchers found that tears released in response to emotions had a different composition than those triggered by synthetic chemicals. Namely, catecholamines (adrenal, noradrenalin) and ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone).
The question is, does crying provide a means for releasing and lowering levels of stress hormones in the body?
The excretion of ACTH in tears has me particularly curious.
ACTH signals the adrenal cortex to produce cortisol, which is one of the most potent chemical agents in the human body.
Once the body perceives stress and produces adrenalin, noradrenalin and ACTH, it take around ten minutes for the body to start pumping out cortisol.
Is it possible that supporting children (and adults) crying ‘in the moment’ (not delayed) may be the body’s way of attempting to prevent the stress response cascading into cortisol production if not required (i.e. when enough support is available to unburden the perceived threat for the individual)? Thus saving the body from the damaging impacts of cortisol elevations?
Stress and Sleep: Cortisol, Melatonin and Serotonin
Sleep is not relevant to the body when there is perceived threat/stress. There is a survival advantage in being awake and alive!
The biological face of this is that stress directly impacts on melatonin production and consequently sleep.
The issue is that deep, restorative sleep is the mechanism by which we clean and cleanse the brain of waste and toxins that build up between brain cells during waking hours. It is also the time for deep autonomic nervous system restoration in the body at large.
Melatonin is the sleep-inducing hormone produced in the pineal gland from the amino acid tryptophan (from dietary protein and endogenous production).
Tryptophan is metabolised down two pathways. Approximately 95% moves down the kynurenine pathway and is involved in metabolic processes. Five percent of tryptophan is used to make serotonin (our calming ‘antidepressant’ hormone) upon waking in the presence of full spectrum light. Of an evening, serotonin is converted into melatonin in response to lower levels of light and this is fundamental to enabling the circadian rhythm.
Elevations in cortisol push tryptophan more down the kynurenine pathway.
The serotonin-melatonin pathway is directly sensitive to cortisol. It could be that that only an extra 1% of tryptophan gets shunted down the kynurenine pathway in the face of a small elevation in cortisol, but that represents a potential 20% drop in melatonin with big impacts on sleep/restoration.
From an Aware Parenting perspective, this may be the reason why young children innately cry before sleep and why crying in arms often enables better sleep as it may be a potential mechanism for reducing cortisol.
Crying is also often accompanied by vigorous body movements which helps release stored energy (which is why attachment play is also so useful before bed and in stress recovery).
Cortisol’s impact on melatonin is why as adults we too can easily lose sleep in the face of an evening quarrel with a partner, or worrying thoughts.
And it explains why eating close to going to bed can delay sleep because elevations in blood sugar are accompanied by elevations in cortisol.
Humans are programmed to release stress and to sleep when safe, relaxed and ready.
These are basic inbuilt mechanisms and have certain basic needs.
As parents this translates into trusting our children – their tears, their emotional expression, their movements as they release; and to lovingly accompany them in this process.
I so appreciate Aware Parenting’s recognition of the human system’s ability to self organise and heal when needs are met and feelings flow in the loving presence of a caregiver.
I have no doubt that there is profound biological regulation that takes place in this context which is measurable, and in the future when we have the results to demonstration this, it will fuel more and more people’s passion for parenting in this way.
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I’m so grateful to Clare-Louise and trust that you enjoyed that as much as I did!
What I LOVE about Aware Parenting is that these things are all so visible.
I noticed that after my children cried with my loving support, their muscles were more relaxed, they were more calm yet more aware and present. They made more eye contact. They slept peacefully. They could concentrate for long periods.
I also noticed that they rarely got sick, and the times when they did were often preceded by them clearly having more accumulated feelings.
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If you would like support in cooperating with your child/ren’s natural stress-release mechanisms, helping them live more of their lives from a state of homeostasis, I have some resources that I’m sharing about at the moment.
FREE INTRO:
One is my free intro to Making Friends with Children’s Feelings.
Here I explain more about the healing power of tears and tantrums.
COURSE:
There’s my Making Friends with Children’s Feelings Course
Which has a 4 week live round starting in a few days!
This is suitable for those new to Aware Parenting and also if you’re familiar with it but want to deepen and second-naturise your practice!
(It’s $250 or 6 fortnightly payments of $50)
MEMBERSHIP:
If you’re familiar with Aware Parenting, and would like ongoing support, there’s my
Aware Parenting with Marion Membership
(It’s $55.55 per month)