Some of the unusual things that we treat in the Autonomics Clinic
I thought you might find it useful to know some of the range of autonomic issues that we have been asked to treat in the Autonomics Clinic, and/or that have been referred to us by physicians, clinicians, etc. Some of these situations might apply to you. Some might apply to someone that you know. Most people do not realize that these issues are 1) autonomic, or 2) treatable. Having a sense of what these things are, and that they can be treated is, hopefully, hope-giving.
MIND/BODY MEDICAL/ MENTAL HEALTH
Complex Regional Pain Syndrome
Up to and including full-body proprioceptive deficits, and affiliated vestibular dysfunction. We have successfully treated CRPS, which has a major autonomic component not commonly understood by traditional neurology.
Post-Surgical Malaise
Patients who are not recovering from surgery on schedule, even when the surgery itself was successful. This can be the result of the body shifting into a defensive state prior to or during surgery. If this happens, the body can retain anesthesia (it doesn’t fully clear), and tissue that was physically moved/ manipulated/ shifted during surgery sometimes does not return to pre-surgical levels of integrated movement & ease.
Collision-type accidents
Collisions where there is a complex motion pathway (e.g. car accident, ski accident, falls, tumbles, etc.) that creates non-resolved vestibular neurological artifacts and interferes with balance. Affiliated autonomic injuries and tissue injuries compounded by autonomic involvement.
Frozen Shoulder
The mainstream medical treatment of which is medieval. Leeches, anyone? This is an autonomic issue.
Dysautonomias
On a case-by-case basis. Long COVID is a dysautonomia. We’ve worked with Parkinson’s through an autonomics lens. We’ve worked with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. I’m interested in POTS.
Neurobiological Sequelae of Early Childhood Adversity
This is more of what you would conceptualize as classical shock and developmental trauma healing. From being bullied in third grade, to early patterns with caregivers. As well as more sociological ACES (racism, sexism, etc.)– all of these are largely autonomic.
Neurobiological Prequelae of In Utero Stress Exposure
If in utero environment was suffused with stress chemistry, certain neurological connections may not have been made in utero.
Recovery from Various Shock Traumas
An array of the types of malevolent encounters you might imagine humans endure, from having objects fall on top of you, to being held up at gunpoint. Walking the nervous system home through extreme activation/ shutdown responses.
Persistent Shutdown Responses
While we do not treat complex chronic illness or auto-immune issues directly (these alway involve the entanglement of the autonomic, immune, and endocrine systems, which, once entangled, prevent straightforward resolution of autonomic issues) (these are clinically homed elsewhere, we sometimes consult as adjunct), I do work with people on clearing persistent lifethreat/shutdown responses. These can manifest as depression and/or persistent digestive difficulties, and typically involve retained allostatic load in the GROUNDING SYSTEM and its subcomponents (enteric nervous system, psoas, pelvic bowl neurology). We also work with the vestibular reorganization that is a sequelae to clearing shutdown from the body.
Lateralized brain/ body asymmetries
From imbalanced brain hemispheric functioning, to lateralized interoceptive asymmetries (left side of the body feels different from right side) to lateralized movement or tension asymmetries (left side of the body moves or holds tension differently than the right side).
[If you want to get really geeky about the above, you can read my paper on ResearchGate entitled, A typology of chronic defensive autonomic states as specific antecedents to disease etiology1 which explains how enduring autonomic defensive responses create the conditions for various kinds of disease and dysfunction.]
PERFORMANCE
Refining Flow Architecture
Helping folks identify and lock into ideal flow composition (neurological setpoints of elite performance) for elevated performance athletically, creatively, and in leadership, business, and life domains. (Our elite performance diagnostic is here.)
Addressing Habitual Somatic Contractions/ Stress Response patterns that limit performance
Most of us have habits of falling into particular defensive response patterns in high-stakes/ high pressure situations. I help elite performers understand these patterns at an embodied level and learn to change the neural inputs in these situations so that they can respond more agentically with greater response flexibility.
Vitality Recovery
Most modern people have FAR more retained allostatic load than they realize. This takes two distinct forms. Allostatic loads comprised of hot stress (e.g., fight-flight responses), and cold stress (e.g., shutdown responses). The physiological effects and exit pathways of these responses are highly differentiated.
Even high performers are often carrying subtle (they are not really subtle, but we experience them as subtle) shutdown in soft tissue (full-body shutdown responses effect organ systems, whereas localized shutdown can reside in muscle, tendon, ligament, fascia, fat, fibrous tissue). Exiting these accumulated loads restores limpidity of body systems and structures, and liberates vitality.
Our clinical work is bespoke: if you are interested in working with us we’ll have you fill out a consultation request, which we will ask you to write carefully. We will in turn read it carefully, and if we feel that we can help will set up an initial consultation and have you fill out a Consent to Treat. If we determine, in the consultation, that we believe we can help you, and there is a good fit, we will determine treatment objectives and design a treatment cadence.
You can learn more about the Autonomics Clinic by clicking the green button below:
Correlating stress-related diseases with their specific autonomic antecedents provides 1) a novel and clinically-relevant taxonomy of stress-related disease etiology, 2) an empirical basis for early preventive intervention if there is detection or monitoring of enduring pathogenic autonomic states, and 3) pathways to more effective treatment of underlying autonomic strata beneath symptoms. For the past decade, Hearth Science has been developing a new foundation model of autonomic physiology, and correlating pathogenic autonomic states with stress-related disease etiology. In this white paper we map out general findings, exploring the autonomic undergirding of a variety of illustrative disease pathologies, as well as characterizing some of the complex non-linear interactions between autonomic substrates, the immune system, and the neuroendocrine system. This mapping provides a framework for understanding autonomic antecedents to common stress-related pathology ranging from post-traumatic stress injuries, to pain syndromes, to gastro-intestinal disease, auto-immune disease, and beyond. It focuses not on symptoms in target organs, but rather on the autonomic pattern language of the down-regulation of specific physiological systems as a result of chronic or archived allostatic loads in the body, which are differentiated by neurology and neurochemistry.