Is Mental Health Mental?

Have we been lead down a merry road by our Brains and Society when we should be looking at the ANS?

Let's look at the science part and understand it a little better!

The Autonomic Nervous System manages just about every single process in our bodies and works in constant antagonistic cooperation. The sympathetic - Activating, increases heart rate and the Parasympathetic- Calming, lowers it, this is just one mechanism in our body that is regulated by the ANS. (there are thousands more but we love the Heart in Lavandula HQ)

Within the ANS we have:

1.Nerves- connections

2. Nerve Centre's- Ganglia

3. Nerve cells scattered on the surface of our organs

The Sympathetic Ganglia lie along the spine and the Parasympathetic Ganglia lie next to our organs- (*now remember this part as we remember this as a connection to the Vagus Nerve we always talk about where it wanders through our organs in our body!)

There are around 90 Ganglia- (nerve centre's ) and around 50 of them are located in the abdomen and pelvis. Lightbulb moment for you-" This is the point you say aha. I always have that feeling in my stomach" and so do your children- sore tummy alerts daily if the nervous system gets overwhelmed.

22 pairs in the Sympathetic and 4 pairs in the Parasympathetic.

these are like 90 extra little brains in our body!

• The ganglia are involved in regulating the stress response and the emotional processing of the brain. Damage to the ganglia can disrupt the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.

The ANS communicates with a part of the brain called the HYPOTHALMUS through these ganglia by means of electrical signals and it carries out the commands from the hypothalamus and sends feedback so that it can respond by adjusting activity in the ANS. Like a team, but the ganglia can work independently and can loose their filtering functions and bombard the brain with feedback signals, or none at all, that can cause the Hypothalamus to get the wrong message and put out too many or too little hormones for regulation. It is just taking feedback and acting on it because that is it's job. A loop of sorts, Brain to Body- Body to Brain.

It works in the background without us knowing but the HYPOTHALAMUS is a major factor in stimulating stress hormones and can also integrate information from other parts of the Brain such as, Emotions and Memory.

As much as the Brain has such a complex system, it has only 2 processes- Excitation and Inhibition and relies on signals being send to it internally from the ANS or eternally from the environment