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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Eddie Ramirez

How Intimacy Changes the Brain

Our Heavenly Father, I thank you that you're able to give wisdom when we need it.

I pray, Lord, that you may guide my words.

The science of the brain is increasing quite a bit.

We still don't know everything, but what we know is that the brain is the most complex structure that human beings have ever studied.

1 of the things that we are understanding is that the brain is not fixed.

That constant change is what we call neuroplasticity.

It's like when you throw something, an object.

As you do that, The reason why there is neuroplasticity is that those repeated behaviors that we have, the brain creates a path, and next time we do them, we actually get better, and it is easier for us to do it.

For example, a little baby that is the very first time that is trying to throw an object, is gonna grab it and the ball may fall behind him and he tries to throw it.

See, there is no pathways in his brain that has programmed this.

But as he repeats the behavior, the brain starts to create little pathways.

So next time that you do that, now that there is a pathway in your head, it is something much easier.

And any time you learn a new skill, such as language, such as instruments and so forth, your brain changes to adapt to this.

In fact, not only those neural pathways form, the thickness of your brain changes.

For example, if you are right-handed, you're using mostly the left side of your brain to control that right hand.

Your left side of your brain, if you're right-handed, literally changes.

It's thicker, your left side than your right side.

Or depending on your professions, there's an interesting published paper on how taxi drivers in London, as they learn all those streets and names and so forth, the spatial memory of those taxi drivers is actually bigger than the average person because the brain changes.

And how that change happens is that it creates connections between 1 nerve cell and the other.

If you start walking in 1 direction over and over, that grass is going to die and you will create a pathway.

So neuroplasticity can have big implications And we have tremendous potential for neuroplasticity.

Okay, gonna get the Nobel Prize in astronomy if you were able to figure out that 1.

Well, did you know that the number of connections in the average brain is bigger than the numbers of stars in the Milky Way?

How 90% of damage to those connections between the brain and the rest of the body got destroyed.

But see, the dead tissue, you cannot do much about it, but the tissue that is alive, you can retrain it, you can stimulate it, new connections can be formed and they can take over and relearn to use that other part of the brain.

So the name of this son that started doing these things, his name is Paul Bakirita.

And he has done some amazing research on the field of neuroplasticity.

See the ability of the brain to change is amazing and again we're just scratching the surface.

If you remember your physiology classes you would learn about a sympathetic and a parasympathetic system and see, those systems have a big influence on our neuroplasticity.

See that sympathetic is when you have the accelerator all the time.

If you remember, the parasympathetic is what they call the rest and digest when things are calmed down and so forth.

For example, you cannot be just on the parasympathetic all the time.

It's as if you're driving on I-10 and you're on your parasympathetic, just calm down.

And if somebody cuts in front of you, You need that sympathetic, you need that stress hormones, you know, to help you deal with that stressful situation.

If you're just like, oh bro, it's fine, you know, go ahead and cut in front of me.

Man, you're gonna crash against him, you know.

You don't have that velocity and that speed to make the right choice.

So when you are in the running, running, running, running mode that is creating a negative plasticity in your brain.

And we know that neuroplasticity is required for any type of learning, any time that you are learning a skill.

But even your relationships, how good or how bad they are, have an impact in your neuroplasticity.

And see, you can have what is called positive neuroplasticity.

You learn a new skill, you learn a new language, etc., etc.

But unfortunately, there's also negative neuroplasticity, such as addictions.

See, with addictions, there is a path that is being formed and the person feels trapped about it, And it's because those drugs affect negatively the brain.

Here in this image, for example, we can see a normal brain.

Here is when the spine connects to the brain.

But look at what happened when somebody uses addictive substances such as marijuana.

Tremendous harm that is causing to the brain.

So as the person keeps on using this, creates inflammation and all kinds of negative reactions in the brain.

This scan is not an anatomical scan by the way, it's a functional scan.

So you can see where the damaged brain cells are located.

I know it's a hot thing, and I know they tell you that it cures everything.

Be careful, if they say it cures everything, beware of that.

There's many studies showing the negative effects on the liver, on your immunity, on your ability to maintain your emotions and so forth.

And the most worrisome factor is the frontal lobe suppression that it causes.

But it's not only marijuana that has an effect, also things like alcohol, like cigarettes, like caffeine, they have a negative effect.

And you know, I don't do direct research on neuroplasticity, I do indirect research on neuroplasticity.

Up at Weimar and with the depression program, we've been helping people, for example, demonstrating in this study how those people that use benzodiazepines, as they start changing their lifestyle and participating of a program like the eight-week depression program, their usage of benzodiazepines decreases dramatically.

And we found out with our data how depression and anxiety actually get worse on people that are using those benzodiazepines and how not only young people, but also geriatric populations are being affected, and how we're able to decrease those benzodiazepines even in a matter of 10 days when they come to our residential program, as we use other alternatives like this other study that we did on lavender oil.

Lavender oil has the capacity of helping you deal with anxiety.

But also your choices have an effect on your neuroplasticity, like this study that we did, showing that doing things that go against your conscience are not good for your mental health.

This 1 was published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine showing how heterosexuals compared to bisexuals, homosexuals, or people questioning their sexuality, these 3 groups have more than double the rate of depression and they tend to have it more severely.

And you know, it is such a nice thing to see what happens when the person changes their lifestyle.

For example, this is 1 of our patients that came to our New Start program up in Weimar.

Diabetic, hypertension, not being controlled with 2 medications, a severe case of obesity, and with multiple medications.

In a matter of 18 days, he loses 7 kilos.

We had to stop all medications because they no longer needed.

In a matter of 6 months, he has lost 83 pounds.

And in 11 months, when we do a complete blood test, cholesterols are normal, fasting blood sugar is normal, prostate test is normal, and the most surprising number here is the hemoglobin A1c of 5.5, which tells me that on somebody that is not taking any agent to lower their glucose, he has actually reversed the diabetes.

He continues doing the changes, and in a year and a half, after losing 141 pounds, you can see the before and after.

By the way, BBC News ran a very interesting article recently, you can Google these words and find the article, showing that 70% of the physicians in England don't know that diabetes is potentially reversible.

By the way, for some of you that want to access that research, there's more than 80 studies.

You can go to this ResearchGate site and you can find all that research that we are doing up in Weimar.

You can either type all that address or put Francisco Ramirez Research Gate and in your Google is going to be the first 1 that you can see.

But you know, the Bible also teaches about neuroplasticity.

In fact, that's the purpose of the gospel, to create a transformation inside the human beings.

For example, in Proverbs, It says that as we think, what happens to us?

See, it creates neural paths, and that has an effect on our behavior.

Or as it says in John, for as many as received him, to them he gave them what?

See, this is where We doctors are limited.

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How Intimacy Changes the Brain

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