Chorea of Huntington. On the psychological causes of the disease
There are many diseases in modern medicine that doctors do not like to face. They do not like those diseases for which methods of effective treatment are not developed or are not known. They do not like it because they cannot offer anything that would reverse the course of the disease, slow down its course, or at least weaken its symptoms. And also because few of the patients think about the fact that not all diseases are cured. As a result, all the blame for the vagaries of the course of the disease is usually shifted to the attending physician.
Meanwhile, there is an incredible number of diseases, the cause of which is still unknown, as well as genetically determined ones, with the treatment of which there will be problems by definition. In the first case, because the reason is unknown, and in the second - because genetics cannot be changed. One of these diseases is Huntington's chorea.
Chorea of Huntington is one of the genetically determined hereditary diseases. In the medical literature, it is described as "a slowly progressive disease of the nervous system, characterized by choreic hyperkinesis, mental disorders and progressive dementia." As a rule, the first manifestations of this disease appear between the ages of 30 and 50. Cases of the juvenile form of the disease are quite rare and account for less than 10%.
The typical manifestation of Huntington's chorea in adults is choreic syndrome, which is rare during adolescence. Most often, the muscles of the face are involved in involuntary movements, which causes expressive grimaces with protruding tongue, twitching of the cheeks, alternating frowning and / or raising of the eyebrows. Less commonly, hyperkinesis is observed in the muscles of the arms and - even less often - of the legs. As the disease progresses, hyperkinesis intensifies.
To date, no specific treatment for Huntington's chorea has been developed. The main direction of treatment is symptomatic therapy aimed at suppressing hyperkinesis. The disease has a poor prognosis.
Briefly, the situation looks like this:
- The disease is of genetic origin.
- The course is progressively worsening.
- The prognosis is poor.
Fortunately, this disease is rare enough. 3-7 people per 100,000 among Europeans, and 1: 1,000,000 among representatives of other races. In my 15-year practice, I saw only two patients with this diagnosis: one - back in my student years and the second - quite recently. In both cases, they were women about 50 years old. And in both cases, despite the 15 years elapsed between them, the forecast was the same.
Only my attitude to problems from a series of "unsolvable" ones became different
If somewhere your problem is considered hopeless, you need to look for prospects elsewhere. So, for example, there is nothing shameful if a person with a disease of this kind, having received and followed ALL the relevant medical recommendations (and even more so, having heard that there are no prospects for drug treatment), does not give up and sit on the sofa, staring at one point thinking that "everything is gone" and "life is over." It is much better not to lose faith and do everything possible in the direction of recovery, try other, alternative paths.
So, for example, the last of the two patients I met in my practice with an established diagnosis of Huntington's chorea, by the time we met, began a course of acupuncture and homeopathic treatment. I thought about how it is possible to explain the origin of this disease from the point of view of the system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan.
Influence of genetics
Let us respect the details of the etiopathogenesis of repeated Cytosine-Adenine-Guanine triplets in the HTT gene located on the short arm of chromosome 4 and encoding the Huntingtin protein, which acquires toxic properties when it is synthesized from a chain consisting of more than 36 indicated triplets of nucleotides. Let's pay attention only to the fact that the symptoms of this genetically determined disease appear after the age of 20 and very rarely - in childhood. What could be the reason for this?
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From a scientific point of view, the degree of "toxicity" of the Huntingtin protein, which is directly proportional to how many repeating C-A-G triplets are greater than 36. Thus, the less toxic this protein is to brain cells, the symptoms of the disease will appear later.
- From another (holistic) point of view, our body is able to compensate for the disturbances present in it on its own. And manifestations of the disease appear when the influence of factors that weaken the body's defenses is too great.
Factors that weaken the body's defenses
What can be attributed to these factors in this particular case? Since the course of Huntington's chorea is progressive, not recurrent, it would be correct to assume that these same factors are also those that progressively increase with life. And what else if not stress, unresolved psychological problems in a timely manner, have such a tendency to accumulate and increase the impact on the entire body? Therefore, I decided to consider this clinical case in the context of psychosomatics, and the knowledge of system-vector psychology turned out to be very useful here.
Psychology and illness - what do they have in common?
From the point of view of the system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan, there are 8 types of mental, each of which is unique in its properties. Each of them has their own special desires, their priorities in life, their preferences and ways of solving life problems. In the modern world, each person usually combines the properties of three or four vectors, however, there are many people with combinations of vectors in a smaller or larger number.
All of them influence the character and behavior of a person, shaping his life scenario depending on the level of development and implementation of the properties specified by the vectors. The level of stress also has an impact - when it exceeds the ability of a particular person to adapt, then we can observe reactions typical for each vector.
According to Yuri Burlan's system-vector psychology, tremors of the arms, legs, nervous tics and obsessive movements occur primarily in the owners of the skin vector. This is how their nervous system reacts to a state of over-stress. The patient I saw with Huntington's chorea had a cutaneous vector. Let's consider what is stress for a person endowed with the properties of a skin vector, and try to establish whether there was over-stress in this case.
Features of the psyche and factors of over-stress
The skin vector sets certain properties to its owner - a special attitude towards material values and social superiority, focus on the extraction and saving of material resources, reaction speed and the ability to be flexible, adapt to the situation in order to successfully fulfill its role - to extract material resources and save them.
Thus, a person with a skin vector is a born organizer who, like no one else, knows how to distribute all the roles and responsibilities both at work and at home. This works especially well when there is a higher-level manager above him. And the point is not at all that in the absence of such, the owner of the skin vector will not be able to cope with the duties assigned to him - he is able to cope, but at a short distance and through colossal internal tension. This is a situation that will present him with over-stress.
Any material loss for a person with a skin vector is a blow to the most sore spot, fraught with psychosomatic reactions at various levels (from the onset of itching and rash to more serious deviations).
The need to keep what has been earned and what has been achieved (fear of loss), as well as the loss of a job, are also over-stress factors for the owners of the skin vector. It is sometimes even easier for them to achieve and earn money than to keep what they have achieved.
Another reason for stress based on the desire for material superiority for the owner of the skin vector is the presence in the environment of a person who is more successful in this regard. Such a situation, at best, will induce him to compete with the goal of “catching up and overtaking”, and if such a way of solving the problem is impossible, it will create a situation of constant stress.
Where it is thin, there it is torn
When communicating with a patient with an established diagnosis of Huntington's chorea, the main emotions splashed out when it came to the beginning of family life, which fell on the 90s. This period, when, along with the usual way of life in our country, the economy collapsed, affected, perhaps, everyone. Someone more, someone less. The research institute where she worked was closed. My husband also had to look for a new job, and in those days there was not much to choose from. The disadvantage of his new job was that he was absent from home for several months in a row, so the main family concerns and responsibility for the children fell on the shoulders of the young wife.
She had to distribute the available funds in such a way that there was enough for all the needs until the next visit of her husband. Take care not only of yourself, but also of small children. The fear of being left without a livelihood drove her crazy. “I was constantly afraid that there would not be enough money!” She went on to scream during the memories. Twenty (!) Years have passed since then, but when she remembered this, her voice broke into a scream, and panic sounded distinctly in it.
findings
In the history of this clinical case, there are at least two serious reasons for the state of over-stress in the patient's skin vector: the need to take full responsibility for oneself and the need to save and count money in conditions of chronic lack of money against the background of previous material and social losses. A vivid emotional reaction to the memories of such long-standing events indicates that the patient's psychological reaction to them remains relevant to this day. This means that psychological work with the patient is necessary.
Of course, no far-reaching conclusions can be drawn from one clinical case. Nevertheless, there are obvious connections between a certain type of psyche and an overstress situation peculiar only to it, which, obviously, could have a certain value in the onset and / or manifestation of the disease. Based on this, it can be assumed that awareness of the causes of stress, as well as the positive fulfillment of the needs and requirements of the skin vector, could have a positive effect on the course of the disease.
When a person knows the features of his mental state, he is able to realize what exactly in his reactions could weaken compensatory abilities and / or serve as an impetus for starting a chain of psychological reactions that led to the provocation of a disease to which he had a predisposition. In addition, a deep understanding of the structure of the psyche significantly increases stress resistance, which is important in maintaining the performance of the body's defenses.
When his relatives are oriented in the peculiarities of the psyche of a sick person, for their part they will try not to create those situations that are perceived by his unconscious as stress, and therefore can worsen his condition.
Summing up and relying on the positive experience of alleviating other psychosomatic disorders in people who have undergone training, it can be assumed that the practical application of the knowledge of system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan by the patient and his relatives can significantly reduce the component of the mental component in the pathogenesis of diseases of a genetic or idiopathic nature, as well as diseases with an unfavorable prognosis, which, in all likelihood, have an important psychological component in their etiology. The application of this knowledge in practice will show how significant this component is in each specific case.
PS Unfortunately, in the given clinical case, I have not yet managed to convey this idea to the patient and her relatives. On the one hand, they strive to achieve improvement with the help of the methods of oriental medicine (the mechanisms of action of which they do not understand, therefore they are still able to believe in its effectiveness), on the other hand, they refuse to do anything within the framework of Western medicine, because it considers this disease genetic, and therefore incurable.
The patient was not ready to pay attention to psychological factors. The idea that our health depends on doctors and does not depend on ourselves is often the negative factor that becomes an obstacle on the way to new opportunities for improving our well-being.
I do not leave hope to convey to the patient's mind the idea that psychological factors and the characteristics of our response play, perhaps, a more significant role in the initiation of diseases than was previously assumed. Consequently, the correction of these components through awareness of their mental characteristics, of course, is able to influence the manifestations of somatic diseases. The question of the degree of this influence remains open until we apply the knowledge of Yuri Burlan's system-vector psychology in practice in each specific case.
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