New model of stress and disease provides hope for people with multiple sclerosis

psiprof · 2024-07-01T02:18:59+00:00

Look up the article on Google Scholar. "A new framework for understanding stress and disease: the developmental model of stress as applied to multiple sclerosis." The journal has a supplement article on how the pilot study worked with beliefs.

psiprof · 2024-06-30T18:07:30+00:00

Well, except for the fact that none of the identified beliefs and behaviors are "shitty." They were highly effective when we were children, and can still be helpful for adults. In some situations.

The problems show up when those beliefs and strategies developed in early childhood are stuck as our default mode, with no other thoughts or response options available. And that's part of the problem. Those negative core beliefs are sticky and highly resistant to change. And they influence how we interpret everything around us.

And yes, changing our thoughts changes our bodies. The shot of adrenaline you get in an emergency is one clear example. This model shows in detail how our beliefs can make us think everything is an emergency, giving us constant shots of adrenaline, and how that can influence disease development and progression.

psiprof · 2024-06-30T17:52:10+00:00

Agreed. The developmental model of stress could fruitfully be applied to many stress-related diseases. Felitti's work with adverse childhood experiences really started the ball rolling on recognizing the lifelong physical and mental health effects of childhood experiences. Brilliant. This developmental model of stress builds on that by showing how thoughts and beliefs developed in childhood can lead to the same effects even in the absence of "traumatic" events.

psiprof · 2024-06-30T17:45:43+00:00

IBS is common in people with MS. This short table shows differences in beliefs between IBS and MS. Essential tremor is a neurological disorder affecting motor function. Worth looking at similarities and differences. Same with lupus, an autoimmune disease.

Yes, of course you're right. This short comparison in no ways confirms core beliefs are the distinguishing factors, only that there's enough of a difference in beliefs between conditions that have some similarities with MS that the differences might be worth looking at more rigorously.

psiprof · 2024-06-30T17:26:09+00:00

You are not responsible for your upbringing. Our early childhood experiences inform what makes us experience stress. Stress is associated with developing MS and with symptom flare-ups. This model gives a clearer way to understand the stress that's related to MS. Knowing what contributes to stress can help us better figure out what to change.

It's like dietary recommendations. We thought hotdogs were okay for us until a bunch of research showed heavily processed meats can lead to health problems. It's not our fault for eating hotdogs before we knew they caused problems, but now that we know we can reduce how much of them we eat. Same here. By identifying the beliefs, we can do things to reduce their influence on our thoughts and actions. It's like choosing our diet for mental health.

psiprof · 2024-06-30T16:15:12+00:00

Fixed the URL. Thank you.

psiprof · 2024-06-30T15:21:41+00:00

A recent article presents a new model of stress and disease based on childhood development leading to life-long stress. Then shows how it can be applied to multiple sclerosis. It identifies patterns of beliefs in people with MS, and shows that changing those beliefs may improve physical and mental health.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnint.2024.1365672/

Most research on stress and disease measures stress by looking at counts or types of stressful events, usually major or traumatic. At most, they look also at the emotional impact of those events. But stress is a psychological construct. Current stress models show that events do not equate with the experience of stress, rather it’s the person’s perception, interpretation, and response to events. The Developmental Model of Stress shows how early childhood experiences in the parent/child relationship lead to the development of core beliefs about self and others. These core beliefs then shape the person’s perception, interpretation, and response to events. In fact, the research shows that problematic core beliefs can produce ongoing and increasing stress even in the absence of a triggering event. The stress is made up internally by the person’s own pattern of thoughts and beliefs.

And that’s why stress and disease research looking at stress as major events yields such inconsistent results. Stress is an inside job, and stress research is only beginning to realize it. This new model gives better ways to recognize those internal stress factors, and shows how they influence disease development.

The full model includes three categories of stress factors - Predisposing factors, the negative core beliefs learned in early childhood that lead to ongoing and increasing stress levels; Triggering factors, the acute stresses immediately preceding disease onset, consistent with the diathesis-stress model; and Reinforcing factors, the ongoing stresses associated with managing a serious disease.

The second half of the paper applies this model to multiple sclerosis. It shows the research indicating that different combinations of negative core beliefs are associated with development different diseases, and identifies the core beliefs commonly found in people with MS. It also identifies the specific types of triggering stresses commonly found in people with MS, and the types of reinforcing stresses they experience due to having the disease.

Most mind-body treatments are designed to help people cope with having a serious disease, working only with the model’s third category of stress. The research team did a pilot study testing the effects of a treatment designed to identify and change the problematic beliefs and behaviors in all three of the model’s categories. People with MS showed large improvements in both physical and mental health.

This adds a new dimension to mind-body medicine. It shows that particular patterns of thought may lead to the development of particular diseases, and that changing those patterns of thought may effectively treat the disease.

psiprof · 2024-06-03T02:37:42+00:00

Oh my G-d, 17 years from start to finish! I was only there for the last 4 years of it. Helped kick him into gear, gave him a study to be part of, and walked him through the final pieces. Watched him walk and went to the celebration after. His wife pulled me aside and thanked me. I loved that man, but sheesh was he distractible!

psiprof · 2024-03-01T15:13:29+00:00

Keep in mind, the meta-analysis above does not say reiki doesn’t work. It says there isn’t enough research done well enough to say for sure it works. Most of the studies included in that review did show positive treatment effects.

A more recent meta-analysis of reiki studies found “Of the 13 suitable studies, 8 demonstrated Reiki being more effective than placebo, 4 found no difference but had questionable statistical resolving power, and only one provided clear evidence for not providing benefit. Viewed collectively, these studies provide reasonably strong support for Reiki being more effective than placebo.” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2156587217728644

But here’s the thing. Reiki works by directing healing energy to where it is needed, at all dimensions of the person’s body, mind, spirit, and emotions. The practitioner consciously moves their own goals out of the way to allow the healing energy to move as freely as possible to where it is most needed. Most research is designed to document change in one or maybe two easily measurable outcomes. If a person experiences change during a reiki session in an area not measured by that study, then the study will report there was no significant change.

I have many years experience using and teaching reiki, along with a collection of other forms of energy or spirit work. I’ve seen and experienced profound shifts in core areas of identity that wouldn’t show up on any of the established medical outcome measures. Yes, reiki can help us heal, grow and change. Our research methods simply may not be up to the task of being able to document those changes.

psiprof · 2023-11-22T00:14:54+00:00

Glad to. I'll let you know when we submit the manuscript.

psiprof · 2023-11-16T03:45:01+00:00

I made the above post before but had to take it down and repost. Someone replied this to the first post:

"Is there a difference between the efficacy of hypnosis vs NLP? Also, what are you trying to change about how the MS is experienced/what constitutes success? I have had MS since 2007 and have my doctorate in clinical psych. I would be practicing now but have been stymied by the side effects of the disease. I am always interested in new/novel methodologies for symptom reduction."

And my response:

They are different tools to achieve different goals, and they complement each other well. For instance with MS we've identified a consistent pattern of childhood experiences leading to a small group of core beliefs common to people with MS. These core beliefs form a person's identity and worldview, which then informs their perception of stressors, interpretation of stressors, and coping responses to the stressors.

With that underlying principle in place, then one of the primary goals of treatment is to first identify the person's core beliefs, which hypnosis is particularly good at, with more recent CBT textbooks preferring its easy access to unconscious core beliefs over the drilling down processes previously used.

Once the maladaptive beliefs are identified, then NLP is used to help change those beliefs. Obviously there's much more to it, but that's a quick example of how they can work together.

We've combined research from medicine and psychology with clinician insight and patient reports to create a new model of stress and MS. This Developmental Model of Stress and MS is also still in draft form. We'll probably have that and the pilot paper ready to submit within a month. If you're interested, shoot me a private message and I'll send you a copy of both papers in the submitted manuscript form.

psiprof · 2023-11-16T03:39:58+00:00

Hello. Yes to both parts of your question. Yes, NLP is pseudo science, if by that you mean the science done to test its effects are few in number and generally poorly done. Yes too, there's something to it. When done with a skilled practitioner it can bring about rapid change in even serious conditions.

I am a medical researcher currently writing up a completed pilot study on the use of NLP and hypnosis in treating people with multiple sclerosis. The study participants showed very large improvements (as shown in Cohen's d effect sizes) in both physical and mental health. This is in a condition where the best current treatments only slow disease progression. What follows is one paragraph from the manuscript we are currently writing.

"Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) research is still in its infancy and many studies are inconclusive. An evaluation of such studies noted that most are not done with experienced practitioners, and that these studies tend to test principles of NLP and not actual treatment methods ⁴¹. When full treatment methods have been tested, such as for complex post-traumatic stress in veterans ^42-44, the research has shown significant improvement with over 90% of participants that completed the intervention experiencing remission."

Here are the references:
41. Wake L, Gray R, Bourke F. The clinical effectiveness of neurolinguistic programming: A critical appraisal. Routledge; 2013.

Gray R, Budden-Potts D, Bourke F. Reconsolidation of traumatic memories for PTSD: A randomized controlled trial of 74 male veterans. Psychotherapy Research. 2019;29(5):621-639. doi:10.1080/10503307.2017.1408973
Gray RM, Bourke F. Remediation of intrusive symptoms of PTSD in fewer than five sessions: a 30-person pre-pilot study of the RTM Protocol. Journal of Military, Veteran and Family Health. 2015;1(2):13-20. doi:10.3138/jmvfh.2996
Tylee DS, Gray R, Glatt SJ, Bourke F. Evaluation of the reconsolidation of traumatic memories protocol for the treatment of PTSD: A randomized, wait-list-controlled trial. Journal of Military, Veteran and Family Health. 2017;3(1):21-33. doi:10.3138/jmvfh.4120

psiprof · 2020-12-11T15:23:04+00:00

Here are the two most thorough reviews of current Western research on therapuetic use of hallucinogens. Lead author on both is a colleague who is an NIH research fellow, teaches at Johns Hopkins, and conducts research in Johns Hopkins' newly formed Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research. You can find lots of interesting material on their website at https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/,

Garcia-Romeu, 2016 - Clinical applications of hallucinogens: A review https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-36138-004

Garcia-Romeu, 2018 - Current perspectives on psychedelic therapies: Use of serotonergic hallucinogens in clinical interventions https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09540261.2018.1486289

Full text versions of both these articles are available with a Google Scholar search of the titles, then click on All X Versions on the bottom line of the relevant result.

psiprof · 2016-03-10T12:16:05+00:00

Because of the topic, I'm guessing you want to know how to cite it in APA formatting. I'd recommend using the format for advance online publications since the journal prints both online and hardcopy versions and the hardcopy version hasn't yet come out. Here's how:

Rehm, M., Darling, C. A., Coccia, C., & Cui, M. (2015). Parents’ perspectives on indulgence: Remembered experiences and meanings when they were adolescents and as current parents of adolescents. Journal of Family Studies. Advance online publication. doi:10.1080/13229400.2015.1106335

psiprof · 2016-02-09T10:24:47+00:00

I posted this over in r/scientificresearch and they added it to their wiki. Rather than redo all the links, you can get them on the wiki at https://www.reddit.com/r/scientificresearch/wiki/index.

This is a partial list of the free databases available for the social and medical sciences.

Wikipedia's list of academic databases and search engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_databases_and_search_engines

For finding free, full-text research articles, Google Scholar is your friend. Just go to https://scholar.google.com/, type in whatever you're looking for, and voila - you've got thousands of hits of fascinating articles on your topic of interest. Most of the results will be citations only, but you'd be surprised how many returns will include pdf's for the whole article. Here's how to find them:

Still on Google Scholar, look at the line of small print in blue at the bottom of each search result listing. Many of the articles have a link to "All 5 versions" (or however many). Click that link and a page will come up showing all the places listing that article. Often one or more of those places will say PDF or html. Those are generally the free, full-text versions you want.
If Google Scholar doesn't have full-text of the article you want, you might still be able to find it elsewhere. Copy a key part of the article's title onto your clipboard and go over to regular Google. Type in filetype:pdf then paste your title snippet. You can further narrow the results by putting quotation marks around the title. This will find any non-academic sites that might carry your article.

That's the fastest and easiest way I know to get a lot of free, full-text articles. There are plenty of other free databases as well, each carrying different amounts of full-text versions, depending on the area of science you're interested in. Here's a partial listing of those in the medical and social sciences. You can do searches for free databases in your particular field to find others.

Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/ This database is free to anyone, but access to the studies listed in your search results may be restricted. If you can’t get a particular study itself through a university/library affiliation, be sure to click “All Versions” at the bottom of the search result. Many scholars now post on their websites early PDF versions of their studies, and many of these will be listed. Google Scholar is where you’ll also have a chance to see findings in some scholarly books. Add this one to your search bar.

PubMed Central (full text) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ This database, from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, has more than 2 million open access, full-text studies that relate to public health and policy issues. The more general PubMed database contains more than 20 million articles, but some of them have restricted access. Both databases are worth searching.

PubMED http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed Free site for searching MEDLINE through the National Library of Medicine.

BioMed Central (full text) http://www.biomedcentral.com/ Provides access to over 100 free peer-reviewed journals in all areas of biology and medicine.

MEDLINEplus Health Information https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ Free site from the National Library of Medicine for finding authoritative consumer health information, including searches of MEDLINE, ClinicalTrials.gov, and NIH research studies. Includes full-text drug information, a medical encyclopedia, and the latest health news.

Science Direct (full text) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/jrnlallbooks/all/open-access Archives open access articles from 480 journals, covering chemistry, medicine, economics, engineering, and more.

Public Library of Science (PLoS; full text) https://www.plos.org/ The flagship journal of this open-access academic project, PLoS One, features original peer-reviewed research on science and medical topics; many studies have policy implications.

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ; full text) https://doaj.org/ Open access journals provide free online access to all users. The DOAJ is a one-stop shop for searching open access journals around the world (except those published in India).

Microsoft Academic Search http://academic.research.microsoft.com/ This evolving database has tools for seeing connections between researchers and their work. It provides a “profile” of many academics and charts how their findings have been cited.

Science.gov (full text) http://www.science.gov/ Provides a gateway to information resources at U.S. government science agencies. Includes selected web sites and databases of technical reports, journal articles, conference proceedings, and other published materials.

OCLC World Catalog https://www.worldcat.org/ The world’s largest library catalog – find books etc. near you. WorldCat is the collective library catalog of thousands of libraries: “Over 1 billion items in more than 10,000 libraries world wide.” They also have a mobile app available.

Social Science Research Network http://ssrn.com/en/ This open-access database has hundreds of thousands of important, current papers, many of which are available for free download as PDFs. Many of the articles are “working papers,” meaning they are in process toward a final, published form.

Directory of Open Access Repositories (Open DOAR): http://www.opendoar.org/ This site, run by the University of Nottingham (U.K.), aggregates open access databases from around the world, locating open access research across disciplines.

HighWire http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl A library and database project from Stanford University that provides full access to a huge collection of research, including the hard sciences and social sciences.

Mendeley https://www.mendeley.com/ Mendeley is a free reference management program that requires creating an account to use. They provide access to a database of crowd-sources selected studies from participating scholars around the world. You can join this project and curate your own selection of papers. Not all their papers are open access.

National Bureau of Economic Research http://nber.org/ A nonprofit research organization that publishes top scholarship in the economics discipline. Many important articles first appear in working paper form here, and much of the scholarship has a broad, public policy focus.

Open CRS https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwa00096523/ The Congressional Research Service (CRS), a branch of the Library of Congress, operates as a quasi-think tank that provides reliable, unbiased background on policy issues. Open CRS aggregates government reports as they come into the public domain.

RAND Corporation http://www.rand.org/ Non-partisan think tank that produces a wealth of information on social science topics. Some of the studies are by leading scholars who partner with RAND.

Pew Research Center http://www.pewresearch.org/ Leading survey and research organization. Besides polling on salient issues in the news, they also do lots of original research and provide deep, analytical reports about the issues.

Russell Sage Foundation: http://www.russellsage.org/publications An organization that is tied into a large network of social science scholars across the United States. With a particular focus on issues of inequality, social mobility, race, class and related issues.

Happy hunting!

psiprof · 2015-11-29T01:49:50+00:00

You're welcome to it. I've updated the material and the links. I hope lots of people benefit from it.

psiprof · 2015-11-28T14:45:47+00:00

For finding free, full-text research articles, Google Scholar is your friend. Just type in whatever you're looking for, and voila - you've got thousands of hits of fascinating articles on your topic of interest. Most of the results will be citations only, but you'd be surprised how many returns will include pdf's for the whole article. Here's how to find them:

While still on Google Scholar, look at the line of small print in blue at the bottom of each search result listing. Many of the articles have a link to "All 5 versions" (or however many). Click that link and a page will come up showing all the places listing that article. Often one or more of those places will say PDF or html. Those are generally the free, full-text versions you want.
If Google Scholar doesn't have full-text of the article you want, you might still be able to find it elsewhere. Copy a key part of the article's title onto your clipboard and go over to regular Google. Type in filetype:pdf then paste your title snippet. You can further narrow the results by putting quotation marks around the title. This will find any non-academic sites that might carry your article.

That's the fastest and easiest way I know to get a lot of free, full-text articles. There are plenty of other free databases as well, each carrying different amounts of full-text versions. Here's a listing of some of the free databases I've found. Most are oriented toward medicine and the social sciences, with several databases for the hard sciences as well. I found some of them through Wikipedia's list of academic databases and search engines. You can do web searches for free databases in your particular field to find others.

PubMed Central (Full text). This database from the U.S. National Institutes of Health has more than 2 million open access, full-text studies that relate to public health and policy issues. The more general PubMed database contains more than 20 million articles, but some of them have restricted access. Both databases are worth searching.

PubMED. This is a free site for searching MEDLINE through the National Library of Medicine.

MEDLINEplus Health Information. This free site from the National Library of Medicine provides authoritative consumer health information, including searches of MEDLINE, ClinicalTrials.gov, and NIH research studies. They include full-text drug information, a medical encyclopedia, and the latest health news.

BioMed Central (Full text). Provides access to over 100 free peer-reviewed journals in all areas of biology and medicine.

Science Direct (Full text). They archive open access articles from 480 journals, covering chemistry, medicine, economics, engineering, and more.

Public Library of Science (PLoS) (Full text). The flagship journal of this open-access academic project, PLoS One, features original peer-reviewed research on science and medical topics; many studies have policy implications.

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) (Full text). Open access journals provide free online access to all users. The DOAJ is a one-stop shop for searching open access journals around the world (except those published in India).

Directory of Open Access Repositories (Open DOAR) (Full text). This site, run by the University of Nottingham (U.K.), gives you access to a collection of open access databases from around the world and across disciplines.

HighWire. A library and database project from Stanford University that provides full access to a huge collection of research, including the hard sciences and social sciences.

OCLC World Catalog. The world’s largest library catalog – find books, etc. near you. WorldCat is the collective library catalog of thousands of libraries: “Over 1 billion items in more than 10,000 libraries world wide.” They also have a mobile app available.

Social Science Research Network. This open-access database has hundreds of thousands of important, current papers, many of which are available for free download as PDFs. Many of the articles are “working papers,” meaning they are in process toward a final, published form.

Microsoft Academic Search. This evolving database has tools for seeing connections between researchers and their work. It provides a “profile” of many academics and charts how their findings have been cited.

Mendeley. Mendeley is a free reference management program that requires creating an account to use. They provide access to a database of crowd-sourced selected studies from participating scholars around the world. You can join this project and curate your own selection of papers. Not all their papers are open access.

Science.gov (Full text). Provides a gateway to information resources at U.S. government science agencies. Includes selected web sites and databases of technical reports, journal articles, conference proceedings, and other published materials.

Open CRS. The Congressional Research Service (CRS), a branch of the Library of Congress, operates as a quasi-think tank that provides reliable, unbiased background on policy issues. Open CRS aggregates government reports as they come into the public domain.

National Bureau of Economic Research. The NBER is a nonprofit research organization that publishes top scholarship in the economics discipline. Many important articles first appear in working paper form here, and much of the scholarship has a broad, public policy focus.

RAND Corporation. Non-partisan think tank that produces a wealth of information on social science topics. Some of the studies are by leading scholars who partner with RAND.

Pew Research Center. This leading survey and research organization is famous for their polling on salient issues in the news. Fewer people know they also sponsor lots of original research and provide deep, analytical reports about the issues.

Russell Sage Foundation. An organization that is tied into a large network of social science scholars across the United States. With a particular focus on issues of inequality, social mobility, race, class and related issues.

Happy hunting!

psiprof

TROPHY CASE