schizophrenia.... and the new medical research.....
aleshanee > 05-13-2016, 07:35 PM
medical researchers have isolated genes that they believe can cause the excessive pruning of synapses in the brain during early adolescence that is already known to be associated with schizophrenia....... it has been known for many years that certain kinds of trauma in early childhood can also cause this excessive loss of synapses in the brain... and lead to the numerous symptoms and loss of certain functions and developmental ability, in schizophrenia sufferers..... ..... but this new study might explain how some teenagers and young adults suffer an onset of schizophrenia who never experienced such traumas........ as well as explain how some who suffered minor traumas appeared more susceptible to onset than their peers who endured the same things but had no long term problems.......
here is an article on some of the latest research findings.......
http://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/...snhealth11
studies like this mean a lot to me personally.... and are very encouraging... as many people here already know i was diagnosed with schizophrenia in my early teens.... and have been on medications of various types and amounts ever since..... the meds definitely help..... i know what happens to me when i am off them and i can also feel the differences when they are working as they should.....
and i have also suffered through many cycles of relapses and set backs... some that were devastating.... over the years... with a myriad of symptoms whenever medications were out of balance or some other thing effecting my health and physical status caused them to be less effective or to stop working... .... including exacerbation of an emotional disability and overwhelming false auditory symptoms that led me to a suicide attempt when i was 13... and which have also led me to doing other things since then..sometimes without even realizing it... that puts me in danger or causes serious injury.... ... .. my hope is that continued research like this will eventually find a way to stop the relapses and reduce or eliminate the symptoms altogether......
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i posted this once before in another forum..... but i thought it might be a good idea to post it here as well..... in hopes of starting a new and hopefully better discussion about the issue....... it is an issue that throughout history has been very controversial in fundamental christian circles...... and a medical condition that to this day is still poorly understood..... ........
breakthroughs in studying this condition are very slow in coming..... and though the findings of this recent research is only a small breakthrough....... people who have suffered from it as i have hope that each time a breakthrough is made it might the one that serves to convince some of the hyper- and extreme religious types who love to denounce psychology and psychiatry.... and who have so far refused to accept schizophrenia as anything other than sin or demon possession...... to realize that what researchers and psychologists have been saying for years about this illness is true..... ... that there really is a physical cause for it.... and that what the religious-extremists like to call "empirical evidence" showing mental disorders like this really do have physical and structural defects in the brain associated with them - definitely exists.... .... ... it;s not phony or made up science....... and the disorder itself is not just rebellion - sin ..or even demons that can be preached or beaten out of those who suffer from it...... and it;s not even just the "chemical imbalance" that you often hear other mental or emotional disorders associated with.....
though there is some bio-chemical involvement....... some bio-chemical changes naturally happen with any alteration or injury to brain structure........... schizophrenia is more than just bio-chemical..... it;s bio-structural..... and the many different symptoms associated with it ....... including the kind of emotional disabilities that some say is fake or behavioral... and which others make fun of....... are all caused by missing and damaged synapses that the brain originally had intact... but which were altered or even culled and removed by the brain itself because of either trauma... abuse... or disease in the developmental stages of childhood... .....or other factors as of yet unknown.........and there is even evidence now that in some people the brain might be removing and altering some synapses automatically without any apparent reason other than faulty genetics.....
the research is still continuing..... ... and thankfully the superstition is being discarded more and more as the research bears fruit....... ... but the brain is a difficult thing to research..... you can;t just cut into it to figure it out like you can with other parts of the body.......... but if you will remember .... in the centuries before medical science figured out how to cut into the rest of the body, and began to learn more about it.... superstition ruled what most people thought about it;s processes too........