hushed.life

Quick Summary: when we are highly-sensitive, especially if we have multiple sensitivity (food, chemicals, smells etc), overwhelm, mental and physical fatigue, a need to shut down a lot, maybe we should consider that brain processes and neuroinflammation, like a loss of brain-gating or neurons too close to threshold could be contributing ie. our sensitivity levels could be brain-based.

Zoning or Checking Out

One of the ways my sensitivity shows itself is that I get overwhelmed easily in busy places. Imagine you are in a shopping centre, or a cinema, or simply a family get-together. Do you sometimes need to go out into the garden, or pop to the loo when you don’t need to go, just to get away for a bit and re-set yourself? I do. Do you often need to have a lie-down even when you’ve just had a pretty normal day; you feel exhausted and shutting down, even for 10 minutes seems to help you? You’re not napping, you’re closing your eyes and ears, getting a little warmth and comfort, a little bit of peace. Yes?

That’s a sign of the highly-sensitive person taking in too much sensory information; of an input overload, if you like.

Why does over-stimulation happen?

Some experts might see this as a brain fatigue type problem rather than a personality type issue, actually. There is a process in the brain called brain-gating. Let me explain…

Brain-gating

Almost all sensory stimuli goes through the thalamus in the brain and lots of inhibitory mechanisms (too complex to go into here) are needed to stop the thalamus activating in response to them. This is called thalamic-gauging or brain-gating. I heard one expression that 10% of the brain does things and the other 90% is there to stop it and keep it under control! The brain-gating mechanism is a good example of that.

If we didn’t have something to stop the thalamus processing and acting on all the sensory information coming in, we would get overloaded and not be able to cope. Just imagine being in a crowded room with lots of sounds, smells, people, chatter, music, tastes from the buffet etc – we have to have brain-gating to filter out what is not so important at any given time.

Essentially, the thalamus is responsible for inhibiting the sympathetic response, so if a person has lost some gating, they are more likely to be sympathetic dominant (possibly even classed as having some form or degree of dysautonomia), which means they become over-reactive to stress and stimuli.

Symptoms might include hypersensitivity to food, smells, sound, light, stress, movement and gravity, often they have fleeting pains in the body that move about all over the place, anxiety, adrenaline rushes, their heart races, they can’t get to sleep and more besides. The body is basically ‘listening’ too hard and reacting to too much as it comes in. The level of brain-gating loss will determine how hypersensitive a person is.

Neurons too close to threshold

This is a another, different brain process, which has a similar effect.

Neurons (brain cells) communicate with each other by discharging small messenger chemicals called neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine. The neuron/brain cell has a sort of threshold where it won’t react to a messenger until there is enough of it ie. there is an amount of input needed to make it fire – and this is called ‘the threshold’.

If a neuron is far from threshold, a great deal of input is required to make it fire. One example would be someone who needs to turn the volume ever-higher on their iPod in order to hear music.

On the other hand, when a neuron is close to threshold it fires too easily and will react to any old sensory input when it shouldn’t. Do you see?

When too many neurons are close to threshold, any type of stimulation causes fatigue, especially overload type fatigue – it’s like our brains have had enough, thank you. Driving your car, reading a book, having a conversation, or other normally easy tasks become a huge burden. Unfortunately, many people’s neurons are unhealthy and become either too far from or too close to threshold.

Summary of brain fatigue/overload/neuroinflammation signs and symptoms

Any or all of these might indicate an issue:

can’t handle too much light or sound, blinking lights, can’t bear things touching skin or the feel of food in the mouth, react to smells, can’t tolerate foods/supplements/chemicals. No brain endurance, have to absent yourself or avoid things, shut eyes, move away, sleep – shut out or reduce the stimulus in some way. Can’t read for as long, drive as far as we used to, concentrate, focus, bring words and thoughts together.  Can’t handle crowded rooms, lots of different noises or conversations going on. We need lots more sleep and/or ‘alone’ or down time than we did.

The symptoms depend where the inflammation is taking place in the brain; it could be localised or a general loss of ATP – the energy ‘currency’ in the cells, if you like.

Sounds like me – does it sound like you? Fascinating stuff, anyway.

I’ll do a follow-up post shortly on more of this, especially what might cause it and what we might be able to do about it, I promise.

Meantime, let me know what you think; do you recognise yourself?