Technical article: Influencing peptides with EFT

Vicki Hughes Life Coach, EFT-ADV

I have become intrigued with the connection between peptides (informational chemicals produced by the body) and ways to affect them with EFT. After watching "What The Bleep Do We Know", I began doing some personal study along these lines, and while I still have a great deal to learn about this, I have been getting some helpful insight, and positive results from combining the knowledge of peptides and EFT.

The scope of this article is to explore the complimentary nature of the body's peptides, and EFT to bring about positive changes physically and emotionally. While I offer these observations as a serious student of this subject, I do not come from a medical or scientific background. This has become a helpful way I have found to allow the energetic and chemical components of my self to work in a complimentary fashion.

I read the very interesting article by Rebecca Marina, where she spoke to and EFT'd her own blood cells, and documented some rather remarkable changes in her blood, as seen via darkfield microscope photography. After reading about the changes she noted in her blood after applying EFT specifically to obtain a change in her blood cells, I came to a similar conclusion regarding the body's production of peptides. These remarkable little self-produced bio-chemicals are part of the body, just like the blood cells, and I concluded they may be every bit as responsive to EFT as the blood cells were.

Over the years, I have grown familiar with and convinced of the power of our spoken words, which is one of the aspects of EFT that I believe is so effective. I have personally found that using a positive reframe of a negative situation, even before you believe it in your heart, combined with EFT somehow seems to cause it to become a heart-felt belief, and enables us to begin to believe our negative situation can in fact change. Patricia Carrington's Choices Method is a tremendous help with this.

In reading Molecules of Emotion by Candace B. Pert Phd. I learned something very interesting. She says, "Just recently, researchers at the National Institutes of Health have found a link between depression and traumas experienced in early childhood. Studies have shown that abused, neglected or otherwise un-nurtured infants and children are more likely to be depressed as adults, and now we have a way to understand the link between the experience and the biology. It all relates to something called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis."

To summarize what she explains about this three fold axis: the hypothalamus, which is part of our emotional brain, has axons that produce a neuropeptide called the cortical releasing factor, (CRF). When this peptide accesses our pituitary gland, the pituitary gland in turn will produce another informational substance known as ACTH. This substance then acts upon the adrenal glands which many of us know is responsible for releasing adrenaline, which sparks that fight-or-flight response we have all grown familiar with.

What is interesting is that this can all take place in a remarkably swift fashion, and the daisy chain of chemical reactions BEGINS with an emotion. It's like a flow chart: You have an emotion, the emotion causes the hypothalamus to create a neuropeptide called CRF that causes the pituitary glad to secrete ACTH, which in turn binds itself to the receptors in the adrenal glands, which causes the adrenal glands to make a stress hormone, a steroid known as corticosterone.

Keep in mind a strong emotion does not have to be sparked by any actual threat or danger, but merely by the perception of threat or danger. For example, if you were cleaning out your attic, where you knew there were normally several resident spiders, you could easily cause this chain reaction to start, completely apart from any spider whatsoever. If the dangling string from an overhead lightbulb were to brush against the back of your neck, as you were merely thinking about the possibility of meeting an attic dwelling spider, your hypothalamus would be off to the races to alert you to a perceived danger! You would be dancing a jig in your attic attempting to get the "spider" off of you, and it might take several minutes for you to calm back down again, even after realizing that it was just the string that touched you rather than a spider.

It is essential to recognize the profound and lasting results EFT provides where strong emotions are concerned. Stopping the negative emotion cuts off this daisy chain of chemical reactions before it gets started.

In Molecules of Emotion, Dr. Pert goes on to say....

"Ever since studies done thirty years ago, we've known that stress increases with increased steroid production. Depressed people typically have high levels of these stress steroids. In fact, depressed people are in a chronic state of ACTH activation because of a disrupted feedback loop that fails to signal when there are sufficient levels of steroid in the blood. So the CRF-ACTH axis just keeps pumping out more and more steroids. Autopsies almost always show a tenfold higher level of CRF in the cerebrospinal fluid of those who killed themselves compared to those who died from other causes.......We could say that CRF is the peptide of negative expectations, since it may have been stimulated by negative experiences in childhood."

"There are animal studies, for example, showing that monkey babies deprived of maternal nurturing, neglected or abused, in effect, have high levels of CRF and so have high steroid levels. Remember it's a feedback loop that is out of control. Depressed people are stuck in a disruptive feedback loop that resists any kind of drug therapy that aims at suppression of the steroids. Eventually there is so much CRF in the system that fluctuations of other peptides throughout the organism are curtailed, leaving even fewer possibilities in the range of behavior."

"In baby monkeys, this takes the form of failure to groom or repetitive behaviors that don't seem to have any purpose. In humans, the result can be extremely limited patterns of behavior and response, which eventually drive people into an emotional black hole......the reason we can get stuck like this is because these feelings get retained in the memory---not just the brain, but all the way down to the cellular level. This is how it works: As CRF levels increase in highly stressed infants and children, the receptors for CRF become desensitized, shrinking in size and decreasing in number. These changes happen when receptors are flooded with a drug, whether it's a drug your body produces naturally or a drug you buy at a pharmacy. The memory of the trauma is stored by these and other changes at the level of the neuropeptide receptor, some occurring deep in the interior of the cell at the very roots of the receptor. This is taking place bodywide. Although such changes can be reversed and need not be permanent, this takes time....the good news is that these findings let us see the potential for non-drug interventions, new kinds of treatments for mood disorders." (read EFT!)

"Remember the stressed-out monkey babies? In another study to determine maternal influence, a group of monkey babies was raised by a fake monkey mother, a wire-and-cloth structure with milk bottles instead of breasts. The babies were fed but not touched, cuddled or held. They soon had all the signs of trauma and depression, as would be expected in light of all we've just talked about. But they were cured---the stress symptoms reversed---when researchers brought in what they called a "monkey-hug-therapist," an older monkey who constantly hugged and cuddled the stressed out baby monkeys. So what was going on? The hugging broke the feedback loop, sending the message 'No more steroids needed,' damage over and done with! The chronically elevated CRF levels came down."

This shows us very sweetly, the power of kind, physical touch. Personally, I believe that is one reason some people obtain even better EFT results when someone taps for them, because the physical contact is a stress reducer all by itself. It also reminds me of the bumper sticker that says, "Hugs, Not Drugs." We would probably all benefit from a little hug therapy.

This information seems to offer us several approaches to managing stress. One is to use EFT to neutralize the negative emotions that we are aware of by just tapping away at them one by one, so that they don't end up starting the negative chain reaction inside of our bodies. Another approach is to begin to use EFT to manage the way our bodies produce peptides, so they can work for us rather than against us.

Because I'm a fairly casual person, I have decided to have a very friendly and interactive conversation with my body. It sounds something like this:

"Hello Hypothalmus, It's Me! I am letting you know that I know what's going on, and I am going to take care of this. There is no need to keep producing this negative expectation peptide, we are not in any danger."

"I lovingly request that my body stop producing any harmful peptides, and I declare that all of my cells' receptors are now free and clear to receive positive peptides."

" I lovingly request that my body begin to produce an abundant supply of health producing peptides, and I declare that all of the cells in my body are receptive to receiving their benefit."

"Even though I have been feeling negative, I choose to have my body produce every natural substance that will bring my physical and emotional health into balance."

Since my husband and I have been consistently using this approach with EFT, we have both noted a very marked leveling off of negative emotions such as anger and worry. We have been delighted to note that while these set up statements seem rather global, they have taken a large bite out of previously frustrating negative reactions. Is EFT actually helping to modulate our bodies' own chemical compounds? That will be for science to discover, but based on the results we are getting, I would be willing to say yes. I trust that scientists around the world are discovering more each day about the mind-body-emotion connection and we will all benefit from a more holistic approach to good health.

We are so amazingly and wonderfully made, God has placed within each of us everything we need to be healthy and whole, if only we know how to cooperate with it. Truly, what we don't know can and will hurt us. Ignorance is not bliss, it's the doorway to personal destruction. Living in the information age is mind boggling. I know we have merely taken the first few steps into the lobby of this healing high rise, but we are stepping into it, and we will continue to go upward.

Joy To You!

Vicki Hughes Life Coach, EFT-ADV