Fix your Brain in Three Easy Steps

This is the title of my next book – maybe. It is the working title. The human brain can go in many ways. The cleverness of Western medicine is partly in its method of categorising problems; wrong development, wrong programming, injury, infection, poisoning, deficiency or lack of essential components, and finally degeneration and disuse.

There are three easy steps to fixing things:

1 – Understand the system
2 – Find and understand the problem
3 – Fix the problem

The quality of  your repair depends upon how well you can:

1 – Understand the system
2 – Find and understand the problem
3 –  Fix the problem

1 – Understand the system

Is it possible that after ‘Decades of the Brain’ and trillions of dollars of research we are still missing some basic tricks about how the brain works?

YES!

First, let me reassure you that this is not a half cocked New Age theory of Quantum Meditation but a return to basic principles of medical science and fundamental knowledge of how the body functions. It is very easy to go off on a tangent and become diverted by what is possible rather than what is true. Neurosciences look like the proverbial drunk looking for his keys under a lamppost where the light is, rather than where he dropped them.

lSecond, I trained for eight years as a neurosurgeon, at the Atkinson Morley Hospital, Queen Square, Western General in Edinburgh. I presented research studies at international meetings from the age of 24, and by the age of 28 had more first name research papers than any one else in my cohort – close to 30, some of which are still cited. I was described by an Edinburgh Professor as the brightest young thing in Neurosurgery this decade. However all that was more than thirty years ago and for a number of personal reasons, I trashed my life in my 30s and 40s.

Third, since my time as a neurosurgeon, I have worked in trauma surgery, spent fifteen years in General Practice and qualified as a psychologist. I have more initials after my name than in it (MB BS, AKC, FRCS, MRCGP, Dip Occ Med, BA, MSc, MBPsS) and worked in most areas of medicine. Ten years ago I wrote a book, published by MacMillan, MoodMapping by Dr Liz Miller, which describes my experience in the realms of mental health

Thus although my claims may seem far fetched, they are not impossible. They are based partly on my experience as a Neurosurgeon .This was at a time neurosurgical operations were often open, bloody affairs, with mortality in double figures as opposed to the net radiological aolutions, alternatives, inserted coils and stents, with mortality often in double figures and post-operative disability common. In addition, I have trained as a psychologist, continue to study the neurosciences and worked with a wider range of brain problems, including disabled children, developmental disorders and mental health. This has given me a broad, perhaps unique, perspective of brain function.

What holds true in one area of function has to be true in all areas of function, otherwise it isn’t true. There are no visible glitches in our Matrix. I had at the age of 29 to give up a glittering career in neurosurgery and settle for gentler backwaters. This has given me plenty of time to consider the assumptions of medicine and its associated sciences.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” It’s simply elementary, my dear reader.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, born 22 May, 1859.