chronic pain | Sofa King Next Level

Grooming

Imagine if you could trigger a powerful release of oxytocin in your body, along with other feel-good hormones like serotonin, without taking anything or inadvertently messing with your body chemistry or tolerance levels? Well read on, people!

As a kid, I used to periodically experience a feeling of tingling euphoria, which I aptly named “The Feeling”. The first time I strongly remember it happening, I was playing with our cleaning lady’s daughter Maria, and she was the dentist and I was the patient. Maria had a very gentle voice and a Portuguese accent, and as the dentist she made me lean back in a reclining chair as she poked at my mouth and inspected my teeth with a flashlight.

As far as games went, this one was deadly boring. And yet I wanted it to last forever! Why? Because it triggered “The Feeling”, which I can only describe as a tingling sensation along my scalp, down the back of my neck and into my shoulders, accompanied by very strong feelings of euphoria and calm relaxation.

Cut to twenty five years later when I was given Pitocin to help my labour along. Wow! I went from insanely painful labor cramps to totally relaxed euphoria. My husband wanted to go home to sleep for a while, and I was like, Sure! NBD! I’m just gonna lie here and enjoy this! I was unbelievably high with euphoric feelings, and my pain was gone.

Pitocin is a synthetic oxytocin, but where oxytocin is beneficial to newborns – Pitocin can actually be quite damaging. The natural birthing cocktail is a combo of hundreds of different factors, not just oxytocin – so pushing one, let alone a synthetic version, at the expense of all the others sets up an imbalance from the start.

WHAT IS OXYTOCIN

Oxytocin is a neuropeptide made of nine amino acids which acts as both a hormone and a neurotransmitter. Most oxytocin is produced in the hypothalamus and released by the posterior pituitary gland to create reactions throughout the body.

If you really like the feeling of oxytocin and Pitocin, it’s not hard to buy on the internet as sublingual drops or a nasal spray. But what would be the point? You would quickly build up a tolerance to it and soon it would be nearly impossible to get “The Feeling” at all. Plus coming down from pure Pitocin creates the opposite effects – feelings of isolation, loneliness, unworthiness etc. Total shame spiral.

But the internet has once again changed everything.

THIS IS A HALLELUJAH MOMENT

I’m here to tell you that I can trigger a totally natural release of oxytocin just by watching a certain type of YouTube video. This is freaking bananas. And since it works for me, it might work for you too.

These videos are tagged as “ASMR”, which is a recently made up term that stands for “Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response”. There are thousands of ASMRtists creating videos that average 20 minutes and consist mostly of gentle whispering, light tapping that rolls from ear to ear, hair brushing sounds, and then diversify into triggers as specific as folding towels and cutting hair.

Many of the videos simulate what I classify as Primate Grooming Triggers. These are simulated hair brushing, eye exams, various other white-coat procedures, shoulder massages and near-ear whispering. In primates, grooming is an incredibly successful behavior which promotes bonding within social groups. If you ever have a chance to experience “The Feeling”, a let-down of oxytocin, you will understand with so much greater clarity why and how these primate grooming sessions work.

White Cheek Gibbons grooming in Vietnam, photo from National Geographic. The male looks hella relaxed.

THE VIDEOS

Here is an example of one of the most viewed Primate Grooming trigger videos, by an ASMRtist who calls herself GentleWhispering: Watch this ASMR video first to see if any of these triggers work for you. (I will post these videos again at the bottom because you know how much I hate embedding links within the body of posts because embedding makes us all dumber! I made this exception because I’m weak.)

You need to wear headphones to really make this work, because there is something about the way sound travels from one ear and then around the head to the next ear that is a strong trigger. I think this ear-to-ear intake of sound closely simulates the way we would have processed sound while grooming back when we lived in trees. You don’t remember those days, but your cells still do and they like it.

If you watch that whole video and don’t get a definitive “feeling” of euphoria and tingling, then these triggers do not work for you. We are not looking for a general feeling of relaxation or calmness. This is something more dramatic, and you will just know it when it happens. You will also know it if it doesn’t happen.

But maybe you trigger to different things. For me, I trigger much more strongly to the sound of someone tapping gently on a piece of cardboard. How crazy is that??? Here is an example of another ASMRtist named Dimitri who really knows how to play a piece of white card: This particular video also has nice visualizations. And if you only want a quick 2-minute fix: this “layer cake” gets me every time.

Again, this video does not just relax me. I am talking about something different. I think I am a “strong responder” to oxytocin in that it feels like a total phase change when that peptide is emitted into my system. The feelings I get are so strong they are sometimes nauseatingly euphoric. You may not get as strong a reaction as me (until you find your own trigger), but for it to be defined as an ASMR event, it has to be more than just relaxing or calming.

HOW IS THIS LIKE MEDITATION

benefits I worked with a meditation coach for a couple years and I really owe her a lot for clarifying the responsibility I needed to take over my moods, thoughts and perceptions. Not all of us are lucky enough to learn those skills from our families or from school, despite the fact that they are critical to living with any presence at all.

My main takeaway from my meditation practice is that it’s not all about carving out some time to sit cross-legged. It’s also about turning every day moments into opportunities to become present. Long line at the bank? Rather than complain about it in your head or fantasize about your bucket list, why not still your mind and focus on your breathing? Look at the long line as a gift, a chance to practice a standing meditation and become fully present. Once you change your perspective this way, you can find opportunities to be grateful for all the most infuriating irritations in life.

However it’s hard to get to a deeper level of meditation without putting in the time to do some sitting. It takes practice, repetition and habit building to be able to release attachment to your thoughts. Finding this “sitting” time was always a challenge for me, and I assume for most meditators. One early hack I took advantage of was a device from HeartMath which connects your ear to your iPhone and gives you real-time feedback about whether you are “in the zone” or not. As you breathe in through your heart and create intentions to feel open and loving, the screen either glows green to show your heart and breath are in coherence, or it glows red to show they are in dissonance. By subtly letting go of attachments to outcomes and thoughts, your heart and breath can make the screen change to green. That’s some powerful feedback! (I will post a link to the device at the bottom).

People who meditate consistently literally change the physical shape of their brains: MRIs reveal a cortical thickening in the part of the brain that is associated with emotions and perception; also revealed is a minimizing of the physical part of the brain associated with worry, anxiety and depression. You actually build a different brain which interacts with your environment in a more positive way. In addition, meditation up regulates the immune system and reduces your chance of heart attack.

MEDITATING DEEPER

Even if you can get “in the green” with the HeartMath device and application for a solid hour, you will be achieving some remarkable health benefits but you still might not reach a truly euphoric state. At best you might reach a calm and tranquil disposition unless you have the dedication of a proper Zen monk. Deep meditators can open the sensory gating channels in their mind and see the world in a different way, also known as approaching enlightenment. However there are some shortcuts to opening those sensory gating channels, which is why sometimes people give up on meditation and turn to ayahuasca, ecstasy, LSD and hallucinogens.

ASMR IS NEXT LEVEL MEDITATION

Well I’m here to say I’ve found a middle ground between basic meditation and psychoactives. Watching an ASMR video with appropriate triggers for your particular disposition can take you to a place where you will get the health benefits of meditation, the “everything is connected” awareness of psychoactives, and a bonus of purely pleasurable physical sensations in your head, neck and shoulders (but not limited to those areas). This is oxytocin, baby!

BENEFITS OF OXYTOCIN

When I’m talking about the benefits of oxytocin, I really mean the benefits of the flood of wonderful chemicals that comes when you breastfeed, when you first fall in love, after you orgasm and when you watch an ASMR video with your unique triggers. This natural flood of chemicals cannot be limited to oxytocin, and at least also includes serotonin, but the comprehensive package is still not really understood. It is better to experience the “full flood” rather than pure Pitocin/oxytocin in the same way it is better to get your vitamins from food than from pills. The full flood of chemicals works together synergistically to create an enhanced experience, and also one that you have specifically evolved to benefit from.

But it sounds weird and complicated to describe it that way, so I am just going to shorthand this list as the Benefits of Oxytocin:

Facilitates mother-child bonding. Without it, all those crying and sleep-robbing newborns would probably be abandoned. Every positive interaction between mother and baby releases new oxytocin, which creates a physical association between the flood of good feelings and the relationship, and in turn fosters an association with general social behavior.
Facilitates father-child bonding. In the same way, fathers can be induced to release oxytocin through skin-to-skin contact with their babies, which creates the same physical feedback loop relationship.
Higher levels of oxytocin drives new oxytocin receptors in the brain, which confers greater ability to manage social stress and aggression. Conversely, abandoned infants have far fewer oxytocin receptors and are susceptible to stress, and prone to hostility and aggression. See: history of Russian orphanages.
Regulates all of our social interactions. People with more oxytocin receptors are better at making and keeping friends, and defusing conflicts.
Reacts with the opiod and dopamine systems in the brain. The release of these other positive-feeling chemicals is part of the synergistic flood experience. An increase of serotonin hormone drives a further release of oxytocin. This seems to create a virtuous loop of good feelings.
More oxytocin receptors in the amygdala still allow you to detect and process fear when applicable, but allow the fears to be mollified more quickly once the threat has passed or proved to be benign. A person with more receptors in this area will have better sleep, less phobias and less feelings of social isolation.
More oxytocin receptors in the ventromedial hypothalamus provides a stronger feeling of satiety after eating, and is associated with less issues of eating disorders and better regulation of body weight. It also facilitates better “play” in women due to enhanced feelings of security and safety, which translates to better sexual response.
More OT (oxytocin) receptors in the hippocamus increase memory and spatial orientation.
More OT receptors in the pineal gland better modulate production of melatonin for more pronounced sleep and wake cycles.
More OT receptors in the brain stem mean better regulation of the whole central nervous system, including cardiac and respiratory function, sleep cycles, and consciousness itself.
OT receptors are also found in the septum, spinal cord, the nucleus accumbens, the adrenal medulla, pancreas, kidneys, ovaries, uterus, testicles as well as other organs or parts of organs which lead to various other associated improved responses.
OT increases both sex drive and sexual arousal, and ability to climax.
OT increases trust, empathy and understanding within a group. However it can foster distrust of outsiders, which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective when outsiders were frequent marauders and rapists, as well as carriers of plagues and pestilence.
OT helps with microcirculation by stimulating the production of nitrous oxide, which vasodilates blood vessels. People without adequate OT levels tend to have cold hands and feet, as well as recurrent headaches.
OT decreases certain cytokines, which decreases inflammation and allows for speedier wound healing.
OT increases pain threshold. Applicable in people with chronic pain or who are going into labor or other procedures.
OT stimulates osteoblasts which build bone, and inhibits the osteoclasts which break down bone. People with low OT receptors develop osteoporosis.
There is a link between OT and glucose metabolism that could contribute to Type 1 Diabetes and the impaired glucose metabolism on the spectrum of metabolic disorders.
There is a link between OT and regulation of cell proliferation. In breast cancer patients, OT helped inhibit estrogen-induced tumor growth.
High levels of OT are associated with mental clarity, concentration and memory. Low levels contribute to a feeling of “brain fog”.

TAKE AWAY

While the natural and evolutionarily preferred methods of increasing oxytocin are ideal, they are not always practical anymore. You can’t breastfeed forever. You can’t fall deeply and madly in love with a new person every month. It’s too expensive to get your hair blown out by a whispering empath every day. You probably have to go to work instead of hosting drum circles and holding hands with friends all day long. So we have lost a lot of our opportunities to create oxytocin release due to the modern way we have organized our society.

Like I said before, supplementing with synthetic or even bioidentical oxytocin is only going to lead to tolerance and addiction – until it no longer does anything for you at all. You will desensitize your oxytocin receptors to boot, which will leave you with the opposite effect than intended. Such is the tyranny of pharmaceutical intervention!

If you can find a couple ASMR videos or audio tracks that actually work for you, then you will always have a natural way to stimulate oxytocin release in your body, which will lead to increased production of oxytocin receptors, which will lead to greater mental and health benefits.

Having said that, I’m not sure that it is a great idea to watch or listen to Tingle Porn all the time. In order to maintain a strong reaction, you may need to keep the novelty alive a little bit. I would consider saving these videos for times of stress, insomnia, grieving, anxiety and disease. That is my recommendation for a healthy person, anyway.

Having said that, if you are suffering from a chronic condition, by all means consider this a form of therapy and work towards increasing your oxytocin receptors. You may have to cycle videos, but fortunately there are many ASMRtists creating new ones all the time – and often they will take suggestions and create experiences based on your own personal triggers.

I know this just got weird, but you will totally thank me once on-demand access to The Feeling changes your whole quality of life forever.

HERE’S WHY “LDN” IS DIFFERENT

Rather than suppressing the immune system, Low Dose Naltrexone works on another level “upstream” in the healing cascade and appears to regulate the immune system. Some of the doctors (Dr. Ian Zagan et al) who are developing LDN for autoimmune issues claim that it is immunosuppressive, but while this is technically true – LDN is actually concurrently immunostimulating. It seems to be able to curb inappropriate immune responses while simultaneously increasing immune function. In other words, it helps auto-immune diseases without compromising the patient’s immune system. So it’s basically a miracle. People who take LDN only get sick very rarely, if at all, and do not suffer from prolonged infections the way they would if taking proper immunosuppressant drugs.

FIRST, WHAT IS NALTREXONE? SOUNDS INTENSE

Naltrexone is a drug that was first synthesized in the 1960s in America, and determined as an opiate agonist, meaning it could block opiates so that the subject taking naltrexone would not feel the effects of opium and heroin. There was little market value for naltrexone, however the US Governement stepped in and paid for extensive clinical trials hoping it could be used to cure heroin addiction and other drug ills of society. Naltrexone was determined to be completely safe, to have no negative side effects, and to be useful even during pregnancy and breastfeeding – which is very rare for any drug. By the time the trials were completed, the drug was already off patent – though the government extended the patent to DuPont for another seven years. In the ’80s, DuPont started marketing naltrexone as a treatment for alcoholism as it causes drinkers to feel none of the pleasant effects of alcohol yet all of the unpleasant effects. As you can imagine, the biggest issue was patient compliance. Naltrexone never really took off as a treatment for anything, and as of now is off patent, of little value to manufacturers and available pretty freely on the internet without a prescription (!).

One of the main things naltrexone does is bind with Opioid Growth Factor Receptors (OGFr), which are on every cell in the body, and blocks them so that Opioid Growth Factor (OGF) molecules cannot bind to them. When OGF binds with OGFr, cell growth and division is regulated. When OGFr’s are blocked, the cells respond in three ways: by spontaneously creating new OGFr’s on the surface of every cell, by making those new OGFr’s more sensitive, and by increasing the amount of Opioid Growth Factor released in the body. The terms are often used interchangeably, but when I am talking here about “opioids” I mean the natural endorphins created by the body; when I talk about opiates I am using a blanket term for the various natural and synthetic external drugs that act on the central nervous system like morphine, codeine, heroin, oxycodone, alcohol and even sugar and dairy.

In normal naltrexone therapy (full dose), the patient doesn’t get to benefit from the increased amount of more sensitive OGF receptors nor the surplus of circulating OGF caused by the naltrexone because the patient takes another dose and all the OGF receptors, including the new ones, continue to be blocked. And in fact if the patient has other problems, like AIDs or cancer, those problems will get worse. So it was determined by Dr. Bernard Bihari in the 1980s that OGF and OGFr play a tremendous role in healing, and that by blocking them healing is grossly impaired.

HERE’S HOW THE “LOW DOSE” WORKS INSTEAD

A regular dose of naltrexone is between 50mg and 200mg per day. A “low dose”, however, is between 1mg – 5mg per day – much less than 10%. It is available online at 4.5mg compounded doses, which is usually where people start when they are experimenting on their own because they can’t get their doctor to take an interest in it and prescribe it for them.

When you take a “low dose” of 4.5mg, the suggestion is to take it at 10pm. By 2am, the dose is fully working and manages to block your OGF receptors for about two hours, until 4am. What happens during these two sleeping hours is that the body panics and makes more OGF, more OGF receptors and makes these new receptors more sensitive. However when the drug wears off at 4am, you are left with the benefit of all these extra sensitive receptors and a surplus of OGF. You experience a rebound effect which supercharges healing.

It isn’t all about the OGF and OGFr. There are many other endorphins which are blocked and then subsequently rebound to become more effective. Some of them have been studied. Some are still unknown. A pubmed search for LDN comes up with some fifty-four thousand hits on its efficacy for fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease etc. It is also being used in at least three different fertility clinics around the world, which suggests it is not only safe for pregnancy but also effective for women trying to get pregnant.

SOME TIPS

If you are going to bother to try this out, you might as well go for the best experience. As LDN is an opiate agonist, it works best when there aren’t any opiates in your system! It may be easy enough for you to avoid heroin and oxycodone, but it is more difficult to avoid everyday minor opiates like sugar, dairy and any excess of carbohydrates. If you are going to go out and drink alcohol one night, skip the LDN at bedtime and start again the next night. (If you drink alcohol on a full dose of naltrexone, it can actually make you really sick).

If you want to try this because you have auto-immune disease, you should know that people don’t have the best response when they continue to take their immunosuppressant drugs at the same time. It has been described as trying to drive (taking LDN) with the brakes on (immunosuppressant drugs). However that’s a pretty big decision that you shouldn’t make impulsively just from reading a blog post.

WARNINGS

This isn’t just some natural herb that has always been around and tested by thousands of years of civilization. Natrexone is a synthesized drug – serious business. Even though LDN is in an incredibly small dose, it still makes meaningful changes to your body. Fortunately, just about all of the meaningful changes are positive. However there remains one common side effect:

The side effect is that in the first three to seven days, people who take LDN at night tend to experience vivid dreams that seem to last forever, and sometimes experience nightmares. After a week at most, the body becomes conditioned and the potential for bad dreams is gone.

That is the only negative side effect.

A positive side effect is that people tend to sleep more restfully, their auto immune disease stops progressing or regresses, their chronic pain is lessened, etc. This is being used to reverse both AIDs and cancer, and the doctors doing these trials not only take LDN themselves as a preventative, but have their spouses take LDN as preventatives. It seems to have powerful inhibitory effects on tumor cell proliferation.

MY STORY

I don’t have any auto immune diseases, though I continue to be very interested in them. However I have some special friends who I thought could benefit from Low Dose Naltrexone. I gave them some reading, which they brought along to their doctors. But since their doctors had never heard of it, they all thought it was dangerous and wouldn’t read about it. So I found a way to order LDN online without a prescription, and then proceeded to “test” the product to see if the lack of side effects story was true. I am generally very healthy and thought I would be able to notice anything negative fairly quickly.

In my first three nights taking 4.5mg of LDN, I experienced extremely vivid dreams which momentarily turned dark. These dreams felt like they were days and days long. Having been an insomniac my entire life, and having tried every sedative and sleeping pill on the market, I was very surprised that within half an hour of taking LDN I felt pleasantly tired and fell asleep. Although I normally wake up a couple times during the night, sometimes for hours, instead I slept through until the morning. The vivid dreams remained for three nights and then stopped. However I continued to have an easy time falling asleep and staying asleep. My entire quality of life has changed for the better.

Usually sleeping pills (such as Trazadone, Atavan, Seconal, Neo Citran, NyQuil etc) would give me a feeling of intense physical drowsiness that would drug me to sleep but not help me stay asleep; also the effect would wear off after a week unless the dose was raised. This was never a good solution for me, so I stuck with natural remedies like intermittent melatonin, valerian, magnesium, meditation and elaborate bedtime rituals. But mostly I had just come to accept that I was never going to have an easy time falling asleep and getting the rest I needed.

There is no literature linking LDN with curing insomnia. In fact, most patients report the opposite effect – that LDN initially gives them vivid dreams and restless nights. However for some reason this has worked for me, and I am deeply grateful for the sleep that now forms a regular part of my life.

MY RAT FRIENDS

My one friend who tried LDN to deal with chronic pain went from taking 6 Aleve pain pills a day to taking none. However she found the 4.5mg/day dose made her sleep too much, so she reduced her dose to 3mg yet has maintained the same reduction in chronic pain.

My other friend with auto immune disease could not risk stopping her immunosuppressant prescriptions so tried LDN at the same time. She did not have any noticeable benefit except good quality sleep; if anything, she experienced some of the worst flare ups she had ever had, requiring her to increase her doses of immunosuppressants. Putting the car in drive while the parking brake was on didn’t work for her.

BUT IS IT REALLY SAFE?

I started going to a fancy private doctor so that I could get every blood test ordered and every hormone level checked. I wanted to be able to say without a doubt that eating LCHF (Low Carbohydrate High Fat) and doing all my weird things isn’t just making me “feel” healthier, but is actually making me healthier. So I came clean to my new doctor about taking LDN without a prescription. She was not excited, and urged me to stop taking it, and offered me some good alternatives for sleep aids (holy basil tea etc)…

However three months later, my doctor got back to me after having done her own research on LDN. She said not only did she think it was extremely safe, and probably a great prophylactic against cancer and the diseases of aging, but that she would write me a prescription herself.

I have settled on a dose of 3mg/night at 10pm. When I travel, I take it at 10pm in whatever time zone I am in. I skip it whenever I drink more than a single glass of wine.

NOW GO DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH

Fortunately there is a lot of research available on Low Dose Naltrexone. Right now (July 2014) there are dozens and dozens of clinical trials taking place for myriad auto immune diseases, AIDs, cancer etc. There is a non-profit website devoted to organizing resources for LDN. There are thousands of users online sharing their stories of successes and failures. And there is a small window where LDN is still under the radar and so loosely monitored that you can order it for yourself without too much fuss.

WHY DID I CALL THIS A “NON-PHARMA” PHARMACEUTICAL?

LDN is a “People’s Medicine” because it is extremely safe, non-toxic, inexpensive, off-patent, easy to get, and incredibly effective. This is a “non-pharma” pharmaceutical because there is barely any profit to be made off of it. A single 50mg generic naltrexone pill can be bought off the internet for less than $6. Dissolved in 50ml of distilled water, a regular person can use a calibrated medicine dropper to administer 3ml at a time for less than $0.40/dose. If LDN cures your cancer, it’s a great bargain. If it doesn’t, you only risked $135 for a year’s supply.

Sofa King Next Level

Taking things to the next level. From my sofa

Tag Archives: chronic pain

The Feeling: Oxytocin Tingle Porn