Ellie wrote: > Thoughts, whether cerbral or instinctive, are transmitted as nerve > impulses and follow the same physiological laws. Cerebral thinking and > instincitve thinking are patterns of nerve impulses in different parts of the nervous system. When the neurons are clogged up with toxins, nerve > impulses get diverted and thinking, whether cerebral or instinctive > becomes distorted, even delusional. The consequence is ill health, mental and physical. Mental and physical are the same IMO. Recovery is a detox process. To add to my comments, I find mental, physical and spiritual to be one and the same. This is my personal belief, not a scientific finding. I'm not religious, but might be called a pantheist. To a large extent, I think my recovery from major health problems, including mental illness, addictions, learning disability, pancreas and liver disease, a lung tumor, and more, has been accelerated by doing the work of releasing old toxic emotions, especially anger, which has been stored as toxic, mostly endogenous, biochemicals in the neurons of my brain. My neurons have been clogged up most of my life, and unable to keep me healthy mentally and physically. The effect of these toxins on the sympathetic nervous system, and hence on diseases of the peripheral organs is well established. In order to recover, I have had to learn to direct old anger, now rage, at its source--not necessarily in person. I have learned to do this rather than directing it at myself--in the form of addictions, for example- -or toward others. I learned this in therapy designed for this purpose. I did not need much therapy and now continue to do it with the help of friends who act as witnesses. No matter how good my diet, it would not be enough to bring me recovery without this effort. The diet helps the emotional recovery and the emotional recovery allows me to taste and smell better and recover from food addictions. Physiologically the body is trying to do this detoxing periodically without my help, but it is up to me to redirect the anger through the right neurons. Neurons do not replace themselves, as do other cells which autolyse--and new cells are formed. Neurons do repair themselves by the same process of breaking lysosomes, which allows enzymes to digest parts of the neuron, which are then repaired. In this process the neurons release stored up toxins. These toxins, when released, overstimulate the nervous system and cause excitatory symptoms, ranging from mild anxiety all the way to murderous rage. I sometimes call the Toxic Mind Theory the Wrong Neuron Theory. It is not one neuron, but many that are involved. Memories are laid down as patterns in many neurons. If I was justifiably angry at my mother as a child, but had to suppress those feelings, sooner or later the neurons will discharge the toxic anger, but probably through the wrong neurons because many of the neurons that lead to memories of my mother are clogged up, and the anger gets diverted to perhaps my sister or some other woman instead. When I think of O.J. killing his wife--if he did--I wonder who he really wanted to kill. Wrong Neurons getting detoxed, I suspect. This disease is a matter of degree. Civilization had caused all of us to learn to suppress emotions to some extent. We have lost our instinctive fight or flight reaction. Mental health is not the lack of emotion, but the capacity to respond to a threat with healthy emotions, especially anger. Anger is not the sin, but rage is. The Old Testament word for sin, hamartia, is an archery term and means literally "missing the mark." If any of you have ever had a touch of anxiety or can admit to getting angry at the wrong person, you might consider the need for recovery from a toxic mind. I don't think I am in trouble with my future publisher for releasing this theory on the Net, since I am not identifying the toxins, which I do in my paper. Even Shelton, who suppressed his own emotions and ended up with Parkinson's disease, knew that toxicosis was the source of mental ills. My best, Ellie