Emerge Natural Health Provides Treatment for PTSD

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event like a natural disaster, serious accident, terrorist act, combat, rape or other violent assault. PTSD affects approximately 3.5 percent of U.S. adults, and an estimated 1 in 11 people will be diagnosed with PTSD in their lifetime with women twice as likely as men to receive a PTSD diagnosis.

Requirements for diagnosis of PTSD include:

  • Experience of a traumatic event
  • Ongoing, intense and disturbing thoughts and feelings about that event long after it happened

Symptoms of PTSD:

  • Intrusive thoughts, involuntary memories, distressing dreams, flashbacks of the traumatic event.
  • Avoiding reminders. Avoiding people, places, activities and situations that trigger distressing memories.
  • Negative thoughts and feelings, ongoing fear, horror, guilt or shame.
  • Irritability and having angry outbursts, behaving recklessly, being self-destructive.
  • Exaggerated startle response, chronic stress response, poor sleep, memory problems.
  • Digestive issues, elevated blood pressure, excessive sweating, fatigue.

Stress affects the autonomic nervous system and PTSD causes a frequent, elevated and/or prolonged stress response. An elevated stress response results in stimulation of the fight/flight/freeze part of the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system.