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July, 2010 - VOL. 16, NO. 4 | |
July, 2010 |
| Coherence: Bridging Personal, Social, and Global Health |
| Rollin McCraty, PhD |
| All nature is a continuum. The endless complexity of life is organized into patterns which repeat themselves—theme and variations—at each level of system. These similarities and differences are proper concerns for science. From the ceaseless streaming of protoplasm to the many-vectored activities of supranational systems, there are continuous flows through living systems as they maintain their highly organized steady states. Even more basic to this presentation than the concept of “system” are the concepts of “space,” “time,” “matter,” “energy,” and “information,” because the living systems exist in space and are made of matter and energy organized by information.
— James Grier Miller, Living Systems, 1978
Of the many new scientific perspectives that emerged from the twentieth century, one of the most profound is that the universe is wholly and enduringly interconnected and coherent.1-3 Complex living systems, including human beings, are composed of numerous dynamic, interconnected networks of biological structures and processes. Coherence implies order, structure, harmony, and alignment within and amongst systems—whether in atoms, organisms, social groups, planets, or galaxies. Thus, every whole has a relationship with and is a part of a greater whole, which is again part of something greater. In this context, nothing can be considered as separate, alone, or lacking relationships. One of the more surprising findings that have emerged from physics is quantum coherence, which has given rise to the prediction of non-locality and instantaneous communication between subatomic particles separated by vast distances.1
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July, 2010 - VOL. 16, NO. 4 | |
July, 2010 |
| Coherence and Health Care Cost—RCA Actuarial Study: A Cost-effectiveness Cohort Study |
| Woody Bedell; Marietta Kaszkin-Bettag, PhD |
| Chronic stress is among the most costly health problems in terms of direct health costs, absenteeism, disability, and performance standards. The Reformed Church in America (RCA) identified stress among its clergy as a major cause of higher than average health claims and implemented HeartMath (HM) to help its participants manage stress and increase physiological resilience. The 6-week HM program, Revitalize You!, was selected for the intervention including the emWave Personal Stress Reliever technology.
From 2006 to 2007, completion of a health risk assessment (HRA) provided eligible clergy with the opportunity to participate in the HM program or a lifestyle management program (LSM) . Outcomes for that year were assessed with the Stress and Well-being Survey. Of 313 participants who completed the survey, 149 completed the Revitalize You! Program, and 164 completed the LSM. Well-being, stress management, resilience, and emotional vitality were significantly improved in the HM group as compared to the LSM group.
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July, 2010 - VOL. 16, NO. 4 | |
July, 2010 |
| Coherence Training In Children With Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Cognitive Functions and Behavioral Changes |
| David Brett, BSc; Anthony Lloyd, PhD; Keith Wesnes, PhD |
| Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most prevalent behavioral diagnosis in children, with an estimated 500 000 children affected in the United Kingdom alone. The need for an appropriate and effective intervention for children with ADHD is a growing concern for educators and childcare agencies. This randomized controlled clinical trial evaluated the impact of the HeartMath self-regulation skills and coherence training program (Institute of HeartMath, Boulder Creek, California) on a population of 38 children with ADHD in academic year groups 6, 7, and 8. Learning of the skills was supported with heart rhythm coherence monitoring and feedback technology designed to facilitate self-induced shifts in cardiac coherence. The cognitive drug research system was used to assess cognitive functioning as the primary outcome measure. Secondary outcome measures assessed teacher and student reposted changes in behavior. Participants demonstrated significant improvements in various aspects of cognitive functioning such as delayed word recall, immediate word recall, word recognition, and episodic secondary memory. Significant improvements in behavior were also found. The results suggest that the intervention offers a physiologically based program to improve cognitive functioning in children with ADHD and improve behaviors that is appropriate to implement in a school environment. |
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July, 2010 - VOL. 16, NO. 4 | |
July, 2010 |
| The Heart of Grinnell: A Community-wide Rural Health Wellness Initiative: A Pilot Observational Study and a Prospective Study Design |
| Cory Jackson, MA; Todd C. Linden, MA, FACHE; Laura Nelson Lof; Sheryl Rutledge, MS, CHES, RCEP |
| In 2007, the leadership team at Grinnell Regional Medical Center participated in a pilot project with the Institute of HeartMath (IHM) to assess the stress level of individual team members and its effect on the organization.
At the beginning of the project, the leadership team completed a Personal and Organizational Quality Assessment (POQA-R). Results showed that a high percentage of the participants were experiencing fatigue, anxiety, difficulty sleeping, and depression.
The leadership team participated in a Transforming Stress workshop and began using IHM techniques to deal with the stresses in their personal and professional lives. A 1-month follow up revealed improvement in six of the 10 categories assessed: fatigue, anxiety, depression, anger management, resentfulness, and stress symptoms.
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July, 2010 - VOL. 16, NO. 4 | |
July, 2010 |
| Cardiac Coherence and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Combat Veterans |
| Melanie E. Berry, MS; Jay P. Ginsberg, PhD; Donald A. Powell, PhD |
| Background: The need for treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among combat veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq is a growing concern. PTSD has been associated with reduced cardiac coherence (an indicator of heart rate variability) and deficits in early stage information processing (attention and immediate memory) in different studies. However, the co-occurrence of reduced coherence and cognition in combat veterans with PTSD has not been studied before.
Primary Study Objective: A pilot study was undertaken to assess the covariance of coherence and information processing in combat veterans. An additional study goal was assessment of effects of heart rate variability biofeedback (HRVB) on coherence and information processing in these veterans.
Methods/Design: A two-group (combat veterans with and without PTSD), pre-post study of coherence and information processing was employed, with baseline psychometric covariates.
Setting: The study was conducted at a VA Medical Center outpatient mental health clinic.
Participants: Five combat veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan with PTSD and five active-duty soldiers with comparable combat exposure who were without PTSD.
Intervention: Participants met with an HRVB professional once weekly for 4 weeks and received visual feedback in HRV patterns while receiving training in resonance frequency breathing and positive emotion induction.
Primary Outcome Measures: Cardiac coherence, word list learning, commissions (false alarms) in go–no go reaction time, digits backward.
Results: Cardiac coherence was achieved in all participants, and the increase in coherence ratio was significant post-HRVB training. Significant improvements in the information processing indicators were achieved. Degree of increase in coherence was the likely mediator of cognitive improvement.
Conclusion: Cardiac coherence is an index of strength of control of parasympathetic cardiac deceleration in an individual that has cardinal importance for the individual’s attention and affect regulation.
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July, 2010 - VOL. 16, NO. 4 | |
July, 2010 |
| Needed: A Coherent Architecture for 21st-century Clinical Practice and Medical Education |
| David S. Jones, MD |
| Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…
—William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
We need to build a new foundation for 21st-century medicine. The architecture for 20th-century organ-system medicine was not designed to accommodate both the robustness of traditional medical principles and wisdom and the riches that have poured from the biomolecular sciences in the last half-century. The 21st century heralds the entrance into the life sciences of the systems-biology model that has been evolving rapidly over the last 20 years,1 compelling us to address the notion of pervasive networks that link the mechanisms of both health and disease: everything is connected to everything, in a coherent wholeness.* If we look and listen, we can perceive everywhere a continuous dynamic dance in which the various elements never stand still or exist in solitude.2-4 The search for one-gene–one-disease answers has given way to concepts of gene networks and bidirectional epigenetic vectors that sum to phenotypic expressions of health and disease. The answer to the quantum mechanics EPR Paradox5 (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen, 1935) has arrived: there is experimental proof6,7 that the unfathomable uncertainty of the behavior of electrons is real (God apparently does play dice),8 and uncertainty and quantum phenomena are now foundational concepts that must be accommodated in our scientific and medical principles and practices.7,9,10(pp51-52)
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July, 2010 - VOL. 16, NO. 4 | |
July, 2010 |
| Is Electrophysiological Coherence-based Wellness Coherent? |
| Robert R. Ireland, MD, DMin, MA |
| Coherence-based personal training regimens are emerging in the wellness industry to improve health (lowering blood pressure), neurocognitive performance (attention and reaction time), and mood (stress relief). Unlike psychotherapy that focuses on mood and behavioral problems resulting from outdated personal constructs and schemas (incoherence), the emerging coherence training programs focus on self-regulation and use biofeedback measuring entrainment of cardio-respiratory cycles associated with heart rate variability (HRV). Interestingly, some advocates of this form of biofeedback training recommend techniques that appear to cross boundaries of rational science—such as teaching trainees to activate heartfelt feelings such as love and appreciation in their heart area in order to achieve a higher level of entrainment. The aim of this process is to achieve “psychophysiological” coherence.
HRV spectral data represent contributions of autonomic nervous and neuroendocrine systems on HRV. Low age-adjusted HRV is an established predictor of cardiac death post–myocardial infarction and is predictive of all-cause mortality. Very low-frequency HRV reflects activity in intrinsic cardiovascular feedback loops that are stimulated by efferent sympathetic activity and hormonal factors such as the renin-angiotensin system inputs; low-frequency HRV reflects the contributions of the baro-reflex system, which is involved in short-term blood pressure regulation; and high-frequency HRV reflects parasympathetic inputs as well as variability due to respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) characterized by heart rate increases with inspiration and decreases with expiration optimizing blood flow at maximum alveolar ventilation.
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July, 2010 - VOL. 16, NO. 4 | |
July, 2010 |
| Translational Health and Wellness |
| Paula J. Nenn, MD; Eugene Vaisberg |
| The need for a new health paradigm is irrefutable and well documented. The ever increasing number of complex chronic diseases that cannot be managed by the “pill for an ill” model of traditional health care has necessitated a medical paradigm that deals with the underlying causes of complex chronic diseases instead of the symptoms they manifest. A systems biology approach to medicine adopts the abundant scientific evidence that the human body operates through a web of interconnected systems, not as individual organs or organ systems working alone and independent of one another. Consider life as a tree, where the branches represent different organs and their corresponding specialties of medicine (eg, cardiology, pulmonology, psychiatry). These branches and specialties operate largely independent of one other in the current medical model, yet all of the branches are joined together at the trunk of the tree. Functional medicine addresses the state of the “trunk,” recognizing that there are core, unifying imbalances that are common to many chronic diseases, such as inflammation (Figure).1 |
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July, 2010 - VOL. 16, NO. 4 | |
July, 2010 |
| Mae-Wan Ho, PhD: Pursuing the Science of Global Coherence |
| Rollin McCraty, PhD; David Riley, MD; Suzanne Snyder |
| Mae-Wan Ho, PhD, is best known for her pioneering work on the physics of organisms and sustainable systems; she is also a critic of genetic engineering biotechnology and neo-Darwinism. She is director and cofounder of the Institute of Science in Society (www.i-sis.org.uk) and editor-in-chief and art director of its trend-setting quarterly magazine Science in Society.
She has authored or coauthored more than 170 scientific publications, more than 500 popular articles, and more than a dozen books, including The Rainbow and the Worm: The Physics of Organisms (3rd ed, 2008); Genetic Engineering: Dream or Nightmare? (reprint with extended introduction, 2007); Food Futures Now (2008); and Green Energies, 100% Renewables by 2050 (2009).
Editor’s note: This interview was conducted by David Riley, MD, editor in chief of Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine (ATHM); Rollin McCraty, MD, director of research at the Institute of HeartMath, Boulder Creek, California; and Suzanne Snyder, managing editor of ATHM.
ATHM (Ms Snyder): Please tell us a little bit about your background and schooling.
Dr Ho: I was born in Hong Kong. I started school in Chinese and then transferred to an Italian convent school, basically an English school for girls, run by Italian nuns. I got exposed to Western ideas late-ish in life, probably when I was about 10 or 11 years old. I was lucky because I was quite good in school, and the nuns let me do whatever I liked. I didn’t have to listen to them if I didn’t want to. So I escaped the worst of reductionist Western education because all these ideas that didn’t fit just rolled off my back. I guess that explains why I’m always at odds with whatever the conventional theory is in every field that I go into.
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July, 2010 - VOL. 16, NO. 4 | |
July, 2010 |
| Achieving Collective Coherence: Group Effects on Heart Rate Variability Coherence and Heart Rhythm Synchronization |
| Steven M. Morris, PhD |
| Objectives: This study examined whether a group of participants trained in achieving high states of heart rate variability coherence (HRVC) could facilitate higher levels of HRVC in an untrained subject in close proximity.
Design: Fifteen adult volunteers were trained to increase their HRVC. In a series of 148 10-minute trials using six different experimental protocols, three of the trained participants were placed together with one of twenty-five additional volunteers to test whether the three could collectively facilitate higher levels of HRVC in the fourth.
Results: The HRVC of the untrained subject was found to be higher in approximately half of all matched comparisons; and was highest in cases where all four participants focused on achieving increased HRVC. A probit analysis revealed a statistical relationship between participant’s comfort with each other and trial success. Greater levels of inter-group comfort were seen to be positively linked to increases in HRVC. Evidence of heart rhythm synchronization between group members was revealed through several methods, including: correlation analysis, coherence analysis, wavelet coherence analysis, and Granger causality tests. Higher levels of HRVC were found to be correlated with higher levels of heart rate synchronization between participants.
Conclusions: These results suggest that a coherent energy field can be generated, and/or enhanced by the intentions of small groups of participants trained to send coherence-facilitating intentions to a target receiver. This field is made more coherent with greater levels of comfort between group members. The evidence of heart rhythm synchronization across participants supports the possibility of heart-to-heart bio-communications.
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