Psychological Stress and Mitochondria: A Systematic Review Picard, Martin PhD; McEwen, Bruce S. PhD

Mitochondria are apparently now part of the psychosomatic construct!

https://journals.lww.com/psychosoma...chological_Stress_and_Mitochondria___A.3.aspx

Thanks to Amanda on Facebook for finding this.

 

PMS - another acronym to add to the growing list to struggle with. PsychoMitoSomo - in a sing-song style. Yes, that's how I'll remember it

I can't claim to have read the whole thing, or understood some of what I did read, but the paragraphs describing the inherent limitations of the animal studies which they say need to be addressed in the future were interesting.

"The studies using prolonged stressors (e.g., restraint for >8 hours) do not always specify whether such duration prevented normal feeding/drinking, which could either counteract or further exaggerate some effects of stress on mitochondrial functions. e) Restraint stress paradigms commonly used could be construed as a “physical” stressor, and consequently, the mitochondrial changes reported may reflect physical rather than psychological stress."

ETA. This sounds like useless cruelty to me

 

Do they even hear themselves?

 

Excellent, a meta analysis, the perfect way to squeeze the truth from data
It may be correct but its probably more accurate to say prolonged stress hormones and chemicals cause negative externalities in the body (as if thats a revelation).

 

I can already see how studies where animals are restrained will be used to "explain" mitochondrial abnormalities in humans.

I'm also not sure about categorizing chronic restraint as psychological stress.

 

That is what it is.

I cannot se what it can have to do with human illness.

 

They literally are proposing that psychological stress may mutate the mitochondrial DNA:

No humans involved in these studies, which also makes their relevance far less likely:

Changes in DNA were not outcomes in any studies:

Most of the stressors included a substantial physical factor:

How the mitochondria were assessed:

Table 1 lists the results of various studies, and it's pretty suggestive of false positive results - sometimes there's increased respiration in response to stress, sometimes it's decreased. Sometimes mitochondrial size increases, sometimes it decreases, and sometimes it stays the same. Sometimes respiratory chain activity increases, sometimes it decreases. Sometimes the results on the some measurement in the same study are only different based on subgrouping, which is usually the result of post-hoc cherry picking.

Table 2 lists associations between various mitochondrial-related measurements and mood disorders or history of abuse, in 6 studies involving humans. Results are a bit mixed again, and the more obvious explanation is that mitochondrial dysfunction causes the symptoms of mood disorders in those patients, combined with retrospective recall bias regarding childhood trauma (who also had increased inflammation). I find it amusing that they have flipped the usual cause and effect (genes cause disease) to call that "reverse causation" in ceding it might be a possibility:

They refer to autism as a "psychopathology," which seems a good indication that they have been living in a cave and will continue to do so until it collapses on them:

My overall impression is that not only can we use the powers of our minds to grow hand-claws, we can also alter our genomes through sheer force of will and pass on those hand-claws to the next generation I'd be shocked that this study ever got published, but it's a psychosomatic journal and scientific standards are likely completely irrelevant

 

Animal studies are almost always useless if studying humans. They are also cruel. They usually involve killing the animals afterwards.

 

I wonder if David Marks would be interested in this?

And I appreciate not everyone would have the same visceral reaction depending on their sensibilities... but the 'restraint' stressors on animals sounded horrific. ("The stressors most frequently used was chronic restraint stress (e.g., 21 consecutive days of physical restraint, 2 hours per day; 38%), followed by chronic unpredictable stress (e.g., 40 consecutive days with alternating novel environmental exposures on each day; 33%) and acute restraint stress (e.g., a single bout of physical restraint lasting 30–120 minutes; 21%).")

 

Get about these BPS foks don't they.

 

Until none is left.

Presumably restraint itself can provoke physical responses? e.g. Trying to break free; moving to and fro as captive animals often do it they have enough room for that; etc.

 

Indeed.
Meta analyses are not inherently flawed but they are only as good as the studies used for them of course

 

Thank you, @Valentijn, for your great analysis on this topic! Very helpful.

 

I'm worried about a chinese whispers effect where the original message is distorted:

"Restrained or mistreated mice show alterations in mitochondrial function" becomes "psychological stress affects mitochondrial function", which becomes "abnormal mitochondrial function is also psychological", which becomes "we don't need to study or treat abnormal mitochondrial function because we know it's psychological", which becomes "CBT is a miracle treatment that can fix your mitochondria".

 

If only they used this power for good instead of evil

 

This is the same dangerous point of view that got Justina Pelletier, who suffers from mitochondrial disease, medically kidnapped by Boston's Children's Hospital and sectioned for over a year.

 

If only there were studies of people who like to torture animals out of 'interest' and to observe 'biology'...

 

The BPSers like to torture humans, so there should be a comparative study. With our two ideas hopefully we can get double the seed funding.

 

I don't know much science, but this all seems pointless. If you want to study people who are physically restrained, and in stressful situations, it's not like there is a lack of options.

At least they keep the facepalm emote designers employed, I guess.

 

Thats my point, they are harming us in the cause of lies. I would personally like to see them face a courtroom but even when we have a biomarker and become like MS or diabetes its very unlikely they will face consequences for their crimes against humanity