Surgery Stress Causes Memory Loss And Dementia

[Braveheart]

This has been known for quite some time, but the official position has been that it only happens in compromised patients (i.e. elderly, neurologically deficient, infected, etc). RP has written about how the body perceives surgery as major stress and how even healthy people have mental fog for years after even a simple surgery without the need for much sedation.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/healt ... zr6vq.html

Wow!...more to worry about...1st surgery (hernia) of my life coming up (I'm 71) and I'm already battling mental fog....and x-ray not good either...am trying not to stress over this

 

[acrylic]

The one with general anesthesia is what is most commonly studied and the most dangerous one. Keep in mind that you are in a coma while they operate on you. Not many people realize that fact and the medical community keeps calling it "putting you to sleep" on purpose. No, it is coma, plain and simple. So, stressful for the brain and the entire organism.
Local anesthesia surgery like C-section and knee surgery is probably less traumatic but still raises cortisol, adrenaline, and prolactin quite a bit even if you wan't feel anything. So, thyroid function is very important in any surgical intervention.

I have to go in for a pretty intense surgery in the next year. Any tips for what to do to recover properly?

 

[haidut]

I have to go in for a pretty intense surgery in the next year. Any tips for what to do to recover properly?

Like I said, keeping thyroid high. I think Ray said taking a bit of thyroid before surgery helps but I'd clear that up with the doctors before doing it. It can increase stress hormones if the person has not eaten in the last 12 hours as they often order you to do. Smaller doses (1mg - 2mg) methylene blue is probably OK, as would be 100mg niacinamide. I think making sure that estrogen is low in the days and weeks before surgery is very important. Studies show recovery from ICU stays and even survival is strongly inversely related to estrogen levels. So, maybe progesterone and pregnenolone in the weeks before would help. I think loading up on pregnenolone would also help as it stops the stress reaction in the brain.

 

[tara]

I get it. I thought that it just affects physically not mentally!

A lot of what we talk about as stress here is physical, for instance low blood sugar, excessive demands for physical work/exercise, long dark nights, threats requiring the body to be prepared for fight or flight, etc.

My understanding was that in addition to the physical traumas of:
- being put in a coma (ie making one nearly dead)
- being cut
both of which are very stressful/frightening for the body, there can also be additional brain-affecting issues from some kinds of surgery from:
- increased risk of small bubbles entering into bloodstream and lodging in small blood vessels, including in the brain. Maybe this only applies for the kinds of surgery that require heart-lung support, eg heart surgery? I think there may be mechanisms for filtering these potential embolisms.
- amnesic drugs included in the anaesthesia cocktail to deliberately mess with the brain's ability to remember the experiences of and surrounding the surgery itself. Anaesthetists may assume one doesn't want to remember it, and that messing with the brain's memory function is an acceptable cost. Not all patients would think this is a good trade off.

Steve Richfield reckoned that surgery and accompanying anaesthesia may be one way to get the body to shift into a lower body temp mode, with the many potential resulting health issues. IIUC, his hypothesis is that the body gets to associate normal body temps with extreme danger (the trauma of surgery and aesthesia being a serious survival threat), and that it needs to be shown that it can be safe to come back up to normal temps again before it well restore an appropriate temp set point. That's what his temperature reset method is about.

 

[koky]

The one with general anesthesia is what is most commonly studied and the most dangerous one. Keep in mind that you are in a coma while they operate on you. Not many people realize that fact and the medical community keeps calling it "putting you to sleep" on purpose. No, it is coma, plain and simple. So, stressful for the brain and the entire organism.
Local anesthesia surgery like C-section and knee surgery is probably less traumatic but still raises cortisol, adrenaline, and prolactin quite a bit even if you wan't feel anything. So, thyroid function is very important in any surgical intervention.

i was told I'd need general anesthesia for knee replacement surgery why do you think local?

 

[Rinse & rePeat]

They take a knife and cut into your skin. Getting stabbed is stressful.

This made me laugh, but it so true.

 

[Rinse & rePeat]

“Researchers at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Medicine have shown why anesthetics can cause long-term memory loss, a discovery that can have serious implications for post-operative patients.

Until now, scientists haven't understood why about a third of patients who undergo anesthesia and surgery experience some kind of cognitive impairment -- such as memory loss -- at hospital discharge. One-tenth of patients still suffer cognitive impairments three months later.
Anesthetics activate memory-loss receptors in the brain, ensuring that patients don't remember traumatic events during surgery. Professor Beverley Orser and her team found that the activity of memory loss receptors remains high long after the drugs have left the patient's system, sometimes for days on end.
Animal studies showed this chain reaction has long-term effects on the performance of memory-related tasks.
"Patients -- and even many doctors -- think anesthetics don't have long-term consequences. Our research shows that our fundamental assumption about how these drugs work is wrong," says Orser, a Professor in the Departments of Anesthesia and Physiology, and anesthesiologist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.
In the study -- led by PhD candidate Agnes Zurek -- the team gave healthy male mice a low dose of anesthetic for just 20 minutes and found that receptor activity was increased for a week afterwards. These results suggest the same effect can impact a patient's learning and memory during a time when they are receiving critical information about their care.
"There's a lot going on after surgery, which can alter our ability to think clearly. Loss of sleep, new environments and medications can all impact a patient's mental function. Anesthetics likely compound these issues," says Orser.”

Why anesthetics cause prolonged memory loss

Researchers have shown why anesthetics can cause long-term memory loss, a discovery that can have serious implications for post-operative patients.

www.sciencedaily.com

 

[Tarmander]

This made me laugh, but it so true.

wow that was a long time ago