23SW09 - Improving Neuroplasticity and Mental Adaptability with Botanical Medicine and Physical Activity

Speaker: Kenneth Proefrock, NMD Mental health can be improved throughout life by adopting a botanical medicine foundation with specific physical exercises, including breathwork. Humans are the most adaptable creatures on planet Earth and much of modern life is unfavorable to a healthy lifestyle and a well-working mind over the long term. Our bodies and our minds are designed to respond to an ever-changing world that swings between the extremes of safeness and un-safeness, and the resulting constant calibration of the neuronal architecture of one's self to the unfolding physical sensations of life. This is how we derive a sense of meaning from those experiences.

The essence of the biochemical phenomenon we regard as neuroplasticity is an ongoing and dynamic process of a constant assembling and disassembling of microtubular neural structures, which become consolidated through sensory input into our neural architecture. The other neuronal connections are culled and their raw materials used for the next growth spurt. Central to this idea is how effectively our neurological system is able to shift its architectural components to better accommodate the experiences of life. We are selective in how we interpret our reality; our mind and our senses conspire to make us decide what is real and what is unreal, what to remember and what to forget, they co-ordinate our feelings of pleasant or unpleasant, beauty or ugliness, appealing or not appealing. Botanical medicine provides a means to re-calibrate one's experiences with agents like Kava (Piper methysticum), Valeriana spp, Leonurus cardiaca, and Leonotis leonurus, which have a defined effect on most people, but it is not uniform across all individuals. As we discuss these subtleties, we have the opportunity to understand ourselves, our neighbors and our world more deeply.

Related product: The PowerPoint for this recording is available here: 2023 Southwest Conference on Botanical Medicine: Conference Book Download (PDF)