Winning the War on PTSD:
We Are Experiencing a Global PTSD Pandemic
By Dr. Jamie Turndorf, PhD
When I began writing this column a year ago, I focused my attention on PTSD in the veteran population because I believed that PTSD was most prevalent among this group.
As I soon discovered, not only veterans suffer PTSD.
As I deepened my research, I learned that anyone who has experienced a single illness, accident or trauma is likely to develop PTSD as well.
This is because everyone, not just vets, is subject to the biochemical cascade that triggers PTSD.
Here’s a brief overview of NIH and other published scientific research outlining this biochemical cascade to which I refer:
1) Stress causes a rapid and massive depletion of magnesium from the body. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1844561;
2) Magnesium depletion triggers a chemical imbalance called HPA-Axis dysfunction (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/psychological-therapies-for-posttraumatic-stress-disorder/A2FB3EE9C7EC96D1117A22ABD0715540);
3) HPA-Axis dysfunction causes PTSD. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30342071;
and
4) Magnesium supplementation reverses PTSD. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3198864/
I reiterate, only one accident, illness or stress is required to set-off the chemical that depletes magnesium and triggerS PTSD.