Are you feeling weighed down and overburdened by your stress levels? Do you want to incorporate things into your life that help to extend the results of your Ketamine treatment and help you to de-stress and refocus? If so, it might be worth considering adding a mindfulness practice into your daily routine. This potentially transformative activity is something that can help support physical, mental, and emotional well being, allowing us to better cope with life’s myriad challenges. Mindfulness involves incorporating moments throughout the day where we take stock of our current state before observing how this impacts our thoughts and feelings; leading us on a journey towards greater self-knowledge and inner peace. So let’s explore what reinvention through mindful practices might look like!
How Ketamine Treatment is Changing Your Brain Neurocircuitry
Ketamine treatment has begun the process of changing the neurocircuitry of your brain. Continue that trend with mindfulness practice. For those who have had ketamine treatments, you may have noticed an improvement in your mental health. This could be attributed to the changes that ketamine treatment has begun in the neurocircuitry of your brain. It is important to understand how this works so that you can continue to use it as a part of your treatment plan. Let’s take a look at how ketamine treatment is changing your brain neurocircuitry.
How it Works
Ketamine works by targeting receptors in the brain called N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA). These receptors are responsible for regulating glutamate, which is a neurotransmitter vital for learning and memory formation. When these receptors are blocked, it leads to a decrease in glutamate levels and allows for new pathways to form in the brain. This process of creating new pathways is known as neuroplasticity and can lead to improved mood, focus, and overall well-being.
Neuroplasticity has been used in psychiatry as a way to treat depression, anxiety, PTSD, and other mental health disorders. The idea behind using neuroplasticity is that if we can create new pathways in the brain then we can effectively rewire our brains away from negative thinking patterns or behaviors. Ketamine works by temporarily blocking NMDA receptors so that new pathways can be created more easily than before.
The Benefits of Neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity can help us form better coping skills, improve our emotional regulation skills, reduce our stress levels, increase our resilience, and even foster better relationships with ourselves and others. All of these things will ultimately lead to better overall mental health outcomes when combined with traditional talk therapy or medications. As mentioned above, ketamine works by temporarily blocking NMDA receptors so that we can create more effective pathways in our brains than before—allowing us to experience long-term changes rather than just short-term relief from symptoms like depression or anxiety.
Conclusion: The changes that ketamine treatment has begun in the neurocircuitry of your brain should not be taken lightly; they are real changes that will provide long lasting effects on your mental health if used correctly. Neuroplasticity allows us to create new pathways in our brains which allow for improved mental health outcomes such as improved moods, focus, relationships with ourselves and others, emotional regulation skills and resilience against stressors. By understanding how ketamine works you should now be better informed about its potential benefits for treating various mental health conditions – allowing you to make an informed decision about continuing its use as a part of your treatment plan going forward!
A study into mindfulness by Rinske A. Gotink and colleagues showed:
Previous research on traditional meditation styles (i.e. Zen, Vipassana, Tibetan etc.) found that individuals who have regularly practiced meditation for several years exhibit significant altered brain structure, when compared to demographically matched controls (Holzel et al., 2008, Lazar et al., 2005, Luders et al., 2009, Pagnoni and Cekic, 2007, Tang et al., 2015, Vestergaard-Poulsen et al., 2009). Recent meta-analyses report eight regions to consistently show structural and functional differences in long-term meditators: the prefrontal cortex (related to enhanced meta-awareness and reappraisal), the sensory cortices and insula (related to body awareness), the hippocampus (related to memory processes), and the cingulate cortex (related to self and emotion regulation) (Boccia et al., 2015, Fox et al., 2014, Holzel et al., 2007, Manna et al., 2010, Tomasino et al., 2012).
See “8-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction induces brain changes similar to traditional long-term meditation practice – A systematic review,” in Brain and Cognition, Vol. 108, Oct. 2016, pp. 32-41.
