CIRS Episode 2 | How Limbic Dysfunction Intersects with Chronic Illness

Or SIRS at its core, in my opinion leads to limbic dysfunction and trauma. I don't know a SIRS patient that doesn't have some degree of limbic dysfunction. And when we talk about the limbic system, we're talking about this kind of midbrain, this primordial reptilian brain, the hippocampus, the amygdala, the hypothalamus. And the hippocampus is memory and the hypothalamus is the relay sensory center for all of these endocrine loops that we're alluding to, like the stress loop and others, including thyroid and sex hormones. And then the amygdala's mood. And if this individual is hardwired into a sympathetic fight, flight, freeze situation, then they're not going to get all the way better. They're going to be the impetus to having that improvement in their clinical state. And so a lot of times, either concurrently or prior to or you pause what you're doing to work on the limbic retraining, then you can start to move in the right direction.