Page 27 - Rana Sampson Issue (1)

Most remarkably, Luce who has since received her doctorate for to take it and when they don’t. As in Colleen’s situation, becoming
research on aging, strongly advocated that every individual keep aware of inner mood cycles allows her to create an individualized
a journal of moods, emotions, thoughts and dreams. She sensed nutritional and exercise programs which can help make them easier
decades before others what is today called individualized medicine. to manage. Many women have found that by following a regime
This is the branch of physiological biochemistry that prescribes a of natural health products and exercise you can help to limit these
blend of nutrients taken at specific times of the day to increase self- extreme mood changes.
knowledge and to maximize performance. Imagine a world where we could predict with precise accuracy what
Unfortunately, a person's natural clocks are rarely taken into our mood will be on a certain day. Athletes could be requested to sit
account when drugs are prescribed for them. One of the main on the bench during vulnerable periods when they might get injured
reasons Dr. Goodman left the field of Psychopharmacology was his or play a bad game, work presentations could be scheduled in ac-
dissatisfaction with the disease model generally used in the devel- cord with these cycles, and special events in life, like weddings or
opment and prescription of psychotropic medications. Dr. Goodman the birth of babies, could be planned for periods when cycles have
admits, “I felt personal dissatisfaction with a disease model which built esteem to appropriate levels. Since these dates of opposing
worked on the premise that 20% of humans suffer from an emotion- mood swings can be predicable once an individual learns to recog-
al disease and if they are in fact diseased, why prescribe medica- nize the patterns, there stands the possibility that software pro-
tion that will only help for just four or five hours before it wears off?” grams can be designed to accurately discern the hidden drumbeat
It was Gay Gaer Luce’s book along with the research of Franz Hal- and display it on a screen, along with an advisory recommending
berg in Chronobiology that was weighing on Dr. Goodman and his what may be best for them to do that day.
beliefs about the human clock. He knew there was something very According to Dr. Goodman, the use of Mental Chronomics can help
critical about these facts, but additional research tipped the scale individuals determine if the intensity of mood swings they experi-
for him. This included studies done by University of Minnesota’s ence can be defined as normal. This could save many from a life of
Franz Halberg and University of Pennsylvania Industrial Psycholo- medication to alter moods which most often smoothes out naturally.
gist Rexford Hersey, who found evidence for a monthly emotional This was in essence what Colleen has now discovered. She expe-
rhythm in 29 of 29 healthy normal workers on an assembly line. It rienced mood swings, yet they were hardly outside of normal levels
was this factor that led him to begin to chart his own monthly emo- and they were truly responsible for most of the successes she
tional rhythm. achieved in life. After all, mood swings are a natural and healthy
By January 1, 1989 Dr. Goodman had mastered the intricacies element of life. Imagine a life where there is but one view on every
of charting his cycles. Every day and every night he tracked 12 event that occurs. Knowing these simple facts means our nation, in
variables (filling over 100 notebooks) as he recorded his feelings, the future, can produce many fewer mentally ill youth and more au-
dreams, sleep, thinking patterns, athletic performance and various thentic geniuses? It is actually by knowing how being mildly moody
other physiological indicators. Over time, the dedication to his proj- is the definition of mental health in creative people that can help
ect resulted in some surprising developments. Probably the most them to fully enjoy and understand life. With the findings of such
astounding fact was what he learned about dreams. Incredibly, by great minds as Gay Gaer Luce, Franz Halberg, Rexford Hersey and
December 2000, he observed to his dismay that his "monthly" emo- David Goodman, San Diego ladies like Colleen can now lead nor-
tional rhythm that he had tracked earlier, had stabilized at 260 days. mal lives, confident that changes in mood and attitude do not make
This permitted him to analyze dream series to a degree unprec- them destined for a life controlled by medication. San Diego
edented in the dream research community. He was able to tease Fortunately Dr. Goodman has now registered the Da Vinci Foun- Woman
out the intricate details of dream series, enabling him to discover dation for Discovering Human Genius to assist local San Diego
the contributions of six rhythms to the generation of a nightly dream residents in discovering their individualized rhythms embedded in
at a specific time of night. their DNA that regulates their unconscious minds.
Previously dreams were often declared to be a random jumble of 27
images and unconscious thought. This was replaced by proof that
they are, in fact, highly crafted and sometimes predicable events.
In October of 2009, Dr. Goodman’s presented his findings at the
Society for Neuroscience’s annual convention in Chicago. Dr.
Goodman explained, “Based on four dreams a night that I recorded,
the first dream in a dream series offered an idea of a future action.
Then the next dream generally intended the future action. Fol-
lowing this, dreams later in the series witnessed the initiation and
implementation of the action. In seven of eight dream series, the
hypothesis was confirmed. These findings tend to disprove that
dreams are random.”
What decades of research into dream rhythms and individual time
structures in adult men and women shows is how intelligent indi-
viduals like Colleen are still kept in the dark when they are diag-
nosed as mentally ill. Better they be informed how hidden rhythms
regulate their lives. Note however that these rhythms vary from
person to person and gaining insight into our own rhythm, called
by Dr. Goodman "One's Own Drummer's Drum," can answer many
personal issues. This can turn on the inner light in persons who
formerly believed they were bipolar, when in reality they are simply
responding to rhythms emerging regularly from the depths of their
brain stem. Knowing that every person on the planet marches to
their inner drumbeat can eliminate the diagnosis based on shadow
bipolar syndromes.
Another way to look at being moody is to sense a drumbeat Dr. David Goodman
enabling us to see the world through different mood sets during
different times of the month. This simple truth can allow individuals
to cut out unneeded medication, or at least learn when they need
March/April 2011