By: Hettie Basil Lighttower
I have a couple corrections from last week’s column about bindi’s and tilak’s. Firstly, I used the wrong word where I meant to talk about the pineal gland and called it the pituitary gland. I indeed meant to say pineal gland anytime it was mentioned in the discussion. Not sure how I messed that up. In a hurry, I guess. I do hope it didn’t cause too much confusion and interruption to your cognitive reception of the information.
And a couple of misspellings that are worth mentioning: Bangledesh is Bangladesh and sandlewood is sandalwood. Ok, I feel better now. I really should have been more diligent in my proofreading.
Moving forward, I have more curiosities about the PINEAL gland. One thing of interest is the fact that it resembles a pinecone and that it is considered a sacred and valued “organ”. Did you know this? And this shape gives it its name.
Biologically it is a part of the endocrine system of your brain that helps to regulate our good hormones like melatonin and serotonin. These hormones regulate our sleep patterns and help us stay on diurnal cycles. So, it is very important to keep us in our proper circadian rhythm. It is located near the center of the brain in the epithalamus between the two hemispheres tucked in that groove where the two thalami join.
Not only is it important for our sleep and “happy chemicals” it also regulates female hormone levels and contributes to our cardiovascular health and of course our mood stability. If there is an underlying condition or injury to the pineal gland it can affect us in many different ways. As a matter of fact any of the functions that we just mentioned can be affected and throw us off kilter.
Perhaps if someone is moody or negative all the time they could be having a problem with their pineal gland. Although it is only the size of a pea it has very big repercussions if something is wrong with it. That affects us in our entirety. If we are not getting the proper sleep or the good hormones such as the melatonin, that helps us sleep or the serotonin aka the “the happy hormone” that regulates our mood and daily point of view imagine how that could affect our relationships, productivity, motivation, and how we even view ourselves.
This all sounds pretty important to me. But why aren’t we taught more about its health and how to care for it. We should all know how to provide the health security for this important “pea” in our brain. But instead, we are “pea-brains” about it. Since it also plays a vital role in our cardiovascular regulation this might explain why heart health has been so popular.
Are we putting a bandaid on our heart health when really we should be looking into repairing our pineal gland? If we learned what we can do to increase the health of the pineal gland would heart attacks and other cardiovascular issues be a thing of the past? It makes me wonder. Logically any long-term conditions can lead to more serious health problems, and this we know. Even the old saying, “a stitch in time saves nine!” Early prevention is also recognized for most all other things, including cancer.
How many times have we heard, “well, we caught it early so…blah blah blah….” Or “if we had caught it earlier then we could have done this, but now we are in this situation and have limited options….” Many “early childhood” measures are taken now to avoid long-term conditions. We clearly are aware of the vast number of benefits of diagnosing early and taking action early when it comes to health care. Could early prevention of cardiovascular problems revolve around this gland in our brain and not so much the heart? Now, I am thinking about the heart-brain coherence we have talked about in the past.
So, with the pineal gland health being pertinent to proper sleep, avoidance of depression and female estrogen levels, it is very surprising to me that this is not the conversation in the doctor’s office: “Ok, these are symptoms of something going wrong with your pineal gland! Let’s see what is going on with it.” Instead, we get, “here, take this anti-depression drug and this pill and that pill for your heart health.” It seems to me we may be treating the symptoms and not the root cause.
One day I am going to be writing and report to you that I have achieved my doctorate degree in functional health or naturopathy. I have a good many friends and colleagues that are doctors and also pharmacists, but I can’t help but wonder if we/they have been lead astray on focal points.
Our bodies are designed to heal and cells regenerate everyday. Some parts of our bodies do this at a faster rate than other parts of our bodies. We probably all know the liver will regenerate and regrow even. The cells of the gums in our mouth are a next runner-up when it comes to regeneration. But what can we do for our pineal gland? What does it take to get it healthy again if it is not? How do we know if it is healthy or not? Is there something we can do to help it repair itself? Are the diagnosed sleep problems, depression labels, bi-polar issues and girl problems a quick fix if we learn how to support our pineal gland?
Sigh, I only have more questions…..
Send in your notions and comments to [email protected]. And remember, kindness is contagious~*