Know your audience

Jefferson Breland

(2/2025) Our brains are working all the time, at least for most of us. Even when we sleep, our brains keep chugging along. The thought that our brains are constantly working, voluntarily or involuntarily, exhausts me.

This constant brain activity means that our bodies are forever generating electrical signals which are then converted into chemical signals. For the sake of simplicity, time, space and my sanity, I am going to lump all of the components and actions (and there are many) of this process into a single word- neurochemistry.

This neurochemistry travels through the body via nerves and blood to reach every nook and cranny of our body. Neurochemistry controls our heartbeat, blood pressure, respiration, muscle function, our thoughts, our memory, how we learn, and what we feel. It controls our digestion, as well as our feelings of hunger and thirst.

Neurochemistry affects our sleep, how we heal, and how we age. It controls our freeze, fight, flight responses, hormone regulation, what we hear, see, feel, touch, and taste.

It is safe to say that neurochemistry is just a wee bit important since it is involved in every mental and physical process of our body.

You might say, "This is all well and good, of what use is this information, and what is this audience thing in the title?

As I have written before, it is important to pay attention to how our bodies respond to different emotions. Do we experience shallow or rapid breathing? Do we clench our jaw or grind our teeth? Do we raise our shoulders? Do we experience headaches or stomachaches? Do we tighten our muscles in different parts of our body?

Each of our thoughts and the accompanying emotions produce a neurochemical response that moves through the body. These responses to our environment are based on our beliefs. Our beliefs determine how we feel about every moment of every day.

For example, last month’s Complementary Corner was about the Chinese Lunar New Year which is associated with the Chinese astrological sign of the Snake.

This sentence alone is loaded with ideas or beliefs which might generate some thoughts and feelings. Is the article is useful or not? What is a lunar new year and why should I care? What do the Chinese know about anything? Did I mention SNAKES?

Each of these thoughts is based on our relationship to each topic. Our beliefs determine our sense of right and wrong, what’s stupid or intelligent, frivolous or practical, rational or irrational, safe or dangerous, funny, not funny.

You may have thoughts about my choice of subject, my writing style, my way of thinking, your way of thinking, my grammar, my sense of humor.

Each of these thoughts will produce a neurochemistry. If you enjoy my writing, there will be one version of the neurochemistry. If you don’t enjoy my writing it will produce a different version of neurochemistry. Our neurochemistry is directly related to our emotional association with what we experience.

When we experience an emotional situation, our neurochemistry will contain

hormones such as adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol, epinephrine,

dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, dopamine, testosterone, estradiol, and a few others I can’t pronounce.

The bigger the emotion, the more hormones in our neurochemistry.

Even if the emotional situation is acute, big and sudden, yet brief, our bodies are usually able to metabolize the hormones and they don’t have a lasting effect.

Sometimes we are not able to metabolize the hormones and this may result in a variety of symptoms from digestive issues, fatigue, heart issues, and extended emotional states such as excessive fear, worry, heightened awareness, sadness, or hopelessness.

When we experience chronic emotional situations, i.e. more subtle, yet extended or repeated situations, we may also not be able to metabolize the continuous trickle of barely perceptible releases of emotionally charged neurochemistry in our bodies. Our bodies can adapt to this steady stream of neurochemistry. We may not even notice the effects on our body’s systems until we experience larger, seemingly unrelated symptoms such as autoimmune conditions, for example.

Who is the audience I mentioned earlier? We are.

Now that we have a better understanding of how our thoughts produce messages in the form of neurochemistry that reach every living single cell in our body, it is time to give you some perspective.

This is where the size of the audience comes in. Those of you who fear speaking in front of crowds might want to sit down.

There are approximately 30 trillion human cells in the body. Each of these cells contain 46 pieces of DNA, our genetic building blocks.

30 trillion also written as 30,000,000,000,000 is a big, very big, number. It is too big for me to understand.

For some perspective, let’s look at the largest football stadium near us. It is Beaver Stadium in College Park, PA, the home of Penn State’s Nittany Lions. Its seating capacity is 106,572. You would have to have over 280 million Beaver Stadiums to place our 30 trillion cells in its own seat.

Even that is too big for me to imagine. Let’s try another comparison.

The estimated human population of earth in 2024 is 8.15 billion. We would need over 3.5 thousand planet Earths to hold the equivalent number of cells in our body.

This is still hard for me to wrap my head around the 30 trillion cells in the body.

Now imagine you had a megaphone to tell all 38 trillion inhabitants of your body a message. Imagine your inhabitants believe every word you think or say.

Every time we remember something, even to tell a story about it, our brain will reproduce the neurochemistry associated with it. On the biological level, our brain doesn’t know the difference, it simply remembers what neurochemistry it produced the first time and sends the same message to every cell in our body again.

This remembering repeated over time may have an impact on the function of the 46 pieces of DNA in each of our 30,000,000,000,000 cells. This field of study is called epigenetics. I recommend looking it up to learn more specifics.

I hope I have your attention. Now, please take a nice slow and deep breath, maybe three.

We are not doomed to destroy ourselves with our emotions. Emotions are necessary to experience life fully and that’s why we have them. Just as emotions can muck up genetic expression, emotions can help us take advantage of our bodies ability to heal itself. We just need to pay attention. Let’s start simply.

While we may have an audience of 30 trillion cells, we have just one of us. We have our spirit and mind and that is enough to work with.

The first and one of the most important ways to help ourselves feel better and be healthier is to pay attention to the messages our bodies send to us daily, if not every minute of every day.

A bodily message as simple as feeling tired is invaluable. Honor your body’s request to take better care of yourself. Even sleeping one more hour, heck, even 30 more minutes a day can improve your mood, your digestion, mental concentration, immune systems, creativity, athletic performance, heart health, weight management, memory, and reduce inflammation, to name a few.

When we feel rested, we can feel less overwhelmed. It takes energy to navigate the complex nature of these modern times. When we have more energy we are more able to pay attention to how our bodies react to life’s challenges.

When we pay attention to how we react, we can make more appropriate responses to others and ourselves.

When we begin learning to respond more appropriately we can have more peace in ourself. When we have more peace in ourself, there is more peace in the world.

If you have any questions, please contact me.

Jefferson Breland is a board-certified acupuncturists licensed in Pennsylvania and Maryland with offices in Gettysburg and Towson, respectively.
He can be reached at 410-336-5876.

Read past editions of Complementy Corner