Do Our Thoughts Always Begin in Our Brain?

WARNING: this article contains descriptions of suicidal ideation

It’s something we rarely think about, isn’t it? Our thoughts. They’re just sort of there, aren’t they? Floating about in our mind.

Sometimes they bother us. Sometimes they’re annoying. Sometimes our thoughts are happy. Sometimes they’re sad. But there’s no escaping it…

Our thoughts are us.

Or are they?

It was spring. The season had brought an abundance of flowers in an impossibly beautiful palette. After a short walk uphill, we were rewarded with a magnificent view of a valley, cleft by an ancient river. My friend stood precariously close to the edge to take the perfect photo while my heart jumped into my mouth. It was a long way down.

That day was bright and sunny, but it sparked a memory of the darkest time in my life. This memory was from a decade before anorexia nervosa came crashing into our family, taking over my children’s lives. It came from a time when I experienced my own mental illness, an illness so powerful and overwhelming that there were days when the only emotion I felt was despair. While I was in the profound well of this illness, I could not see any way to climb out. Indeed, there were many days when I thought I might not survive at all.

It crept up on me, as these things often do. It started when my children were very young. I began to worry about little problems in our home. I would notice cracks appearing in the walls and convince myself that the house was unstable. I would read about deathwatch beetle and start to hear tapping in the walls, certain that our home had been invaded. I would speak to my husband, who dismissed my concerns. “Don’t worry,” he’d say. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

But I couldn’t stop worrying. Every new worry was magnified to impossibly large proportions. Every problem felt like the end of the world. And each time a new worry appeared, it would buzz around my head through every waking hour. Every minute the same thought would take over, repeating all day long. I couldn’t swat them away. The worries were beyond my control. The problem always felt disastrous. Impossible to fix. And every time I had a new worry, I would believe that if only I could fix this problem, it would all be over and I’d be happy.

Of course, all that happened was that a new obsession took over from the last, the latest perceived problem bigger and more intractable than the previous one. Tap tap tapping on my brain.

Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap. All. Day. Long.

Inevitably the worries turned to my children. Something sparked an idea in my mind and this set off a worry about their health. I thought that something was wrong. Seriously wrong. And it would mean that my daughters would not have happy lives. Their lives would become miserable as the cruelty of this illness took over. I was completely and utterly convinced that this problem was real and that it would be devastating, and I became desperate. I didn’t know what to do. It was a problem with no solution. There was no cure.

Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.

I took my children to a doctor.

“They’re fine,” she said.

I wasn’t convinced.

“But are you okay?” she added, kindly.

Of course I was okay. I wasn’t the problem. The problem was the problem. If the problem was solved, everything would be fine.

Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.

Life carried on. Every day I’d wake early and look at the time. Five o’clock. And the thoughts would flood into my head. The feelings of despair would seep through my body, filling up every cell of my being. I couldn’t bear it. As time passed I started to make a plan. There was a way out. There was a way I could end my misery.

If I wasn’t here any more the thoughts would end.

Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.

I began to experience some physical problems and decided to see a doctor. I didn’t mention the intrusive thoughts or the unrelenting depression. It was embarrassing. Nobody would understand. And anyway, my thoughts were me. These new issues were in my body.

The doctor ordered a blood test, “just to rule some things out.” And a couple of days later, I was called back to the surgery.

“You have iron deficiency anaemia,” the doctor announced. “Your body has no iron stores. You’re running on empty.”

She recommended I take three iron tablets a day until my levels were back to normal, which I duly did. I didn’t consider for a minute that the pills might have any effect whatsoever on my state of mind.

After all, my thoughts were just me. Nothing could get rid of them. I was stuck with my misery forever.

Then a miracle happened.

After a few weeks of restoring my iron, my mood started to lighten. My mind quietened. The buzzing in my head began to fade. Sometimes I slept in. I stopped thinking about a way out. I started to notice the extraordinary beauty of the world around me. I felt joy in my daughters’ presence again.

I was happy.

So how could anaemia cause a mental illness, and how could a problem in my blood affect the way I thought?

Well, your body needs iron to produce haemoglobin, which is a protein found in red blood cells that transport oxygen around your body. So, it seems that my brain was not getting enough oxygen. Now, it’s not an enormous leap to imagine that a brain that’s not getting sufficient oxygen is not going to function as well as a brain that has all the oxygen it needs. Neurons are the basic working unit in the brain and are involved in the thinking process, although scientists are still trying to figure out exactly how this works. These nerve cells require a continuous supply of oxygen as they only maintain a small reserve of energy. Reduce the source of oxygen and they’re probably going to become sluggish, perhaps getting stuck in patterns, as that would presumably take less energy than new thought production.

There are many other examples of mental illnesses which are caused by a problem somewhere in the body other than the brain. For example, thyroid dysfunction can cause a variety of mental issues including anxiety and depression. Wilson Disease can cause a build up of copper in the brain which can result in a number of psychological symptoms. And pregnancy and birth can be the trigger for mental illnesses including postpartum psychosis and postnatal depression.

It seems more than likely then that the intrusive thoughts of anorexia nervosa also originate in the body, whose intricate biological systems are affected by malnutrition in multiple ways.

Someone with anorexia may also have iron deficiency. And if you are not getting sufficient nutrition, you will probably have numerous other vitamin and mineral deficiencies too, which will all have a subtle impact on the way your bodily systems function. You might have muscle loss, which will alert your body to the fact that it is in serious trouble. You will likely have a lower temperature than is normal for a human. The hypothalamus works with the skin, sweat glands, blood vessels and more to maintain a steady temperature of around 37 degrees Celcius at all times. Imagine the confusion throughout your body when this is reduced.

Each of these separate reactions will send a message to the brain that there is a problem. A big problem. And combined, they will signal to your body that food is scarce. It will go into panic mode because it is programmed to survive, like all living things on this planet. It’s really no surprise that your poor body starts to freak out and send regular, urgent messages to your brain. Is it also any wonder that, under such strain, your brain turns these messages upside down and ‘You need to eat!’ becomes ‘You don’t need to eat!’?

And while it’s difficult when you have anorexia, or depression, or extreme anxiety, to entertain the idea that your thoughts aren’t your own, they’re really your body’s, I can tell you, from my experience, that your thoughts can definitely be driven solely by your biology.

The only way to take charge of the situation, to regain control of your thoughts, is to sort out the physical problem that is causing the distressing ones. In my case it was easy: I needed a course of iron pills. In anorexia it’s far more difficult because you have to actively disobey the thoughts you are trying to quieten, and in the short-term that might make them louder. But the only way to banish those thoughts for good is to eat without restriction, re-nourishing the body so that it’s no longer under strain. It’s hard. It’s not impossible. Many people have achieved this.

There is another way of existing.

On that glorious spring day I stood at the top of the hill, in awe of the magnificent valley stretching out in front of me. I basked in the glow of my fabulous new friendships. I marvelled at the fragrance of the flowers on the breeze and their extraordinarily diverse shapes and hues. It was more than just feeling a sense of wonder at the incredible natural world that surrounded me; I felt my place in it. I was a part of it.

And I remembered that a decade or so earlier, all I would have thought about at a spot like this was the possibility of the long fall into oblivion.

I realised in that moment that, even though my worst fears had been realised and my daughter was now battling a real, serious illness that seemed almost impossible to overcome, I had no desire to jump.