“When Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield’s ear, it was a very bad business decision – it cost him $3 million. It was an amgdyala hijack.” – Dr. Daniel Goleman (World-renowned emotional intelligence expert)

There is an ancient battle happening within the bodies of every woman, man, and child upon the earth. A war for the conquest of the lifeblood that feeds the various chemical processes to our brains and makes our bodies function.The age-old struggle for our consciousness that we can clearly witness in mental illnesses like depression, schizophrenia and diseases such as Alzheimer’s, which are at all-time highs.

Hell, even people like Mike Tyson are well known to act crazy like a Beast, biting his opponent’s ear off and violently raping his wife as he gets paid millions of dollars and is looked at by his Liberal fans like Joe Rogan with admiration.

My skirmishes with my own mind and battle to heal my son and self from serious illnesses have led me to research the science and biology behind what caused these illnesses, mental disturbances, and addictions that seemed to rule my mind and other people around me. What makes people who appear normal and healthy one day become sick, depressed, and lose their minds the next? How come some of these people go insane and take it to the next level by hurting or murdering innocent people as they claim they were ordered to do so by demons or Satan?

This search for the cause of our worldwide mental health epidemic has brought me back within my own body to look within my second brain. A dark place known as the gastrointestinal tract (guts, stomach, etc.), and the same chemicals in our body that modern science had discovered play a huge role in mental illness, addiction, and the spiritual phenomenon known as demon possession.

There is a health condition that psychologist Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., and author of the New York Times bestseller Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships has dubbed an amygdala hijack. (1) A mental health phenomenon that I believe can be compared to when a lady or even a man turns into who can be called a “Karen” who exorcises their inner bitch or someone claims to hear voices and even demon possession.

An amygdala hijack is an emotional response that is immediate, overwhelming, and out of measure with the actual stimulus because it has triggered a much more significant emotional threat. The amygdala is our “emotional/irrational brain”, while other parts are sent to the neocortex or “thinking/rational brain.” If the amygdala perceives a match to the stimulus, i.e., if the record of experiences in the hippocampus tells the amygdala that it is a fight, flight or freeze situation, then the amygdala triggers the HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) axis and “hijacks” or overtakes rational brain function.

When the amygdala perceives a threat, it can lead that person to react irrationally and destructively, which “can take over the rest of the brain in a millisecond if threatened.”

Researchers like Dr. Daniel Goleman have also discovered that when people interact with someone undergoing an amygdala hijack, it can be contagious, causing their minds also to have a complementary hijacking. Goleman later emphasized that “self-control is crucial…when facing someone who is in the throes of an amygdala hijack” to avoid a complementary hijacking—whether in work situations or in private life.

Meaning, if a person is not careful and concentrates on their self-control, their minds can also be taken over to act emotionally and irrational.

This mental phenomenon can be easily observed in domestic violence cases involving a husband and wife or family members. The danger is that “when our partner becomes, in effect, our enemy, we are in the grip of an ‘amygdala hijack’ in which our emotional memory, lodged in the limbic center of our brain, rules our reactions without the benefit of logic or reason…which causes our bodies to go into a ‘fight or flight’ response.”

It usually starts with one person with mental issues that then trigger people they are around to lose self-control. This can also be studied in public situations where one person acting irrationally and violently can trigger other people in the crowd causing a riot. I have seen this happen on numerous occasions at punk rock concerts, parties, and even with myself.

According to Goleman, this starts in early childhood. He cited the “marshmallow test,” which measures the emotional intelligence skill of self-management: Four-year-olds were told, “You can have this marshmallow now if you want, but if you wait until I come back from my errand, you’ll have two.’ About 1/3 can’t stand it and grab the marshmallow; another third wait the full 7 or 8 minutes. Then, 14 years later, they’re tracked down by a professor at Smith, Phil Peake. The kids who grabbed fell apart under pressure, they couldn’t get along with friends. The kids who waited had a 210-point advantage on their SAT’s. The people in Princeton who make up the SAT were stunned. They said it’s the difference between a family with no college education and a parent with a master’s degree.”

Goleman believes that today’s patterns of child-rearing are problematic. “Children are unintended victims of ratcheting up of competition. Their parents have to work longer and harder to maintain their parents’ standard of living. Kids are over-scheduled after school, you don’t have the down time. And there’s a technological experiment with the world’s youth. They spend more time alone, staring at a monitor than has been true ever in human history. There is relational poverty. They have less time with the people in their family. Fewer parents have the luxury of someone in the family to hang out with their kids.

You don’t have time as a child with the adults who care the most about you and who can help you learn these lessons, and nor is there time for free play, where you work problems out yourself. Childhood has been impoverished in that regard, particularly in affluent families. It’s imperative that we put this in schools, so that at some point every day, you’re getting it. In the interest of society, we need to institute social-emotional learning programs.”

HOW DOES SOMEONE’S MIND BECOME HIGHJACKED?

Research has proven that the primary residents in our gut are our microbiome. A community consisting of bacteria and fungi that have the ability to alter human behavior through the gut-brain axis (GBA) like our tryptophan metabolism and other chemicals. Recently, studies have shown that several microbial metabolites (referred to as neuro-active metabolites) produced through tryptophan may influence more than we ever imagined.

Tryptophan is found mainly in the human gut and brain as the main chemical involved in gut-brain access (GBA) systems and communications. It is an important chemical that science is beginning to discover acts as a transmission antenna or biological internet via neurotransmission that we can control or be controlled by the microbes in our guts.

In the human gut, our microbes, which are symbiotic with us, convert tryptophan to tryptamine. Tryptamine activates trace amine-associated receptors that regulate the activity of dopaminergic, serotonergic, and glutamatergic systems. Tryptamine produced by mutualistic bacteria/fungi/molds in the human gut activates serotonin and coordinates absorptive processes and plays a role in innate and adaptive mucosal immunity.

The disruption of the microbiome in our gi tracts has long been shown to alter these chemicals, causing mental disorders. For example, there are many reports of the psychiatric side-effects of antibiotics, even in people without a previous psychiatric history. It is no wonder because most antibiotics are created using fungal derivatives such as penicillin.

Research has proven that serotonin in higher-order brain function and low brain serotonin levels are associated with poor memory and depressed mood. Studies have shown that that the effects of acute tryptophan depletion can cause neurological problems such as depression, psychomotor processing, declarative memory, working memory, executive functions, and diseases like Parkinson’s disease patients with demonstrable reduction in global cognitive function and verbal recognition due to acute tryptophan depletion.

The gut-brain axis creates a bi-directional system between the gastrointestinal tract and the brain. The influence of gut microbiota, depending on how it has been altered affects our behavior. Research has shown that when altered, naturally occurring chemicals like tryptophan and serotonin play an important role in human central nervous system disorders such as bipolar and schizophrenia.

In fact, if you do not have enough of this chemical, it can cause severe neurological issues and create lesions and deform parts of your brain like the amygdala. I believe that it becomes highjacked by the very microbes in your gut, making otherwise ordinary people become illogical and unreasonable and pathogenic and parasitic.

The main job of the amygdala is to regulate emotions, such as fear and aggression. The amygdala is also involved in tying emotional meaning to our memories, reward processing, and decision-making.

Here is an image from a recent study showing how gut-brain access occurs and how easily the microbes can unknowingly manipulate us in our gi tracts:

The part of the brain I theorize is controlled by the fungi is what we call the gi tract or gut and the mammalian part of our brains. If you are ill due to being unhealthy from a poor diet, alcohol, and or drug use, I believe that the fungi in your gut can control this gut-brain access and thus highjack the mammalian brain to carry out its destructive and pathogenic missions.

Amygdala dysfunction during face emotion processing is well-documented in bipolar disorder. Individuals with bipolar disorder showed greater amygdala activity (especially the amygdala/medial-prefrontal-cortex circuit).

Amygdala size has been correlated with cognitive styles with regard to political thinking. A study found that “greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala.” These findings suggest that the volume of the amygdala and anterior cingulate gyrus may be associated with an individual’s ability to tolerate uncertainty and conflict.

This brings us to what I believe we can equate to the modern phenomenon of women and even men who act out publically in an emotional, irrational, and crazy manner as if they are lunatics and even demon-possessed.