Biochemistry and Peak Performance

 

Nerve cells communicate with one another through messages - messages in the form of amino acids and complex chains of amino acids called peptides. Amino acid messages are simple, on the order of yes/no, an on/off switch; a peptide, like a complex sentence, may contain whole strings of information. Either way, the messaging process is remarkable. In the words of Dr. Murray Saffran, "The message must leave the cell of origin, pass into the blood, attach itself to a specific blood protein, which then carries it to a specified organ, where the message leaves the blood protein, attaches to a particular cell, and tells that cell to start to manufacture a certain product."

To make the process even more ornate, the amino acid or peptide messenger can deliver its message only by entering the cell. Nerve cells are designed like locked boxes: entry is via chemical doors, or receptor sites, and only the correct chemical key will unlock a particular receptor site: adrenaline must enter through the adrenaline site, serotonin through the serotonin, etc. The body's response to stress situations, the kind one finds in the hardest of games, is orchestrated by a whole complex set of chemical messages between the nerve cells, keys in locks, calls and responses.

Initially a hormone biochemists call Big ACTH (for adrenocorticotropic hormone) is released; as it breaks down, it gives birth to a wide spectrum of potent substances, each of which does something or things to mobilize the body and mind. Beta-endorphin seems to be the prime mover in the stress biochemistry equation: "It stands right at the center of the control network," according to biologist Derek Smyth, "able to produce analgesia or even catatonia, to lower blood sugar, to modulate by inhibition the brain's established neurotransmitters, and to stimulate the release of a host of pituitary hormones that in themselves play critical roles in behavior."

The story behind the discovery of endorphin is a particularly interesting one, a real piece of scientific detective work. Neurobiologists researching narcotics addiction found receptor sites on nerve cells that fit exogenous (that is, from outside the human body) opiates like opium, morphine, and heroin. How, they asked, could such sites have evolved when man has only used opiates for the past three or four thousand years? (The opium poppy, Palaver somniferum, was probably first used, medicinally and/or recreationally, on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean during the Neolithic.)

There must be endogenous substances, secreted by the human body itself, that fit into those same receptor sites, similar in form and function to the opiates. And there were, the neurobiologists found: beta-endorphin, and similar, somewhat less potent peptides called enkephalins.

Getting back to the stress response, beta-endorphin's most dramatic role is as a painkiller; tests have shown it to have a hundred times the analgesic power of morphine. Enkephalins, on the other hand, in addition to being analgesics, help modulate the mood-altering chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine (noradrenaline), and epinephrine (adrenaline): you could say that they help reestablish and maintain emotional equilibrium.

Interestingly, beta-endorphin can be split into two Jekyll and Hyde component chemicals, alpha-endorphin and gamma-endorphin. It is the former that produces the euphoria and analgesia, the bliss and the lack of pain; gamma-endorphin has been shown, in tests on laboratory animals, to induce quite the opposite effects: irritability, excitability, increased sensitivity to pain.

In stress and survival situations, the two complement one another: enough alpha to deal with the pain and fear, and enough gamma to keep you in touch with the realities of the situation so that you can react correctly.

But there is more to the biochemical stress equation than just endorphins and enkephalin. Big ACTH also contains a kind of "small" ACTH that acts as a trigger for stimulating chemicals like epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine (noradrenaline), whose effects include increased mental awareness, muscle rigidity, heightened senses.

And there is also MSH (melanocyte-stimulating hormone) in the Big ACTH catalogue, a substance that has been found to hype alertness and accelerate the learning process in laboratory animals. This last probably explains the tales so many disaster survivors tell of their lives flashing before them like a speeded-up film: the biocomputer of the brain is doing an accelerated search through its memory banks, looking for the bit of information that will provide a way out of the fix.

And more... when the body goes into oxygen debt, as it does after heavy exertion, the carbon dioxide levels rise; carbon dioxide breaks down into lactic acid, a known cause of altered states of consciousness. Dehydration, plummeting blood sugar levels - the range of chemical stress consequences is practically endless.

What does all this mean in terms of searching for peak performances and experiences in sports, or anything else that pushes the human animal to the limit? Practically everything.

It seems as if the two, biochemistry and performance, are directly linked': when the biochemistry is good, the performance and the experience are good; when it is bad, they are bad.

For instance, Big ACTH can decompose in a great many ways, producing more or less of this or that chemical. Say you get too much adrenaline and noradrenaline, and not enough of the ameliorating, nonstimulating chemicals: the results can be panic, hysteria.

On the other hand, too much beta-endorphin and not enough of the rest can put you into a zombie-like trance, shock, a junkie's nod, like the surrendered gazelle that turns its throat up to the ravenous lion.

Sometimes, though, the chemistry is right. More often it is less than completely right but still not bad, and sometimes it is an utter, dysfunctional disaster. The stress response can manifest itself in all kinds of negative ways. Distance runners, for instance, actually seem to get hooked on the endorphin-rich biochemical response kindled by their sport. "Not only do marathon runners get high off endorphins, they become dependent on them," says Dr. Andrew Weil. "It is an addiction. I've seen a number of such runners who, when they are prevented from running for a day or two, become really unpleasant to be around."

Indeed, statistical studies show that upwards of 20 percent of competitive runners are forced to seek professional psychiatric help, occasionally to the point of being institutionalized, when injuries interrupt their running activities for significant periods of time.

The same kind of addiction to stress biochemistry, though I suspect in this case the prime addictive agent is adrenaline rather than endorphin, seems to afflict the risk-taking athletes - the speed skiers, hang-glider flyers, big-wave surfers, and the rest; and it explains the crazed, incessant, febrile atmosphere that clings to these athletic scenes.

Certain Shoshoni Indians, when they want a real, insensate high, have what they call dynamite parties; they take turns lying in a hole in the ground, and having dynamite charges set off a few feet away; the blast blows them right out of the hole, and they come down, sprawling, in some kind of weird state of ekstasis.

The extreme sports scene has a lot more in common with dynamite parties than it does with shamanistic initiation or Zen meditation or any of the other disciplines that aim at controlling and texturing one's own responses to the stresses of the world. Mind-blown pleasure is a long, long way from reacting perfectly, inevitably, to everything the universe throws at you, an easy waltz with danger or death itself.

Back to the subject at hand. Is it unreasonable to suggest that shamans actually control their own biochemical responses to stress and can invoke the precisely right endocrinal mix at will? Canadian psychologist Dr. Raymond Prince suggests just this possibility in a 1980 paper tided "Shamans and Endorphins: Exogenous and Endogenous Factors in Psychotherapy." He writes of an optimum physical / psychological state that springs out of what he calls the "omnipotence maneuver," a feeling of being in absolute, perfect control of a dangerous situation, and indeed, all situations. Prince believes that the body's endocrinal response to stress is at the root of this feeling.

Do shamans leam to trigger this response in themselves and then to pass it on to their disciples via ritualized stress situations, carefully engineered crises? Dr. Prince writes: "in a situation of life stress ... a state of hyper-arousal occurs which generates appropriate endorphins or other neuro-endocrines in such quantities that an unprecedented feeling of cosmic peace and tranquility is experienced."

Certainly that state of mind (and body) is the kind that produces great performances; when you feel totally relaxed yet absolutely involved in the task at hand, your actions and reactions are at their absolute best. And if someone could put himself or herself into that state at will (which shamans and their ilk seem to be capable of doing), they would appear to the rest of us as supermen and superwomen.

Human beings can actually hit that same perfect pitch sometimes through simple practice, practice, practice, controlling the normally uncontrollable.

Another, peripheral idea: do shaman types somehow become biochemically different, superior, after a time; do they in effect evolve themselves into physically different beings? This would account for a whole host of beliefs found around the world.

Experiments with biofeedback over the past few years have shown that everyday, average, modern human beings can learn to control some of the same functions of the autonomic nervous system that yogis and shamans can. (The autonomic nervous system regulates, among other things, the cardiovascular, respiratory, and endocrine systems. In the words of Dr. Weil, "it carries out its functions without our being aware of it. Moreover, if we try to will an autonomic response ... in the same way that we will a movement of our arm, we do not have much success."

Take blood pressure, for instance... If blood pressure is made visible via an oscilloscope or graph, subjects quickly learn to control it; perhaps they don't really understand how they are controlling it, but they are; by "thinking the right thoughts," putting themselves in the proper frame of mind, they can lower their blood pressure far more effectively naturally than by any of the blood pressure drugs currently on the market.

In another set of experiments, most notably by Berkeley brain researcher Joe Kamiya in San Francisco, subjects were taught to control their own brain wave patterns, producing at will more alpha rhythms (the electrical rhythm associated with meditation, relaxation, etc.). When alpha rhythms were being produced, a bell or tone sounded; subjects tried to keep the tone going, thereby gaining more and more control over their own mental functioning. In other, later experiments, test subjects learned to control the beta and theta electrical activity of their brains also.

So far experiments on self-control of biochemistry have not reached such levels of sophistication; the amounts of the various endocrinal components in the stress chemistry equation are very small, and difficult to quantify. The promise is there, however. We already know that certain kinds of exertion produce certain biochemical reactions; mountain runners, tested before and after a trail run, showed a 200 percent average increase in their base beta-endorphin levels.

What we are discovering in our games, and what shamans, yogis, and lamas seem to have known intuitively for thousands of years, will undoubtedly become the stuff of laboratory experiments.

In the meantime, the combined information I had put together on shamanism and biochemistry was encouraging, to say the least: it seemed to confirm that there was an actual bodily process going on, and one that could perhaps be controlled.

by Rob Schultheis from Bone Games, pp.101-112