NEUROPLASTICITY CASE STUDY

After a session, a client confessed an unusual observation. 

When they were trekking at altitude, they would sometimes become so fatigued that they would experience tunnel vision, dizziness, and experience a craving to eat lemons, which, upon ingestion, tasted sweet! 

This inspired me to look deeper into what taste actually means, and to investigate any underlying biological disorders beneath the surface.

Alternating Flavours

When we experience fatigue—particularly under low-oxygen or high altitude—our brain doesn’t just slow down. It re-prioritises. To protect core functions, it selectively reduces the importance of some sensory signals while amplifying others that support survival and recovery (Barrett & Simmons, 2015). One of the most striking manifestations of this is taste distortion.

The gustatory cortex is the part our brain that receives and transmits information from our tongue to our conscious awareness. It tells us how our food tastes and instils all the emotions and memories we associate with flavour. Located in the insula and frontal operculum, on the sides of our brain, the gustatory cortex integrates taste with information from the gut, heart, and lungs. 

When we are hungry or under-nourished, information is transmitted along these pathways to inform our awareness that we are hungry, not just in general, but for a specific flavour that we instinctively associate with certain food. Under normal conditions, everything tastes as it usually does. Sugar tastes sweet, lemons taste sour, sea water tastes salty. In a balanced biological situation, nothing should taste overly sweet, sour or salty. If such a food were to taste overly sensual, it would reveal that we are overindulging.

Under hypoglycaemia, when the body cannot produce enough glucose to satisfy the brain’s energy requirements, the brain may reassign positive value to unexpected stimuli, like tasting a lemon as sweet.

A lemon can actually taste sweet to some people under certain conditions. 

With insufficienct glucose, the brain can increase the firing rate of sweet-sensitive neurons, while decreasing the excitability of sour and bitter neurons (Leib & Knight, 2015). This is neuroplasticity in action!

The lemon is prioritised sensually and emotionally over other more objectively sweet alternatives, like oranges, because of other restorative qualities within the lemon. These include vagal nerve activation and balancing the body's pH levels. The citric acid can even stimulate parasympathic activation via the cranial nerves.

This is the basis for cravings, where one might have a craving for chocolate breakfast cereal, when one actually was experiencing calcium deficiencies resolved by the milk that one usually consumed with the cereal.

The situation of sense reprioritisation is reinforced if such stimuli are associated with previous experiences of recovery, even among parents or grandparents. These memories can be passed down through generations epigenetically. 

This sense distortion is not a malfunction of our nervous system but an adaptive reassignment of sensory salience. The brain is predicting what might restore balance, and shifts perception accordingly.

Niskala View of Recovery

Balinese use lemons to realign the energy centres of the head, heart and abdomen. The melukat water ceremony uses the citrus fruit to re-anchor the spirit to the body, particularly when a person's energy field has become scattered through spiritual or environmental stress (Ardika, 2018). Here, lemon is not just medicinal—it’s energetic, symbolic, and integrative.

In Ayurveda, lemon (Nimbū) is described as sour and cooling, able to pacify disturbed Vāta and Kapha doshas, stimulate Agni(digestive fire), and cleanse obstructed srotas (body channels) (Dash & Sharma, 2002).

Traditional Chinese Medicine perceives lemon to enter the Liver and Lung meridians and helps disperse Qi stagnation, often seen in cases of fatigue, breathlessness, or emotional repression (Flaws & Sionneau, 2001).

Epigenetic Threads and Ancestral Memory

Intriguingly, some people report the same taste distortions across generations. Research has shown that nutrient stress and perceptual responses can be inherited, especially through alterations in gene expression that affect interoception and metabolism (Meaney & Szyf, 2005; Dias & Ressler, 2014).

This suggests that how one family interprets a taste under stress might not just be personal—it could be transmitted through biological memory.

Restoring the System: How Niskala Healing Supports Energetic Integration

Niskala Healing offers a subtle, non-invasive approach to restoring balance in systems that have experienced distortion. During energetic or metabolic stress, autonomic rhythms—including breath, digestion, and heart rate—often lose coherence. Niskala Healing practitioners use skilled presence and light touch to attune to these rhythms and support the body’s re-establishment of neural coherence and parasympathetic tone (Sills, 2011).

Niskala Healing works with the body’s own ordering forces. It does not impose change, but supports reorganisation. In cases where taste distortion reflects deeper metabolic strain, Niskala Healing can help re-regulate interoceptive signalling, enhance vagal tone, and promote a return to accurate sensory perception. Clients often report feeling clearer, more grounded, and more themselves—before they even describe a change in symptoms.

Accepting Change

Taste distortions are not random. They are adaptive signals—the body’s way of communicating its priorities under stress. Whether seen through the lens of the gustatory cortex, epigenetic modulation, or traditional elemental theory, altered perception offers a unique window into how we restore ourselves.

Niskala Healing honours that wisdom, working not against symptoms but with them. If you’re experiencing fatigue, disorientation, or strange taste shifts—especially under altitude or exertion—your body might be asking for deeper integration. Book your session.

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