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experiencelifemag.com
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The Healer Within
Science has now confirmed that our thoughts and emotions have very real physiological consequences. What does this mean for medicine in the 21st
century? Among other things, that many potions of choice might be
produced by our minds and delivered without prescription drugs.
By Pamela Weintraub |
May 2009 |
The Birth of Psychoneuroimmunology
From the Outside In
The Complexities of Stress
The Vulnerable Heart
The Importance of Optimism
Curative Powers
Conscious Living
In the Womb
More Resources From Experience Life
At a basic level, the connection between the mind and body has always seemed
obvious: If work is too stressful, or your relationship is on the rocks, you
might feel the agitation in the pit of your stomach. Spend a month in the funk
of depression, and you’re bound to catch the next cold that comes around.
From autoimmune disease to ease of breathing to the flow of blood
through your body, it’s clear that our mental and emotional states play a role
in determining our levels of well-being or physical vulnerability. For all its
inherent logic, however, the notion of the mind-body relationship can have a
vague New Age feel: Sure, thoughts and feelings are bound to affect health, but
do we know how? Today, the answer is yes. In hundreds of rigorous studies
conducted at the world’s top universities and teaching hospitals, scientists
have, over the past few decades, demonstrated beyond any doubt the presence of a
feedback loop between emotion, the immune system and the brain — a hard-wired
connection between what we feel and experience and our levels of health and
disease. The evidence means we can tap the mind-body connection to protect
the heart, stave off cancer relapse and fight the common cold — but the path may
be complex. The newest studies point to relationships that are nuanced and
intricate: Stress can drive inflammation (a root cause of many diseases), but in
measured doses, it might also boost immunity. Experiencing success might prime
the health pump or leave you vulnerable, depending on your level of self-esteem.
“The brain is just one of many entry points into a dynamic network of
communication that unites all systems — nervous, endocrine, immune, respiratory
and more,” says psychopharmacologist Candace Pert, PhD, a pioneer in the field
and author of Everything You Need to Know to Feel Go(o)d (Hay House, 2007).
The upshot is that emotions can affect both our psychological well-being and
our physical health. Awareness of such mind-body connections can be harnessed to
help us stay healthy, but the old notion that positive emotions universally
boost well-being, while negatives like stress always keep us sick, has been
oversimplified to the point of confusion. It’s a subject that many experts
agree deserves closer examination and more rigorous analysis.
The Birth of Psychoneuroimmunology
The modern quest to fathom the
mind-body connection dates to 1964, when Norman Cousins, then-editor of the
Saturday Review, was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, a degenerative
connective-tissue disease. Unresponsive to drug therapy and fading fast, Cousins
recalled hearing that positive emotions could boost health. So he checked
himself out of the hospital and into a hotel, where he spent his days
watching funny movies and reading humorous books. Eventually he recovered,
and his extraordinary account was published in the New England Journal of
Medicine in 1976. By 1979, the University of California, Los Angeles, had
established an entire center devoted to Cousins’s idea that the brain and the
immune system were integrated. A new academic discipline with a tongue-twister
of a name — psychoneuroimmunology, or PNI — was born. Traversing the chasm
from Cousins’s anecdotal experience to solid evidence has taken decades, but the
evidence is now firm. Among the findings: Stress, even small amounts caused by
boredom, can cause inflammation, making us ill. Optimists have more stable
cardiovascular systems, more responsive immune systems and a lower hormonal
response to stress. The impact can be traced to our very cells: Life events
such as divorce or bereavement decrease the number of helper T cells, B cells
and natural killer cells needed to fight disease.
From the Outside In
One scientist fascinated by the findings is Bruce
Lipton, PhD, author of The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of
Consciousness, Matter and Miracles (Hay House, 2008). A cell biologist at
the University of Wisconsin during the 1980s, Lipton suffered through a
devastating divorce on the heels of his father’s death and decided to take a
sabbatical at a medical school on the Caribbean island paradise of
Montserrat. Away from his normal life, he began to question everything,
including a basic premise of biology — that genes in the nucleus of the cell
are life’s masters of control. “That central dogma set us up to feel that we
were victims of our biology,” says Lipton, “that genes sealed our fate, and that
we had no choice or free will, or any power to change our biology.” Yet,
examining the cell anew, Lipton determined that most of the cell’s
“intelligence” could be found not in its nucleus, but in its membrane — the
complex layer enveloping the cell and allowing it to interface with the outside
world. In fact, it was only when the external environment interacted with the
cell that genetic expression was set. A classic experiment by Randy Jirtle,
PhD, shows how it works: Generation after generation of mice carrying the
so-called agouti gene gave rise to offspring that were yellow and fat, and
prone to cancer, diabetes and short lives. Offspring were made healthy not by
manipulating the gene, but by providing pregnant rat mothers with a diet rich in
methyl-containing compounds, turning the toxic gene off. In essence, this
showed that cells were like programmable chips, with the master controllers
exerting influences on the genes from the outside. For humans, these
“epigenetic” influences included experience and the emotional environment
itself. The power of emotion has been convincingly described by Pert, who
elucidated the mechanism in the early 1970s. Back then, as a graduate student at
Johns Hopkins University, she found a tiny structure on the surface of the cell
that interacted — much like a lock would respond to the turning of a key — with
opiate drugs such as morphine and heroin. The very presence of that structure,
now known as the opium receptor, suggested the body produced its own brand of
opiates. Before long, scientists found the source: the natural endorphins
generated when we feel excitement or perform physical exercise like running.
Eventually researchers found receptors for natural versions of cocaine,
valium and caffeine, just to name a few. It turns out that all these innate
substances — a combination of neurotransmitters, hormones and peptides —
wash through our bodies, activating their corresponding cell receptors and
filling us with feelings of bliss, vigilance or dread. The implications here
were remarkable: If the newfound receptors were targets for substances we know
to be drugs, it became clear that a person did not have to ingest or inject an
external drug for the feelings themselves to launch a chemical cascade. Pert
advanced her next breakthrough idea in 1985 at the National Institutes of
Health. Working with her husband, NIH immunologist Michael Ruff, PhD, she showed
that the receptors in the immune system were identical to those in the brain. It
turned out that the mind and body were one, and that health and emotion were
inextricably linked. “We can no longer say that brain is to mind as kidney
is to urine,” says Pert. “The mind is not the product of any organ, not even the
brain.” In fact, she notes, “the body is the subconscious mind, and memories are
stored in the body as well as the brain.”
The Complexities of Stress
Much attention has been focused in recent years
on the well-documented physical impacts that mental and emotional stress have on
the body. But even this much-ballyhooed mind-body connection still isn’t widely
understood in all of its complexity. In the short term, says University
of British Columbia clinical psychologist Gregory Miller, PhD, stress can serve
a purpose: By boosting the inflammatory immune response, it produces immune
cells and molecules that battle outside invaders, eliminating infection and
healing injury. Indeed, short-term stress is a positive, says
neuroimmunophysiologist Monika Fleshner, PhD, of the University of Colorado in
Boulder, who proved her point by studying lab rats, all of which were exposed to
bacterial infection, and some of which were also exposed to a laboratory
stressor. She found that when rats were infected and exposed to a stressor at
the same time, they fought the infection and stayed healthier than rats not
exposed to a stressor. Normal amounts of short-term stress, says Fleshner,
can boost some white blood cells’ function and help fight infections like colds.
But when stress is long-lasting, the engine of inflammation can run without
end. Over the long term, inflammatory molecules can spill into the brain, where
they may cause apathy, social withdrawal, fatigue and changes in eating habits.
The symptoms look very similar to those of depression, but stress is likely
the cause. Whatever such mood states are labeled, the impact on disease can be
profound: Runaway inflammation is a cause of autoimmune diseases like multiple
sclerosis (immune cells attack the central nervous system), myasthenia gravis
(immune cells attack the junction of nerves and muscles) and lupus (immune cells
attack skin, joints, heart, lungs, blood, kidneys and brain). While stressful
events alone have never been shown to cause these diseases, they are risk
factors, capable of increasing intensity or provoking relapse. But this
equation is complex for most people because stress is linked to self-esteem and
self-expectation. The first part of the formula makes sense: When those with
high self-esteem fail, stress is high. When they succeed, stress is low. But
stress also results whenever success defies expectation. The key, says Duke
University psychologist Timothy Strauman, PhD, is discrepancy: In a study of
students, blood tests showed that those with fewer discrepancies between their
view of themselves and the outcome had a greater natural-killer-cell
activity. Great success brought immune protection to those who thought well of
themselves — but constituted an immune hit for those who felt success was
too fast or undeserved.
The Vulnerable Heart
We’ve heard that severe emotional losses can be risky
for the heart. But burnout on the job can be just as damaging. For example,
Dutch researchers found that flight controllers in busy airports have faster
heart rates and higher blood pressure than those responsible for fewer planes.
Even ordinary garden-variety burnout (the kind caused by emotional,
physical or cognitive fatigue, or even boredom) can be devastating, notes
epidemiologist Samuel Melamed, PhD, of the Sackler School of Medicine at Tel
Aviv University in Israel. Melamed found that burned-out workers had a
two- to threefold higher risk of heart problems, from myocardial infarction to
stroke. Burnout turned out to be so dangerous that it was at least as culpable
in heart disease as problems traced to obesity, blood pressure and age. But
just as there are certain emotional patterns that can damage the heart, there
are heart-friendly traits and behavioral patterns that can protect it from
damage. One protective characteristic is friendliness. Dutch scientists
asked young extroverts and introverts to focus on tasks. Extroverted children
had more trouble focusing and performed less perfectly in the face of
distraction — but introverted children were more heart-stressed by those
distractions, placing them at future risk. Another protective trait is
trust. Compared with their trusting counterparts, cynics tested by the
University of Michigan had higher rates of fibrinogen, C-reactive protein and
IL-6, all risk factors for narrowing of the arteries and future heart-disease.
The Importance of Optimism
If PNI holds an overarching good-news message,
it’s that we can nurture the traits and lifestyles that lead to good health.
But there are caveats here as well. Study after study has documented
that immunity is bolstered for those with friends. But contrary to popular
notion, the latest research reveals that having only a few important intimates
may provide less health protection than having a sizable circle of friends.
Scientists at Carnegie Mellon studied the issue by giving freshmen flu
vaccines and then measuring their immune response to the dose. They found that
those with larger social networks had a more powerful immune response than those
with a smaller number of close friends. Freshmen who said they were lonely and
had very few friends had the lowest immunity of all. In another,
parallel study, UCLA researchers identified a distinct pattern of gene
expression in immune cells from people who experience chronically high levels of
loneliness — bringing to mind the science of epigenetics and documenting that
emotions influence not just immune cells but our very genes. Another health
booster is optimism, long considered critical when battling illness or
adversity. Indeed, compared with pessimists, optimists have healthier hearts,
spryer immune systems and a more subdued hormonal response to stress. But
there’s a twist: If your circumstance is arduous, your disease too trying,
optimism can lead to fatigue and temporary suppression of immune
response. Why? “Optimists are less likely to give up in arduous situations,
and giving up is ‘easier’ on the immune system than continuing to exert yourself
to overcome a problem or reach a goal,” explains Suzanne Segerstrom, PhD, a
University of Kentucky psychologist who studies expectant emotion and health.
That may be more helpful in the case of autoimmune illness, where the problem is
inflammation — but less helpful in infection, where immune molecules are needed
to fight the disease. Everything is a trade-off. But researchers seem to
agree that the motivational power of optimism — which encourages you to advocate
for yourself, stick to your health-supporting regimens and see a health
professional when you need to — trumps any immune hit it provokes.
Curative Powers
Reports that the mind can cure serious disease are
fascinating, but anecdotal to date. While miracle cures will always grab
headlines, PNI findings point to something else: a nuanced, subtle effect that
works T cell by T cell, one immune molecule at a time. Where PNI can
be marshaled fully, however, its importance can be profound. Just ask Tel
Aviv University psychologist Shamgar Ben-Eliyahu, PhD, whose recent study shows
that physiological stress — especially fear — prior to, during and after cancer
surgery, impairs the immune system. “The psychological stressors of surgery deal
a blow to the immune system, but this is hardly discussed in the medical
community,” says Ben-Eliyahu. “Ours is among the first studies to show that
psychological fear may be no less important than real physiological tissue
damage in suppressing immune competence.” The surprising part of
Ben-Eliyahu’s study is that stress hormones such as adrenaline, released before
and during surgery, underlie the immune decline. Until now, doctors assumed that
the immune system was weakened because of tissue damage and the body’s responses
to it. A weak immune system is one of the major factors that promotes cancer
metastases after an operation, Ben-Eliyahu explains. “Timing is everything
after cancer surgery,” he says. “There is a short window of opportunity, about a
week after surgery, when the immune system needs to be functioning maximally in
order to kill the tiny remaining bits of tumor tissue that are scattered around
the body.” To this end, visualization exercises that calm fears and promote
healing are being used in some hospital surgery centers. (For more on the power
of healing visualizations, see “The Mind’s Eye” in the January/February 2007
archives.) But there are pharmaceutical solutions, too:
Ben-Eliyahu is developing a drug protocol to boost the immune system and block
the fear-hormone cascade.
Conscious Living
As with most modern tools, PNI should be seen as a chisel
and not an ax. Used specifically to boost T cells or lower inflammation, it can
be a powerful ally in fighting disease and staying a healthy course for life.
Understood as a means of adjusting the body’s biochemical balance through mental
repatterning or mind-body exercise and healing techniques, it can be an
important support for optimal well-being and vitality. Meditation,
mindfulness, tai chi and deep-breathing exercises can all prime immunity. Simply
understanding that negative moods and feelings threaten lifelong well-being can
prompt you to seek treatment for mental and emotional pain before your heart is
damaged or inflammation spirals out of control. Nurture your friendships;
address toxic emotions before they become entrenched. “Unless we can use the
mind to communicate with the immune system,” says Pert, “we may never achieve
our optimum level of health.” Pamela Weintraub is a senior
editor at Discover magazine.
In the Womb
The body-mind connection starts earlier than you think. Incontrovertible evidence shows that health strengths and vulnerabilities
may be transmitted by mothers to babies in the womb based on the mother’s
emotional state during pregnancy. Psychiatrist Thomas R. Verny, MD, DPsych,
FRCPC, of the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, one of the world’s foremost
authorities on prenatal and early postnatal environment and its impact on
health, has tracked the findings for years. Nuance is often the key. One
study he points to comes from University of Salzburg psychologist Gerhard
Rottman, who studied 141 women, dividing them into four categories of maternal
suitability from “ideal” to “catastrophic.” Mothers labeled ideal, because they
deeply wanted their babies, had the easiest pregnancies and deliveries and the
healthiest offspring. Those labeled catastrophic clearly didn’t want their
babies — they had the most extreme medical problems during pregnancy and
the highest rate of low-weight, premature and emotionally disturbed infants.
But the most interesting findings came from the two intermediate groups;
these mothers said they wanted their children, but psychological tests revealed
something amiss. These unconsciously ambivalent mothers gave birth to babies who
were often irritable due to gastrointestinal problems or nerves. Verny
explains: “Maternal molecules of emotion, including stress hormones, such as
adrenaline and noradrenaline, neurohormones, and sex hormones, reach the unborn
child through the umbilical cord and the placenta. In this sense, the unborn
child is as much a part of the mother’s body as her heart and liver.” Of all
the emotional risk factors we face from our time in the womb onward, the best
documented and most corrosive is probably stress. Verny ticks off results from
studies in recent years: - Mothers of schizophrenic offspring are almost
twice as likely to have rated themselves depressed during the sixth or seventh
month of pregnancy.
- Babies whose mothers were under stress while
pregnant are at higher risk for hyperactivity, motor problems and attention
deficits than babies of calm mothers.
- Emotionally disturbed mothers
give birth to babies at higher risk for sleep problems, digestive problems and
irritability. Other health risks include cleft lip, cleft palate, spina
bifida, heart disease, hypertension, high cholesterol, osteoporosis and future
fractures, enhanced susceptibility to seizures, adult type 2 diabetes, and
various types of immune dysfunction.
There are hundreds of such studies, says
Verny, and evidence only mounts. “Emotional disturbances in the pregnant
mother lead to increased production of stress hormones,” he says. “These, in
turn, can have adverse impact on gene regulation, precipitating excessive
destruction of neurons and synapses, changing organization and function of the
brain, and damaging the baby’s future ability to deal with stress.” The good
news? The inverse holds as well, he says. “Maternal emphasis on joy and love
bathes the growing brain in feel-good endorphins and neurohormones such as
oxytocin, promoting a lifelong sense of well-being.”
More Resources From Experience Life
For more on the health connection
between our minds and our bodies, check out the following articles in our
archives:
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The Healer Within
Science has now confirmed that our thoughts and emotions have very real physiological consequences. What does this mean for medicine in the 21st
century? Among other things, that many potions of choice might be
produced by our minds and delivered without prescription drugs.
By Pamela Weintraub | Features,
May 2009 |
The Birth of Psychoneuroimmunology
From the Outside In
The Complexities of Stress
The Vulnerable Heart
The Importance of Optimism
Curative Powers
Conscious Living
In the Womb
More Resources From Experience Life
At a basic level, the connection between the mind and body has always seemed
obvious: If work is too stressful, or your relationship is on the rocks, you
might feel the agitation in the pit of your stomach. Spend a month in the funk
of depression, and you’re bound to catch the next cold that comes around.
From autoimmune disease to ease of breathing to the flow of blood
through your body, it’s clear that our mental and emotional states play a role
in determining our levels of well-being or physical vulnerability. For all its
inherent logic, however, the notion of the mind-body relationship can have a
vague New Age feel: Sure, thoughts and feelings are bound to affect health, but
do we know how? Today, the answer is yes. In hundreds of rigorous studies
conducted at the world’s top universities and teaching hospitals, scientists
have, over the past few decades, demonstrated beyond any doubt the presence of a
feedback loop between emotion, the immune system and the brain — a hard-wired
connection between what we feel and experience and our levels of health and
disease. The evidence means we can tap the mind-body connection to protect
the heart, stave off cancer relapse and fight the common cold — but the path may
be complex. The newest studies point to relationships that are nuanced and
intricate: Stress can drive inflammation (a root cause of many diseases), but in
measured doses, it might also boost immunity. Experiencing success might prime
the health pump or leave you vulnerable, depending on your level of self-esteem.
“The brain is just one of many entry points into a dynamic network of
communication that unites all systems — nervous, endocrine, immune, respiratory
and more,” says psychopharmacologist Candace Pert, PhD, a pioneer in the field
and author of Everything You Need to Know to Feel Go(o)d (Hay House, 2007).
The upshot is that emotions can affect both our psychological well-being and
our physical health. Awareness of such mind-body connections can be harnessed to
help us stay healthy, but the old notion that positive emotions universally
boost well-being, while negatives like stress always keep us sick, has been
oversimplified to the point of confusion. It’s a subject that many experts
agree deserves closer examination and more rigorous analysis.
The Birth of Psychoneuroimmunology (Back to Top)
The modern quest to fathom the
mind-body connection dates to 1964, when Norman Cousins, then-editor of the
Saturday Review, was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, a degenerative
connective-tissue disease. Unresponsive to drug therapy and fading fast, Cousins
recalled hearing that positive emotions could boost health. So he checked
himself out of the hospital and into a hotel, where he spent his days
watching funny movies and reading humorous books. Eventually he recovered,
and his extraordinary account was published in the New England Journal of
Medicine in 1976. By 1979, the University of California, Los Angeles, had
established an entire center devoted to Cousins’s idea that the brain and the
immune system were integrated. A new academic discipline with a tongue-twister
of a name — psychoneuroimmunology, or PNI — was born. Traversing the chasm
from Cousins’s anecdotal experience to solid evidence has taken decades, but the
evidence is now firm. Among the findings: Stress, even small amounts caused by
boredom, can cause inflammation, making us ill. Optimists have more stable
cardiovascular systems, more responsive immune systems and a lower hormonal
response to stress. The impact can be traced to our very cells: Life events
such as divorce or bereavement decrease the number of helper T cells, B cells
and natural killer cells needed to fight disease.
From the Outside In (Back to Top)
One scientist fascinated by the findings is Bruce
Lipton, PhD, author of The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of
Consciousness, Matter and Miracles (Hay House, 2008). A cell biologist at
the University of Wisconsin during the 1980s, Lipton suffered through a
devastating divorce on the heels of his father’s death and decided to take a
sabbatical at a medical school on the Caribbean island paradise of
Montserrat. Away from his normal life, he began to question everything,
including a basic premise of biology — that genes in the nucleus of the cell
are life’s masters of control. “That central dogma set us up to feel that we
were victims of our biology,” says Lipton, “that genes sealed our fate, and that
we had no choice or free will, or any power to change our biology.” Yet,
examining the cell anew, Lipton determined that most of the cell’s
“intelligence” could be found not in its nucleus, but in its membrane — the
complex layer enveloping the cell and allowing it to interface with the outside
world. In fact, it was only when the external environment interacted with the
cell that genetic expression was set. A classic experiment by Randy Jirtle,
PhD, shows how it works: Generation after generation of mice carrying the
so-called agouti gene gave rise to offspring that were yellow and fat, and
prone to cancer, diabetes and short lives. Offspring were made healthy not by
manipulating the gene, but by providing pregnant rat mothers with a diet rich in
methyl-containing compounds, turning the toxic gene off. In essence, this
showed that cells were like programmable chips, with the master controllers
exerting influences on the genes from the outside. For humans, these
“epigenetic” influences included experience and the emotional environment
itself. The power of emotion has been convincingly described by Pert, who
elucidated the mechanism in the early 1970s. Back then, as a graduate student at
Johns Hopkins University, she found a tiny structure on the surface of the cell
that interacted — much like a lock would respond to the turning of a key — with
opiate drugs such as morphine and heroin. The very presence of that structure,
now known as the opium receptor, suggested the body produced its own brand of
opiates. Before long, scientists found the source: the natural endorphins
generated when we feel excitement or perform physical exercise like running.
Eventually researchers found receptors for natural versions of cocaine,
valium and caffeine, just to name a few. It turns out that all these innate
substances — a combination of neurotransmitters, hormones and peptides —
wash through our bodies, activating their corresponding cell receptors and
filling us with feelings of bliss, vigilance or dread. The implications here
were remarkable: If the newfound receptors were targets for substances we know
to be drugs, it became clear that a person did not have to ingest or inject an
external drug for the feelings themselves to launch a chemical cascade. Pert
advanced her next breakthrough idea in 1985 at the National Institutes of
Health. Working with her husband, NIH immunologist Michael Ruff, PhD, she showed
that the receptors in the immune system were identical to those in the brain. It
turned out that the mind and body were one, and that health and emotion were
inextricably linked. “We can no longer say that brain is to mind as kidney
is to urine,” says Pert. “The mind is not the product of any organ, not even the
brain.” In fact, she notes, “the body is the subconscious mind, and memories are
stored in the body as well as the brain.”
The Complexities of Stress (Back to Top)
Much attention has been focused in recent years
on the well-documented physical impacts that mental and emotional stress have on
the body. But even this much-ballyhooed mind-body connection still isn’t widely
understood in all of its complexity. In the short term, says University
of British Columbia clinical psychologist Gregory Miller, PhD, stress can serve
a purpose: By boosting the inflammatory immune response, it produces immune
cells and molecules that battle outside invaders, eliminating infection and
healing injury. Indeed, short-term stress is a positive, says
neuroimmunophysiologist Monika Fleshner, PhD, of the University of Colorado in
Boulder, who proved her point by studying lab rats, all of which were exposed to
bacterial infection, and some of which were also exposed to a laboratory
stressor. She found that when rats were infected and exposed to a stressor at
the same time, they fought the infection and stayed healthier than rats not
exposed to a stressor. Normal amounts of short-term stress, says Fleshner,
can boost some white blood cells’ function and help fight infections like colds.
But when stress is long-lasting, the engine of inflammation can run without
end. Over the long term, inflammatory molecules can spill into the brain, where
they may cause apathy, social withdrawal, fatigue and changes in eating habits.
The symptoms look very similar to those of depression, but stress is likely
the cause. Whatever such mood states are labeled, the impact on disease can be
profound: Runaway inflammation is a cause of autoimmune diseases like multiple
sclerosis (immune cells attack the central nervous system), myasthenia gravis
(immune cells attack the junction of nerves and muscles) and lupus (immune cells
attack skin, joints, heart, lungs, blood, kidneys and brain). While stressful
events alone have never been shown to cause these diseases, they are risk
factors, capable of increasing intensity or provoking relapse. But this
equation is complex for most people because stress is linked to self-esteem and
self-expectation. The first part of the formula makes sense: When those with
high self-esteem fail, stress is high. When they succeed, stress is low. But
stress also results whenever success defies expectation. The key, says Duke
University psychologist Timothy Strauman, PhD, is discrepancy: In a study of
students, blood tests showed that those with fewer discrepancies between their
view of themselves and the outcome had a greater natural-killer-cell
activity. Great success brought immune protection to those who thought well of
themselves — but constituted an immune hit for those who felt success was
too fast or undeserved.
The Vulnerable Heart (Back to Top)
We’ve heard that severe emotional losses can be risky
for the heart. But burnout on the job can be just as damaging. For example,
Dutch researchers found that flight controllers in busy airports have faster
heart rates and higher blood pressure than those responsible for fewer planes.
Even ordinary garden-variety burnout (the kind caused by emotional,
physical or cognitive fatigue, or even boredom) can be devastating, notes
epidemiologist Samuel Melamed, PhD, of the Sackler School of Medicine at Tel
Aviv University in Israel. Melamed found that burned-out workers had a
two- to threefold higher risk of heart problems, from myocardial infarction to
stroke. Burnout turned out to be so dangerous that it was at least as culpable
in heart disease as problems traced to obesity, blood pressure and age. But
just as there are certain emotional patterns that can damage the heart, there
are heart-friendly traits and behavioral patterns that can protect it from
damage. One protective characteristic is friendliness. Dutch scientists
asked young extroverts and introverts to focus on tasks. Extroverted children
had more trouble focusing and performed less perfectly in the face of
distraction — but introverted children were more heart-stressed by those
distractions, placing them at future risk. Another protective trait is
trust. Compared with their trusting counterparts, cynics tested by the
University of Michigan had higher rates of fibrinogen, C-reactive protein and
IL-6, all risk factors for narrowing of the arteries and future heart-disease.
The Importance of Optimism (Back to Top)
If PNI holds an overarching good-news message,
it’s that we can nurture the traits and lifestyles that lead to good health.
But there are caveats here as well. Study after study has documented
that immunity is bolstered for those with friends. But contrary to popular
notion, the latest research reveals that having only a few important intimates
may provide less health protection than having a sizable circle of friends.
Scientists at Carnegie Mellon studied the issue by giving freshmen flu
vaccines and then measuring their immune response to the dose. They found that
those with larger social networks had a more powerful immune response than those
with a smaller number of close friends. Freshmen who said they were lonely and
had very few friends had the lowest immunity of all. In another,
parallel study, UCLA researchers identified a distinct pattern of gene
expression in immune cells from people who experience chronically high levels of
loneliness — bringing to mind the science of epigenetics and documenting that
emotions influence not just immune cells but our very genes. Another health
booster is optimism, long considered critical when battling illness or
adversity. Indeed, compared with pessimists, optimists have healthier hearts,
spryer immune systems and a more subdued hormonal response to stress. But
there’s a twist: If your circumstance is arduous, your disease too trying,
optimism can lead to fatigue and temporary suppression of immune
response. Why? “Optimists are less likely to give up in arduous situations,
and giving up is ‘easier’ on the immune system than continuing to exert yourself
to overcome a problem or reach a goal,” explains Suzanne Segerstrom, PhD, a
University of Kentucky psychologist who studies expectant emotion and health.
That may be more helpful in the case of autoimmune illness, where the problem is
inflammation — but less helpful in infection, where immune molecules are needed
to fight the disease. Everything is a trade-off. But researchers seem to
agree that the motivational power of optimism — which encourages you to advocate
for yourself, stick to your health-supporting regimens and see a health
professional when you need to — trumps any immune hit it provokes.
Curative Powers (Back to Top)
Reports that the mind can cure serious disease are
fascinating, but anecdotal to date. While miracle cures will always grab
headlines, PNI findings point to something else: a nuanced, subtle effect that
works T cell by T cell, one immune molecule at a time. Where PNI can
be marshaled fully, however, its importance can be profound. Just ask Tel
Aviv University psychologist Shamgar Ben-Eliyahu, PhD, whose recent study shows
that physiological stress — especially fear — prior to, during and after cancer
surgery, impairs the immune system. “The psychological stressors of surgery deal
a blow to the immune system, but this is hardly discussed in the medical
community,” says Ben-Eliyahu. “Ours is among the first studies to show that
psychological fear may be no less important than real physiological tissue
damage in suppressing immune competence.” The surprising part of
Ben-Eliyahu’s study is that stress hormones such as adrenaline, released before
and during surgery, underlie the immune decline. Until now, doctors assumed that
the immune system was weakened because of tissue damage and the body’s responses
to it. A weak immune system is one of the major factors that promotes cancer
metastases after an operation, Ben-Eliyahu explains. “Timing is everything
after cancer surgery,” he says. “There is a short window of opportunity, about a
week after surgery, when the immune system needs to be functioning maximally in
order to kill the tiny remaining bits of tumor tissue that are scattered around
the body.” To this end, visualization exercises that calm fears and promote
healing are being used in some hospital surgery centers. (For more on the power
of healing visualizations, see “The Mind’s Eye” in the January/February 2007
archives.) But there are pharmaceutical solutions, too:
Ben-Eliyahu is developing a drug protocol to boost the immune system and block
the fear-hormone cascade.
Conscious Living (Back to Top)
As with most modern tools, PNI should be seen as a chisel
and not an ax. Used specifically to boost T cells or lower inflammation, it can
be a powerful ally in fighting disease and staying a healthy course for life.
Understood as a means of adjusting the body’s biochemical balance through mental
repatterning or mind-body exercise and healing techniques, it can be an
important support for optimal well-being and vitality. Meditation,
mindfulness, tai chi and deep-breathing exercises can all prime immunity. Simply
understanding that negative moods and feelings threaten lifelong well-being can
prompt you to seek treatment for mental and emotional pain before your heart is
damaged or inflammation spirals out of control. Nurture your friendships;
address toxic emotions before they become entrenched. “Unless we can use the
mind to communicate with the immune system,” says Pert, “we may never achieve
our optimum level of health.” Pamela Weintraub is a senior
editor at Discover magazine.
In the Womb (Back to Top)
The body-mind connection starts earlier than you think. Incontrovertible evidence shows that health strengths and vulnerabilities
may be transmitted by mothers to babies in the womb based on the mother’s
emotional state during pregnancy. Psychiatrist Thomas R. Verny, MD, DPsych,
FRCPC, of the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, one of the world’s foremost
authorities on prenatal and early postnatal environment and its impact on
health, has tracked the findings for years. Nuance is often the key. One
study he points to comes from University of Salzburg psychologist Gerhard
Rottman, who studied 141 women, dividing them into four categories of maternal
suitability from “ideal” to “catastrophic.” Mothers labeled ideal, because they
deeply wanted their babies, had the easiest pregnancies and deliveries and the
healthiest offspring. Those labeled catastrophic clearly didn’t want their
babies — they had the most extreme medical problems during pregnancy and
the highest rate of low-weight, premature and emotionally disturbed infants.
But the most interesting findings came from the two intermediate groups;
these mothers said they wanted their children, but psychological tests revealed
something amiss. These unconsciously ambivalent mothers gave birth to babies who
were often irritable due to gastrointestinal problems or nerves. Verny
explains: “Maternal molecules of emotion, including stress hormones, such as
adrenaline and noradrenaline, neurohormones, and sex hormones, reach the unborn
child through the umbilical cord and the placenta. In this sense, the unborn
child is as much a part of the mother’s body as her heart and liver.” Of all
the emotional risk factors we face from our time in the womb onward, the best
documented and most corrosive is probably stress. Verny ticks off results from
studies in recent years: - Mothers of schizophrenic offspring are almost
twice as likely to have rated themselves depressed during the sixth or seventh
month of pregnancy.
- Babies whose mothers were under stress while
pregnant are at higher risk for hyperactivity, motor problems and attention
deficits than babies of calm mothers.
- Emotionally disturbed mothers
give birth to babies at higher risk for sleep problems, digestive problems and
irritability. Other health risks include cleft lip, cleft palate, spina
bifida, heart disease, hypertension, high cholesterol, osteoporosis and future
fractures, enhanced susceptibility to seizures, adult type 2 diabetes, and
various types of immune dysfunction.
There are hundreds of such studies, says
Verny, and evidence only mounts. “Emotional disturbances in the pregnant
mother lead to increased production of stress hormones,” he says. “These, in
turn, can have adverse impact on gene regulation, precipitating excessive
destruction of neurons and synapses, changing organization and function of the
brain, and damaging the baby’s future ability to deal with stress.” The good
news? The inverse holds as well, he says. “Maternal emphasis on joy and love
bathes the growing brain in feel-good endorphins and neurohormones such as
oxytocin, promoting a lifelong sense of well-being.”
More Resources From Experience Life (Back to Top)
For more on the health connection
between our minds and our bodies, check out the following articles in our
archives:
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