How you think and feel emotionally can contribute to your physical health and well-being -- it's just that simple. The list of scientific studies demonstrating that point comes from diverse fields of study including medicine, neuroscience, immunology, genetics, psychiatry and psychology.
Integrative medicine is fast becoming the examplar of approaches to healthcare based on the importance of treating the whole person -- taking into account body and mind -- in health promotion, disease treatment and prevention. The mind influences the body, and the body influences the mind.
It is now well known that chronic stress is a significant contributor to illness and the leading cause of death worldwide. Psychiatric disorders like anxiety and depression are on the rise in adults and children, and they are estimated to affect as many as one in two adults at some point in the lifespan. Science shows that stress affects a wide range of physiological states in the body, particularly the immune response, but also factors important in aging (like telomere shortening). A recent study of social anxiety conducted at UCLA illustrates the powerful role such anxiety can have on our body's inflammatory response, and other research is showing how body illnesses like irritable bowel disease have associated brain states.
Thus the mind is a powerful vehicle for reducing body health. But conversely, it may be a powerful vehicle for enhancing it, as well.
Yet modern medicine provides very little in the way of a doctor's prescription to treat our mind states when dealing with health issues. We may be told to relax or be less stressed, but very often there is no remedy to do so (aside from momentary release in prescription meds when severe enough). It is where the role of mind-body practices like meditation, tai chi, yoga, or other forms of tailored exercises for mental health is needed.
Research, albeit still limited, is indicating that mindfulness practices (exercises that increase present-moment awareness) are very beneficial to health and well-being, influencing a wide range of physiological and subjective states including:
The mechanisms of how mindfulness alters brain and body physiology is under investigation by labs around the world, but preliminary findings demonstrate changes in brain function and structure, immune cytokines, stress hormones and gene expression patterns, to name a few.
The means by which mindfulness influences health and well-being will be a topic of science for decades to come, but what is already suggested is that it alters our relationship with thoughts and emotions so that there is a level of "decentering" that arises, where our experiences are seen as less attached. In a way, there is a greater sense of awareness that these experience are part of the human condition and less personal or attached to oneself. By practicing mindfulness exercises (a whole host of practices is available from books, courses and free downloads) on a regular basis, we can learn to relate to life's experiences (whether that is an illness, a pain or a negative mental thought) with greater ease and equanimity.
Scientific evidence suggests that this can and does enhance our health, regardless of the particular circumstances that may be hindering it.
For more information see, "Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness" (Smalley and Winston, 2010). To get free mindfulness practices, go to www.marc.ucla.edu and click on "Mindfulness Meditations."
Follow Susan Smalley, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/suesmalley
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I have a young son to care for. I am in pain and fatigued and fluey everyday. I have been this way for years. I have been to many drs of course, my story is long and complex. But the point I am making is that I believe stress (in all of its forms) is the root cause of my disorders. i could get into a deeper analysis of this here, but I will keep my point short:
The structural make up of our society needs to change in order for stress to be reduced. We need free child care. We need free health care. We need to end poverty. We need to work less hours. We need more social safety nets and services to keep families out of crisis. We need less consumerism and less TV and more TIME to relax. We need time to be in nature. The demands are too high. Even if you lead a simplified lifestyle, and I think I do to a degree, you have to work to get food on the table. Just meeting these basic needs IS stressful.
Thanks for letting me rant. I am glad for this article.
Vivid dreaming - with drugs?
While the medical jury is still out on this question, the popular heart patient drug marketed by Pfizer is in a class of medications known as "statins".
Statins work, a heart doctor in Taiwan tells this reporter, by inhibiting an enzyme that results in lower levels of something called LDL, sometimes referred to as "bad" cholesterol, and raises levels of HDL, aka "good" cholesterol.
According to the medical literature out there online, clinical trials have indicated that ''abnormal'' - that is to say, "vivid dreams" - are sometimes seen in patients taking Lipitor following heart attacks and stent procedures..However, confirmed reports of such dreaming are still rare, occurring in less than two percent of patients studied so far.
Only the Big Pharma companies know for sure, and they aren't talking.
It's too bad that the old Omni magazine is gone, and of course, publisher Omni's Bob Guccione has passed over to the other side. What might be interesting, says a source at Princeton University, would be to see "more public discussion of the effects of legal and illegal drugs on dreams, as opposed to hallucinations".
"If Lipitor causes pleasant and happy vivid dreaming because it's a statin, perhaps some statins could be used as recreational drugs," the professor added, noting with an Isaac Asimov kind of smile
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This is a very old idea.
'As a Man Thinketh'
the full potential of benefits from mindfulness is from learning TM ; tm.org
" being with the sensation " in the body during meditation to ease stress release or healing is one of the very helpful suggestion made on TM(tm) course retreats since the 1961
the real value of learning from a TM teacher, not a book, is 200% of potential benefit actualized
piano isnt learned from a book;
I guess the point here is simple. Throughout our time together, never ever forget the interrelationship between emotion and movement; indeed, our physical being. And it’s always a two-way dynamic - emotion expressed physically, as well as the physical expressed emotionally.
If you feel anxious about a situation, your stomach hurts, your heart races, your throat tightens.
If you feel upset/happy/shocked/etc your body reacts in a certain way. Mind controls body. We just need to figure out what buttons go where, but I believe that controlling your health or healing yourself is theoretically possible.
Some of the emotional detoxification protocols that have been successfully used are those found in Family Constellation work pioneered by Bert Hellinger. For info in this area, see “The Healing of Individuals, Families & Nations” by John Payne.
A discussion of the relationship between emotional and physical detoxification can be found in “Nature’s Detox Plan.’
Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com
A research organization
This will all probably change RADICALLY in our near lifetimes. Unfortunately.
But I dont' focus on that because we are what we believe and put into everyday practice.
"Duh" doesn't fit. We can't hear this enough. Let's just hope that it spreads a lot faster than it currently is.
Thank you.