When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-disease Connection

It is astonishing to learn that lymph cells and other white blood cells are capable of manufacturing nearly all the hormones and messenger substances produced in the brain and nervous system. Even endorphins, the body’s intrinsic morphine-like mood-altering chemicals and painkillers, can be secreted by lymphocytes. And these immune cells also have

Emotional competence requires • the capacity to feel our emotions, so that we are aware when we are experiencing stress; • the ability to express our emotions effectively and thereby to assert our needs and to maintain the integrity of our emotional boundaries; • the facility to distinguish between psychological reactions that are pertinent to the

The higher the level of economic development, it seems, the more anaesthetized we have become to our emotional realities.

Disease, in other words, is not a simple result of some external attack but develops in a vulnerable host in whom the internal environment has become disordered.

The NEJM editorial confused blame and responsibility. While all of us dread being blamed, we all would wish to be more responsible—that is, to have the ability to respond with awareness to the circumstances of our lives rather than just reacting. We want to be the authoritative person in our own lives: in charge, able to make the authentic decision

“Now, I’m not saying it’s the mother’s fault. It has to do with the position of women in society and the relationships people get into. I’m talking only about the child’s experience. The child doesn’t know it, since you can’t miss what you’re not familiar with, but the child is actually experiencing abandonment by the mom. When you say ‘that wouldn

Tumour dormancy is affected by many hormonal and immunological influences, all of them functions of the PNI system and all of them highly susceptible to life stresses.

Repression—dissociating emotions from awareness and relegating them to the unconscious realm—disorganizes and confuses our physiological defences so that in some people

The combined task of this psychoneuroimmunoendocrine (PNI)* system is to ensure the development, survival and reproduction of each organism. The interconnections among the components of the PNI system enable it to recognize potential threats from within or without, and to respond with behaviours and biochemical changes coordinated to maximize safet

A less judgmental way to put this would be that the child perceived himself to be responsible for his mother’s emotional suffering.