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

Since there is no reliable way of deciding when treatment works, what are people who “survive” their prostate cancer really surviving—their treatment or their disease?

a statistically significant degree, were more likely to demonstrate the following traits: “the elements of denial and repression of anger and of other negative emotions . . . the external

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

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.

Consummatory behaviour—from the Latin consummare, “to complete”—is behaviour that removes the danger or relieves the tension caused by it. We recall that stress-inducing stimuli are not always objective external threats like predators or potential physical disasters but also include internal perceptions that something we consider essential is lacki

The hub of the PNI system is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal nexus: the HPA axis. It is through the activation of the HPA axis that both psychological and physical stimuli set in motion the body’s responses to threat. Psychological stimuli are first evaluated in the emotional centres known as the limbic system, which includes parts of the cerebr

The nervous system is deeply influenced by emotions. In turn, the nervous system is intimately involved in the regulation of immune responses and of inflammation. Neuropeptides, protein molecules secreted by nerve cells, serve to promote inflammation or to inhibit it. Such molecules are found in heavy concentration in the intestines, in the areas m

Many children are conditioned in this manner not because of any intended harm or abuse, but because the parents themselves are too threatened by the anxiety, anger or sadness they sense in their child—

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