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

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—

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.

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

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

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

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?

These biological responses are adaptive in the emergencies for which nature designed them. But

The oft-observed relationship between stress, impaired immunity and illness has given rise to the concept of “diseases of adaptation,” a phrase of Hans Selye’s. The flight-or-fight response, it is argued, was indispensable in an era when early human beings had to confront a natural world of predators and other dangers. In civilized society, however

Perhaps I am overly sensitized to the issue of blame, but then most people are. Shame is the deepest of the “negative emotions,” a feeling we will do almost anything to avoid. Unfortunately, our abiding fear of shame impairs our ability to see reality.