Chapter 2: The True Nature of Your Mind
Chapter 2 excerpt: The True Nature of Your Mind: How it Protects You and Hurts You
"A 37-year-old male who'd had chronic prostatitis, an inflammation of the prostate gland, for 17 years came to see me. His symptoms included urinary frequency and urgency, lower abdominal and testicular pain, and occasional burning during urination, and he was in a great deal of discomfort. Urological studies show that in 92% of prostatitis cases, there is no associated infection -- that is, the prostate is inflamed, but tests don't reveal any medical problem. Physicians call such a problem a "functional disorder."
"I told this man that we frequently store negative emotions in the body, and that they can cause actual physical problems, including functional disorders, such as prostatitis. In the course of our conversation, he said that his mother was very abusive toward him when he was growing up, and that he had a tremendous amount of anger about it, but he had "held it in" for years.
"I explained that his resisting feeling those negative emotions over the years had likely caused his chronic prostatitis. We worked together for one session, using direct clearing methods to address his pent-up anger. Shortly thereafter, he was symptom-free for the first time in nearly two decades. At subsequent follow-ups, he remained symptom-free."
- Eric B. Robins, MD
In a typical visit to a doctor, a patient might complain of a headache, insomnia, backache, vague stomach or abdominal discomfort, or urinary problem. The physician, being a scientist and wanting to be thorough, notes the patientâs symptoms and conducts an examination. He or she then offers what is called the "differential diagnosis," which is the spectrum of possible reasons for the symptoms, ranging from the simplest and least problematic to the most severe and life-threatening. The doctor bases the differential diagnosis on his experience observing these symptoms, their frequency, location, and severity, as well as the patient's medical history. For example, the differential diagnosis for a headache might include sinus headache, muscle tension caused by poor posture at a person's desk, migraine, even a brain tumor. One differential diagnosis for abdominal discomfort might include indigestion, mild food poisoning, irritable bowel syndrome, an ulcer, or the early stages of stomach cancer.
The doctor then orders a few diagnostic tests to check for any serious illnesses.
Several days later, the doctor calls the patient with the results, and the news is good. "All your tests are negative; there's nothing wrong," the doctor says. The patient is relieved that there is no serious problem but then asks, "Why am I still having symptoms if nothing's wrong?"
The doctor replies, "Well, we're really not sure," and again tries to reassure the patient that this condition, though without an apparent cause, is nothing serious. The doctor continues, "If your symptoms are creating too much discomfort, we can give you something to help you feel better." This usually means a prescription -- for example, extra-strength Motrin for severe headaches, muscle relaxers for back or neck tension, or a stomach acid inhibitor such as Tagamet for indigestion, to name a few popularly dispensed medications. These remedies may or may not relieve the symptoms.
Thus, the patient often comes away from the encounter without any real understanding of the problem, its cause or what can be done, other than to take medicine to control the symptoms.
Seventy percent of all visits to a primary care physician proceed like this, with patients seeking treatment for difficult-to-diagnose problems called functional disorders, which are ailments that cause real, discernible symptoms but that present no medically detectable cause: no virus, bacteria, tumor, mass, or structural abnormality. Functional disorders include problems such as irritable bowel syndrome and many other types of gastrointestinal complaints, many types of headaches and backaches, many types of urinary urgency and frequency, many types of pelvic pain in women, and so on. These problems are termed "functional" because, despite a lack of perceptible pathology, the body's functioning is disrupted. Even though there is no apparent reason for the symptoms, however, people with functional disorders still suffer real pain and discomfort. Crushing headaches can prevent them from leading a normal life; chronic gastrointestinal upsets can interfere with their ability to enjoy many foods; painful back spasms can render them bedridden; the overpowering and sometimes embarrassing need to go to the bathroom may occur at inconvenient or difficult times.
Even though they willingly prescribe medications to control these symptoms, many physicians believe that people with functional disorders are either exaggerating their complaints (hypochondria), or are stressed-out, depressed, or anxiety-ridden. In other words, these physicians believe that such ailments are "all in the patient's head."
Functional disorders and many health problems are in our head because our "head" - or more properly, our mind - is actually located throughout our entire body. Our mind is inseparable from our body, so if we have a health problem in our head/mind, we've also got one in our body. This is the essence of the mind-body connection, which refers to a different, deeper understanding of a disorder that's "in a patient's head."
The Mind-Body Connection
There is certainly ample proof that we accept intuitively the link between mind and body. For example, we say, "you'll worry yourself sick," and "I was so stressed out I couldn't sleep," both of which demonstrate a belief that the mind can produce a physical effect on the body. Even the physician who orders up a drug that he knows will only relieve the symptoms of an ailment he believes is caused by stress is acknowledging that this person somehow is thinking himself sick.
Medical research is turning up harder scientific evidence that this mind-body link is not only intuitive, it's physiological. The most compelling data may come from Dr. Candace Pert, a psycho-neuroimmunologist who has studied the effect of the mind and emotions on health. Dr. Pert's work has focused on bio-chemicals called "neuropeptides," which were found to be "messenger molecules" that carry the signals or commands from the brain to every cell in the body. Dr. Pert discovered that these neuropeptides act like keys that fit into locks, or specific sites on cells, called receptors. These receptors were found to cover the surface of all the cells in the body, including the immune system, the endocrine system, and those parts of the body controlled by the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS regulates many of the functions in our bodies that happen involuntarily, such as pulse rate, breathing, sweating, digestion, blood flow, etc. Neuropeptides help us run our automatic bodily processes. They carry messages that tell the cells in the lungs to breathe in and out, the cells in the adrenal glands to release adrenaline, and so on. But these neuropeptides also carry, according to Dr. Pert's research, commands for our emotions. Thus, if someone is happy or sad or angry, a certain neuropeptide would carry that particular feeling throughout the body. While the definitive experiment that would identify in a rigorously scientific way which neuropeptide carries which emotion has yet to be devised, Dr. Pert nonetheless feels confident enough to assert that these neuropeptides are the "biochemical correlates of emotion." Dr. Pert also states that this system of messenger molecules and receptors represents a "psychosomatic communication network" that is the physiological link between the mind, the emotions and the body. Messenger molecules are basically "chakra juice," she says. "The chemicals that mediate emotion and the receptors for those chemicals are found in every cell in the body."
Thus, modern medicine demonstrates scientifically what we know intuitively: that the mind is located throughout the body.
