Mind and Body: How thought can make the body sick

Thursday, 13 de January de 2022

Have you ever felt pain in your body during times of stress and tension? Have you ever fallen ill when you were in a busy week with various activities related to study or work? Have you ever felt pain in your head, belly and even your heart when you went through periods of great anxiety?

Well, in this blog today we will see how the mind can make our body sick and what we should do to reduce stress, anxiety and their effects on our body.

Psychosomatic medicine is the science that seeks to understand the effects of social and psychological factors on the human body. For American researchers, Candace Pert and Bruce Lipton, thoughts can make the body sick. Scientists go further and claim that there is a biology of feelings. For them, our thinking is able to activate and deactivate genes and can trigger the formation of molecules that are harmful to our organism, that is called emotion molecules.

Dr Carlos Durgante, doctor and member of the Brazilian Medical Spiritist Association (AME-Brazil), reveals in an interview that the disease can also be caused by chronic dysfunctions in the emotional energy pattern and by the individual's lack of care for himself.

In this context, body and mind are interconnected through a nerve pathway called hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal, structures that regulate hormones related to stress and anxiety. In this field of study, the researcher created the term Psiconeuroimmunology, which studies the correlation between neural, endocrine and immune processes.

To this end, we know that the mind can modulate our immune system by reducing or increasing the production of antibodies. A study by experts at Pennsylvania State University in State College and published in the journal Brain, Behaviour, and Immunity showed that individuals who experience chronic emotional stress may experience increased biomarkers of inflammation in their circulation.

Therefore, situations that lead to anxiety, tension, deep sadness, stress can trigger pathological processes in the body causing inflammatory, infectious, autominune diseases and neoplasms.

In this way, good practices can help to reduce psychological problems and contribute to a healthier lifestyle. Meditation, healthy eating, physical activity and spiritual balance are habits that can favor the mind-body balance and, consequently, assist in the health-disease process.

References:

Piana, A. Emocional responde por mais da metade das doenças do corpo. Disponível em: <http://revistaservioeste.com.br/noticias/emocional-responde-por-mais-da-metade-das-doencas-do-corpo> Acesso: 09.01.2020

Cohut, M. How do our emotions affect our immune response?. Disponível em:<https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324090.php#1> Acesso em: 09.02.2020

D'Acquisto, F. Affective immunology: where emotions and the immune response converge. Dialogues Clin Neurosci. 2017

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Autor:

Tamara Nunes

#socialinteraction #neurophilosophy #neurocognition