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;void(0)) The word “psychosomatics” was first used in German medical literature back in the 1920s. The realization that mind and body are interrelated can be traced back to African and Oriental cultures thousands of years ago. Five centuries before the birth of Christ, Hippocrates postulated that to effect cures it was necessary for doctors to “have a knowledge of the whole of things.” During the Middle Ages both physical and mental illnesses were treated by ministering to the whole person, through that part of him that theology called his soul. For centuries it was taken for granted that people die of grief, that unrequited love could cause illness, that fear and anger could make men ill. Every emotion you feel is a physical event. When you have a strong emotional experience, even one generated by watching a TV show, hormones are secreted and your body chemistry is altered. When the feelings are particularly strong the physical reactions are likely to be equally extreme. A sustained state of emotional upset may cause changes that lead to disease. Your psyche may trigger the overreaction of hormones, which may produce a disease process. Our bodies are always trying to attain a state of equilibrium. When stress upsets this balance it tries to adapt by secreting chemicals. This alteration can be damaging to the rest of the organism. If you think that matters like bills, job stress, and various types of change, which are common in today’s culture will not cause disease, you’d better think again. Big events, whether good or bad, may make you vulnerable to illness. The fast-paced stressors of everyday life are taking their toll on all of us. However, what makes one of us develop one form of disease or another is based upon our personality make-up. Thus, someone with an inherited predisposition to diabetes may develop symptoms of the disease during a stressful period. Not included in this discussion about psychosomatics are diseases that are strictly inherited or certain types of infections: hemophilia; HIV infections; pollutants; allergic reactions; etc. However, it is possible that in many of these cases the level of impairment may be increased by stress. In other words the person’s reaction to a particular stressor may intensify the course of the illness. In this time of rapid technological advances it is common for medical professionals to ignore the interrelationship of a patient’s emotions, physiology and the environment. Medicine can make great strides forward if it learns to take into account the patient’s emotions in combining the mind and body in the treatment of ailments. Cumulative problems of interpersonal relationships produce a large share of the tensions and anxieties that beset the human being and upset her physiology. Socio-economic factors also come into consideration when the physician is dealing with people of lower economic means whose daily interactions with the environment could be radically different to that of sample populations of research studies. Over the next few months I will discuss other factors related to psychosomatics. Newsletter Directory The Aton Project - Home Page Tony VanSluytman info Tony VanSluytman - the Author | Return Home | The BOOK DOCTOR | The BANYON NETWORK | The Banyon Buzz Newsletters | The Aton Project Newsletters | Contact Us | |
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