Rediscovering the Mind-Body Connection
A fragmented healthcare
Modern medicine is considered to have been born in Ancient Greece, to a society that believed health was a balance between physical, mental and external factors. They understood that diet, trauma, beliefs, mindset, social class and even geographical location played important roles alongside the obvious physical factors that determine one’s health. Their opinions reflected an innate understanding of a mind-body connection, two parts of an all encompassing system that are capable of bidirectional communication, with one able to influence the other and vice versa.
The father of modern medicine, Hippocrates, considered that treatment of illness was only successful when viewed holistically.
He believed that to treat a physical ailment, the mind must also be considered, that the systems worked in harmony rather than independently, as is the current view.
Our modern view has become segmented due to fundamental shifts in thinking over the ages. 17th century philosopher Descartes described the body as a machine, and that the mind is merely a manifestation of the churning cogs of the brain. This analogy of the body as a machine lead to treating the patient as a physical machine, and consideration of emotions and feelings in conjunction with “mechanical” elements seized to make sense.
For centuries the disciplines treating mind and body, psychology and medicine, developed more or less independently of each other. Each making important strides forward in their ability to understand and treat health, but their own definitions of health.
Sometimes, the old ways are the best
In recent years, the steps taken by modern psychology have uncovered once more this forgotten route between the mind and the body. The advent of neuroscience, and the increasing sophistication of research methods have unveiled that emotions, thoughts, feelings and indeed mental health problems have a biological basis and therefore are connected with the body. Disorders such as depression, and anxiety are accepted as having both physiological and mental counterparts, and successful treatment often considers both of these areas.
However, our healthcare systems remain segmented, and while each wedge of our healthcare continues to grow and deepen its knowledge, these fragmented pieces no longer connect with each other to give us a complete view. We have lost the bigger picture. The current overarching view dictates that mental health can be influenced by the body, specifically the brain and central nervous system, and not the body as a whole entity. The current opinion also overlooks the idea that mental states can influence our physical health.
Paracelsus, a pioneer renaissance medicine, maintained that the only way to treat a disease or affliction was to care for the whole being, rather than simply the affected area. Several hundred years later we are seeing modern scientists, in the face of their research findings, coming to the same conclusion as Paracelsus. We are seeing an accelerating amount of evidence coming out of research labs across the globe, telling us it’s time to review the current status quo, and recognise that we had the right idea centuries ago.
It’s becoming a reality that we could be healthier and happier people if we remembered our forgotten knowledge of the mind-body connection.
Our bodies and minds are in constant conversation, while this is often very subtle below are examples that illustrate this relationship, and demonstrate how we can take advantage of it to be happier and healthier.
Mind over matter
The 1960s saw Dr Aaron Beck pioneer Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) as a method for treating almost all mental illness. Most recent data supports that it is as effective or more so than medication alternatives. A fundamental principle of CBT is that modifying our cognitions can impact symptoms of mental health disorders.
Take, for example, a person living with depression. They may have negative thoughts about themselves, the world, and/or the future. These thoughts can then influence the person’s feelings and emotions and behaviour, but they also may also have physical manifestations such as chronic pain (headaches, back pain, muscle aches, chest pain), exhaustion and fatigue, changes in appetite, sleep problems (insomnia/hypersomnia). A person undertaking CBT would work on making changes to their thoughts, which would, in turn, have the impact of reducing both their mental and physical symptoms, highlighting the link between mind and body. CBT presents us with an example of how we can take advantage of the mind-body connection to promote a holistic wellbeing of both body and mind.
Panic attacks are often successfully overcome through CBT, and offer us a glimpse into the bidirectional nature of the body-mind connection. They’re catalysed by cognitions that are perceived as dangerous/threatening/negative and therefore activate the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) through and generate physical responses to prepare the body for a fight or flight response. These responses (such as elevated heart rate, sweating, increased breathing) are then evaluated by the mind, and in the occurrence of a panic attack it is concluded, like the thoughts, that they present danger, this evaluation spurs the SNS on further. In this situation the actions of both body and mind not only fuel the panic attack but feed off each other, communicating back and forth. For someone experiencing a panic attack the sensation is very physical, they may feel as though they can’t breathe, they may become dizzy and lose feeling in their limbs, it’s likely for them to experience tunnel vision and have a racing heart; but the therapy to reduce the occurrence of attacks focusses on changing the cognitions that trigger the physical response. Mind over matter.
Killer emotions
Dying from a broken heart is the most romantic illustration of the ultimate power of the mind on the body. Many would consider this concept a poetic interpretation of the weight of grief, with seemingly no place in medicine. However, Tako-Tsubo syndrome is, in fact, a recognised cardiovascular condition where the heart becomes suddenly weakened, leading to heart failure, and amongst its causes is extreme emotional distress… such as bereavement.
History has long pondered the possibility of dying from a broken heart, where the intense and overwhelming emotion of grief can literally cause the physical heart to stop beating.
Well, evidence dating back to the 1970s has proven that grief is not only a possible cause of Tako-Tsubo syndrome, but that it is also the most common cause.
The power of the placebo effect
The placebo effect is a widely understood phenomenon. It demonstrates that in the absence of a given substance, people will still feel its effects. These findings have been replicated with all kinds of illness, proving the power of thought on the body, even to the extent of helping to heal it.
Healing with happiness
Demonstrated by the placebo effect, our thoughts can heal the body.
Our bodies use our thoughts as a guide, they instruct our immune systems for the good or the bad.
This has given rise to a new area of study — Affective Immunology, which has shown us that negative moods are linked with higher levels of inflammation (related to poorer health). Studies have also found that negative moods precede inflammation, therefore inferring causality. Further to this, scientists shown that negative emotions are also linked with lower immunity. A pioneering study back 2003 established this mind-body link through brain imaging. Their results demonstrated that increased activation of the right prefrontal cortex when remembering negative events was linked with lower antibody levels, whereas increased activity in the right prefrontal cortex when remembering positive events was linked with increased antibody levels. From this, we can deduce that fostering a positive emotional disposition may improve your physical health.
The concept that positive thinking can be healing, and that it could protect us from disease seems the opposite of scientific. However, science tells us the story of why how it works. Both the emotional response and the immunological response have evolved to evaluate and respond to external stimuli, for the emotional response this may be reaction to a situation or event, for the immunological response this may be a response to an invading pathogen. There is evidence to show that when presented with either category of stimuli, both systems are activated, and the responsibility to respond is weighted between the two. For example, when we are responding to an infection, the immune system activates the fever response to rid the body of the pathogen. The emotional system, on the other hand, responds by protecting us from activities that may worsen our condition, it makes us lethargy, depression, anxiety, loss of appetite, sleepiness are all factors which protect us.
Equipped with this knowledge that there is a mutual connection between the mind and body, we can go forward and potentially add another treatment option to our arsenal in fighting both physical and mental illness. Scientists are already producing promising data to determine that interventions in amending affect and cognition may have therapeutic use. We’ve seen that mind-body therapies (MBT) can improve symptoms related to oncologic pathology in children as well as improving symptoms for patients of congestive heart failure. We also have the opportunity to go as far as preventing illness and promoting our physical health through moderating our mental affect.
Recently, a link has been found between conscientiousness and a reduced inflammatory response. Conscientiousness is one of the Big 5 personality factors, those scoring highly for this trait are mindful of those around them, are more empathetic to others, feel a sense of duty and tend to be reliable and organised. They also tend to live longer! This may be explained by the reduced inflammatory response linked with this personality trait, making some illnesses less likely to manifest in this population. While these areas of research is still in its infancy, we can theorise that teaching things like conscientiousness in schools may open up the possibility to vaccinate people against illness, or at least prevent them.
You are what you eat
The system also works the other way too. Our bodies can dictate our minds, and the perfect example of this comes in the form of nutritional psychiatry/psychology. A recently emerging body of research has shown, for the first time, that the body (outside of the brain) can impact our psychological experience.
Nutritional Psychiatry is illuminating the role of the gut in mental health. The gastrointestinal tract is home to neurons, evidence that there is a highway of information between the gut and the brain. Further to this, it has been found that up to 95% of the body’s serotonin is produced here, the neurotransmitter responsible for mood regulation and is implicated in affect disorders such as depression. We are now at the stage where treating mental health with amends to diet is within the realm of possibility, signifying the importance of considering the whole body and taking a holistic view on health.
A unified healthcare
Modern healthcare is losing out on exploring new and effective treatment and prevention options because it considers health in fragments. Evidence tells us that its time to unite these disparate segments and understand that the mind-body connection is powerful, and could open the door to the next significant leap forward in medicine. The fathers of medicine had the right idea centuries ago, they only lacked modern technology to both prove it, and take full advantage of it. We are now in a position to harness the powers of cognition on our immune response and resistance to disease, and to use diet as another line of defence and prevention against mental health problems.
