Please note, I’m not a medical practitioner. Consult with your doctor for diagnostic and treatment options related to any health conditions. That being said, suppose you’ve been on an endless pain relief scavenger hunt. Despite concerted efforts, you’re no further with symptom abatement. Maybe it’s time to step outside conventional boxes. Physical and/or psychological incapacitation keeps us stuck. You’re unable to do the things you need to accomplish or wish to do. What if there is potential for a reprieve, no matter how slight, at no cost to you except for a few minutes of time? Would that be life-altering? If nothing else, the data that you gather from this blog series might offer possibilities for a more informed, comprehensive understanding. Use the information for future conversations with your well-care practitioner(s). Best wishes along your healing journey.
Curating Through the 24/7 Info Onslaught
When searching for information, tracking down and plowing through research reports, data, statistics, then determining source credibility can be a time-consuming, mind-boggling, onerous task whether on-site at a library or online.
Image by Foundry Co from Pixabay
Inevitably, Information comes at us 24/7. At times, to me, it feels like crushing message bombardment. Sifting through, if you have the patience, you’ll likely find useful tidbits. Whether coming across information that is either new to you or relatively recently discovered, I believe it’s beneficial to approach the content with curious skepticism.
Searching for information, tracking down and plowing through research reports, data, statistics, then determining source credibility can be a time-consuming, mind-boggling, onerous task whether on-site at a library or online. An adult with ADHD traits is likely either to not have the patience and stamina to start or follow-through to get the desired info; or there’s a tendency for others to hyperfocus to the point of forgetting to eat, use the restroom, and missing appointments or other commitments. Therefore, I thought it would be useful to share with you just a fraction of what I’ve uncovered about chronic conditions and the mind-body connection. Inevitably this will save you time and hassle. Then, it’s up to you to take it, leave it, or dive deeper if you choose.
What We Know is Only What We Know in This Moment
Even as an adherent to science, we only know what we know at any given time. The earth was flat until it wasn’t. DDT, ALAR, agent orange, PCBs, BPA, red dye #2 were considered safe until further research or health and environmental fall-out revealed otherwise. Health sciences now prescribe cures and medical procedures for life-threatening ailments that were assured death sentences not too long ago. My grandmother, as a little girl, only dreamed of people going to the moon. It wasn’t possible in her youth. As far as she knew, it was impossible.
We’re light years beyond what we knew about the brain, the nervous system, and their symbiotic relationship with the body from where we were mere decades ago. We still have miles and many neural pathways to traverse before we fully understand how and why we operate the way we do. Human parts are human parts yet they can operate differently from you to me. Keeping an open mind toward the vastness around what is unknown about our physiology, what is known at this very moment, and what may come tomorrow creates opportunities. Opportunities provide hope. With hope, there’s a sense of safety. Safety allows our brains and nervous systems to turn down the volume enough to return to a state of rest and repair. To heal what ails us. To live fully.
Healthy Skepticism is Healthy
Turning back to curious skepticism. I’m skeptical by nature. Ok, perhaps more cynical at times than skeptical. I understand that you may view the mind-body branch of sciences with a touch of uncertainty. If you’re experiencing chronic pain in your back, your neck, or knee or continuous inflammatory patchy flares on the inside of your elbows, scalp, or face how could it possibly be your brain or nervous system driving that agony, despair, embarrassment? The connection may be difficult to compute. That’s ok because I’ve heard experts in this field talk about their own experiences when they’ve dismissed the possibility that their minds are influencing their pain. Yet, we rarely if ever question the butterflies in our stomachs before public speaking, the tension headaches at tax time, the stress induced heart attacks. Those correlations are well established.
Since I began this series back in early autumn 2024, I’ve shared a lot of information related to physical, mental, and emotional chronic conditions. I tried not to bore you with lots of data and scientific references. This month, I’ve chosen to highlight a few scientific-based research studies and quotes from prominent research institutes to give a bit more credence to mind-body afflictions. If you come away with nothing else than some nuggets for a conversation starter with your healthcare practitioner, you’ll have some understanding and direction to explore before all hope is lost.
Quotes from the Journals, Research Institutes & Medical Practices
Below are just a few examples of quotes from studies published or re-published by reputed health institutes.
From the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
“In 1964, psychiatrist George Solomon noticed that people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) got worse when they were depressed. He began to investigate the impact emotions had on inflammation and the immune system in general. The new field was called psychoneuroimmunology ("psycho" for psychology; "neuro" for neurology, or nervous system; and "immunology" for immunity).”
https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/treatment/mind-body-medicine
“In the 1960s and early 1970s, a physician named Herbert Benson, who coined the term "relaxation response," studied how meditation could affect blood pressure. More understanding of the mind-body link came in 1975, when psychologist Robert Ader showed that mental and emotional cues could affect the immune system.”
https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/treatment/mind-body-medicine
From the Mayo Clinic Press
“A groundbreaking brain-imaging study published in 2023 demonstrated how the many functions of the mind and body are interwoven. The study showed that the parts of the brain that control movement are tightly meshed with the networks responsible for conscious efforts, such as thinking and planning, as well as involuntary ones such as heartbeat and blood pressure. The findings suggest that the perceptions of the mind are literally linked to the actions of the body.”
“Other research has shown that the mind can have a powerful influence on the body. Chronic mental stress directly affects not only our emotional wellness but our physical health as well. When we are distressed, especially for extended periods of time, it dampens our immune system response, lowering our resilience and making us more vulnerable to a long list of health problems. Chronic stress, for example, can increase levels of molecules called pro-inflammatory cytokines, an overabundance of which contributes to chronic inflammation and illnesses such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some types of cancer.”
“For example, evidence indicates that people who have diabetes are 2 to 3 times more likely to be depressed, and people who have chronic pain often experience anxiety.”
https://mcpress.mayoclinic.org/living-well/mind-body-connection-ancient-wisdom-meets-modern-science/
From The University of Kansas Health System
“When we experience pain, sometimes it's easy to forget we aren't just feeling it in our bodies. A sprained ankle makes the foot hurt, but the root of that pain is actually coming from the brain. Pain is simply our brains processing the fact that our bodies have been damaged. Because our brains all process information differently, we all feel pain differently too. Here are some factors that can increase the amount of pain we feel, how long we feel it or how intense it is:
Stress
Poor mental health
Anxiousness
Worrying
Anger
Poor emotional health
Focusing on the pain
Boredom”
“One idea, called the Gate Control Theory, says we can change our brain's reaction to pain messages from the body and sometimes not even receive them. It says that when the nerves start to talk to the brain, they have to pass through "nerve gates" at every stop they make. If these gates are open, we feel pain more easily. If they're closed, we can keep the pain at bay.”
“Gates can fly open when we get injured. The more severe the injury or harm, the more likely they are to open. But our emotional health is just as important when it comes to opening the gates. Often the worse we feel emotionally, the more intense our pain is.“
“With chronic pain, closing the gates can be difficult. But it can be done. Close the gates through:
Self-calming/relaxation
Distraction
Exercise”
“You may find additional help through:
Medicine – When our knee hurts, pain medication recommended by the doctor can close the gates and curb the pain.
Rubbing – Gently rubbing where the pain is coming from. If the signal your brain gets from the touch is stronger than the pain signal, it blunts the pain.”
From the Cleveland Clinic
“Some people also have chronic pain that’s not tied to a direct physical cause. This doesn’t mean that your pain isn’t real. Oftentimes, this type of pain (psychogenic pain) is related to changes in your nervous system and other understandable emotional and psychological factors.”
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/4798-chronic-pain
From Harvard Medical School
“Pain that lasts longer than six months is considered chronic, and it may not go away. With chronic pain, the bell’s ongoing signal gets your nervous system wound up and increases its reactivity to incoming messages. This can be quite distressing and anxiety-provoking. Additionally, the feelings of frustration or sadness when pain doesn’t go away can make pain worse.”
“Pain, depression, and anxiety travel through similar pathways along your nervous system and share many of the same biological mechanisms. One of the areas in the brain that receives pain signals — specifically, the limbic region — shares many of the same messengers as the mood signals. We know from research studies using neuroimaging that the parts of the brain controlling emotion and sensory features of pain are altered in people with chronic pain.”
“The medical community has come to appreciate a direct correlation between improvement in one’s emotional well-being and their experience of pain (and vice versa). Chronic pain increases the risk of depression and anxiety, and depression and anxiety strongly predict the development of chronic pain. This association is seen in conditions like fibromyalgia and irritable bowel syndrome, where behavioral and psychological treatment strategies have shown benefit in reducing symptoms.”
“Our ability to feel pain and react to it is both a boon and a curse, simultaneously. The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) defines pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage." This means that pain is highly subjective, and it is informed by a mix of past experiences, our current emotional state, and future expectations. Since pain is an emotional and sensory experience it affects our quality of life immensely, and treatment is complex.”
“There is increased perception and awareness with mindfulness practices, and meditation addresses both the sensory and emotional components of pain. The interoception center in the brain increases and the amygdala shrinks in size with regular mindfulness practices, which explains better emotional regulation and pain control. The brain's ability to react to painful stimuli with an emotional response decreases, and a person is more likely to respond calmly to a stimulus instead of having a hasty emotional reaction (hurt, pain, anger, etc.). The increased perception and awareness with regular mediation will make a person feel every sensation, including pain; however, they may choose not to react to it, so practicing meditation can help you better manage pain.”
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/mind-body-therapies-can-reduce-pain-and-opioid-use-2020021118772
From Dignity Health
“…your mind can cause pain without a physical source, or make pre-existing pain increase or linger. This phenomenon is called psychogenic pain, and it occurs when your pain is related to underlying psychological, emotional, or behavioral factors.”
“It's not entirely clear why your brain sometimes causes pain when there seems to be no physical source. Some theories suggest that it's due to pain memory, a condition that causes the nervous system to hold onto pain long after an injury has healed. Others suggest that this pain may be caused by signals getting confused within the brain. The normal sensation of pain and where it's located in the body is generally sent through nerve receptors that transmit information to the spine, which then sends it up to the brain. However, there's room for messages to get lost along the way from point A to point B, making it possible for the brain to interpret mental distress as physical pain. Some psychological factors that might cause physical pain include anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, depression, and stress.”
https://www.dignityhealth.org/articles/psychogenic-pain-is-real-pain-causes-and-treatments
From the National Institutes of Health Library of Medicine
“The commonsense notion that ‘too much stress makes you sick' might hold more than a grain of truth. The second of two large-scale epidemiological and medical studies among civil servants in the UK, known as the Whitehall studies, found that workers in low-level jobs, in which they have high stress and little autonomy, have more than twice the risk of developing metabolic syndrome—a precursor of heart disease and diabetes—compared with employees in higher-level jobs (Chandola et al, 2006).”
“The first Whitehall study showed that people from this group are also more inclined to die prematurely than colleagues who do less menial, higher-level work. In these studies, stress is defined as a high level of demand, a low level of control and little support from co-workers or supervisors. By measuring heart rate, and cortisol and adrenaline levels, researchers also found that stress affects the autonomic nervous system and neuroendocrine function (Chandola et al, 2006; Bjorntorp, 1991; Brunner et al, 2002). Other recent research showed that acute and chronic psychological stress, related to low socio-economic status, can increase the risk of heart attack by increasing circulating levels of platelet–leukocyte aggregates (Brydon et al, 2006). A study from the University of Utah (Salt Lake City, UT, USA), first presented at the American Psychosomatic Society meeting in March 2006, showed that hardening of the arteries is more frequent in wives when they and their husbands express hostility during marital disagreements, and more common in husbands when they or their wives act in a controlling way (Smith et al, 2006).”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1456909/
“Although the understanding that emotions affect physical health dates as far back as the second-century physician Galen and the medieval physician and philosopher Moses Maimonides, modern medicine has largely continued to treat the mind and body as two separate entities. In the past 30 years, however, research into the link between health and emotions, behaviour, social and economic status and personality has moved both research and treatment from the fringe of biomedical science into the mainstream. “According to the mind–body or biopsychosocial paradigm, which supercedes the older biomedical model, there is no real division between mind and body because of networks of communication that exist between the brain and neurological, endocrine and immune systems,” said Oakley Ray, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Psychiatry and Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN, USA).”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1456909/
“The potential of stress reduction and social support as a therapeutic intervention became evident in the late 1980s during a study of women with breast cancer. David Spiegel, Director of the Psychosocial Research Laboratory at Stanford University (CA, USA), wanted to determine whether women with metastatic breast cancer who participated in supportive–expressive group therapy had better quality of life and symptom control than those who received only medical treatment. To his and others' surprise, not only did the women have better quality of life and less pain, but they also lived significantly longer (Spiegel et al, 1989).”
“These unexpected findings triggered a large body of research into mind–body interventions—such as group therapy, stress-reduction techniques and cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT)—and whether they can affect survival and pain in cancer, AIDS and bone-marrow transplant patients, with findings split between positive and negative for life expectancy (Kissane et al, 2004; Goodwin et al, 2001). A main focus of research is the relationship between stress and cardiovascular disease, asthma, inflammatory diseases, autoimmune diseases and cancer, and whether stress reduction can extend patients' lives. One recent study, for example, found that CBT could help to reduce viral load in HIV-positive men treated with highly active antiretroviral therapy. Researchers attributed the improvement to changes in depressed mood (Antoni et al, 2006). Depression itself is under study for possible links to a range of inflammatory diseases; several studies show it to be an emerging risk factor for heart disease (Sundquist et al, 2005; Nemeroff et al, 1998).”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1456909/
“An increasing number of US medical schools and centres now have departments devoted to mind–body research and some also to mind–body treatment, including Harvard University (Cambridge, MA), Columbia University (New York, NY), University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Pittsburgh (PA). This now-interdisciplinary research field, which also includes behavioural medicine, is often called psychoneuroimmunology or psychoendoneuroimmunology, and “incorporates ideas, belief systems, hopes, and desires as well as biochemistry, physiology, and anatomy,” according to Ray (2004).”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1456909/
“Also helping mind–body research are improved methods to visualize communication between the central nervous system, and the immune and endocrine systems, said Sternberg. “An obstacle to acceptance in the 1980s was that researchers lacked the tools, such as recombinant cytokines, to understand the connection without the possibility of contamination,” she added. Without recombinant proteins, it was difficult to show incontrovertibly that immune molecules could change the brain and vice versa. “By the mid-1990s the field had accumulated a critical mass of papers, and it started becoming acceptable to associate with psychologists… By then, enough good research had hit the radar screen, so that even skeptics began to take note,” Sternberg said. “From where I sit, there's been a sea change in acceptance of this field over the past four years.”
