Emotion... May Kill You

It is said that most of those who consult an ordinary physician complain of some personal disturbance; this article explains to you how to overcome weakness and dispense with the use of medicine.

For more than a century medicine has known that emotional factors bring on pain of the heart, "attacks," and certain fevers or skin diseases. But the body's susceptibility to states of the mind reaches further than this, and it has been proved: tests were even carried out upon patients which made clear that they were losing enthusiasm—broken in will, walking through life without an aim, and complaining that the days followed one another at a single monotonous pace. The doctor told one of them that there was a shortage of sugar in the blood; yet examination proved that the quantity of sugar was normal, equal to his need.

The patients were treated by both the bodily and the psychological method, and when their mental condition improved, the sugar their blood had lost increased. What is the cause of this?

Testing shows that the following causes produce this illness: a woman's despair of solving her marital problems; a man's rise to a post in which he feels he cannot satisfy his superiors; a woman who gave up her ambition to bear or to adopt a child; an artist forced to abandon his art and go out to work... a woman who compelled herself to work although she wished to marry. The one thread running through these different problems is the abandonment of a goal for which the individual was fitted and toward which he had been working.

Research in one hospital has proved that psychological disturbances bring on stomach ulcer. A group of ulcer patients was brought in and passed under medical observation in a test that draws out many emotions and feelings; whenever they suffered pain from longing or from some offense, the acid secretion increased. The very same result occurred in a healthy group, except that the secretion was less. Psychological testing made clear that these patients had not merely gone deeper into emotion than others; they always showed themselves independent and self-confident.

The prevailing idea—that a person's illness must be either bodily or mental—is an error, for most bodily patients have psychological problems alongside the physical disease. Even doctors themselves sometimes fall into this error, supposing that the body has no connection with the mind. Smallpox, croup, and certain contagious diseases result from a germ; but the presence of this germ does not deny the disease's relation to the psyche during the period of its struggle, for the emotional effect plays an important part in killing the germ or in strengthening it.

The bloodstream contains the defending corpuscles against germs, but their action quickly changes when it is affected by emotion; and upon feeling grief or anger, changes occur throughout the whole body—quickened breathing, heartbeats, a change in the course of the blood, contraction of the muscles, and other passing effects.

If a man faces a wild beast in a forest, he stands before two courses: flight, or fight. His reaction is of the kind of anger, or grief, and the effect of this extends,

naturally, to produce bodily effects: the movement of the blood quickens and rushes to the places in need of activity, and the motion of breathing changes. All this is natural, and it causes no illness, because the activity feeds the necessary movement; and if the person escapes without being harmed by the animal itself, the effect of the battle ends at that point. But if he grows angry or afraid and cannot manage resistance or response, the effect spreads over various regions. Let us suppose he does not know his enemy, or that this enemy remains within two bowshots of him for days on end—and this happens often in our society: a man may be thwarted at his work by a chief he detests, the mere sight of whom stirs the depths of his soul, and yet he can do nothing but show him respect and courtesy; or he may find himself living with a wife (or a husband) who is forever disquieting and vexing him. In such conditions the activity remains pent up in the body; it does not seep outward in a headache, nor does the stimulus fade away; and the result is a lasting disturbance which exhausts the strength, crushes the will, and produces many bodily disorders—and this is the road by which illness begins.

The quantity of emotion can show itself in three possible ways: movement, speech, and thought.

Movement is stronger than speech and expression, and speech is better than thought—though this does not deny the importance of thought.

Some try to fit their lives to surroundings they detest by turning their thinking into another channel.

The danger does not depend on the kind of emotion, but on the results issuing from it; and the person's constitution and surroundings become exposed to illness.

One doctor carried out an examination of a thousand patients with diabetes and diseases of the heart, and found that one of them had been suffering mental pains in the course of it, being on bad terms with his directors; he strove beyond his strength to rise so that they should have no authority over him, and he married, and the responsibility increased.

Thus the doctor found that the illness comes after a great failure in one's work, or the sudden death of a person one loves.

Early upbringing and environment have a great effect on the growth of the personality; exposure to shocks at an early age causes illness more than heredity does. The traces of inherited disease appear in the blood of the parents or of one of the relatives; but heredity does not lie in a broken bone, for example, or in the psychological condition.

Yet the child in many cases follows the paths of his parents, since they are the people who influence his personality most of all.