Family Health, Wellness & Emotions Emotions & Health

"Today, the mind/body research is confirming what ancient healing traditions have always known: that the body and the mind are a unit. There is no disease that isn't mental and emotional as well as physical."

--Quoted by Christine Northrup, MD, in

Acupressure for Emotional Healing,

by Gach and Henning

The Mind/Body Connection

While the relationship between emotions and physical health is not new to many civilizations, some Western minds are just opening up to the idea when they read books such as Candace Pert's Molecules of Emotion and others. The mind/body connection research and reports really started to surface in the US during the 1980's.

Listed below are the following links:

1. How Sherri Lund came to study the mind/body connection

2. Examples of Using Nutrition on Emotional Conditions

3. Addressing Emotions for Physical Conditions

4. Quotes on the Mind/Body Connection

How Sherri Lund Came to Study the Mind/Body

A few years ago, I was nearing the end of my doctorate program in Naturopathy and I needed to come up with a topic for my dissertation. Two things prompted me to research the connection between emotions and physical health. First, I had a client present a perfect example of how emotions play an important role in health.

As an Eyologist, I consider signs and markers in the eye to provide information to health and stress within a client's body. One appointment involved a woman who came for an Eyology appointment because she was noticing some heart symptoms and wanted to know if I could recommend something naturally to help her.

During the eye analysis, I noticed a marker that could represent stress in her heart area, and it appeared to come from an area that can hold negative emotions. I said to her, "I don't need to know details or anything, but is there something that you are angry or resentful over?" Immediately she began to cry and it took a few minutes for her to regain her composure. Her emotions were obviously just under the surface.

It takes tremendous energy to hold this kind of energy at bay, living and working as if everything is okay. When I asked this lady if she could talk to her spiritual leader (she had already told me she attended a religious organization), she said she couldn't because he would/could tell someone else. So I asked if she could journal about her frustrations but she said no, someone would read it. My final suggestion was for her to write her thoughts out on the computer and then delete them -- somehow she needed to get these things out of her system. Again, she had a reason why this wouldn't work for her.

Around the same time as this appointment, I read the following quote:

“The root cause of 85% of illness is related to emotional or psychological issues.”

-- Dr. Norman Shealy, MD

This quote was the second prompt for my dissertation topic. I thought, "If this quote is true, wouldn't all practitioners offer some type of emotional support to their clients?" In thinking about the woman with the heart symptoms, I knew that I could offer herbs to support the heart or things to support the arteries and veins. Medical doctors could prescribe drugs or even surgery. All of these things could be applied to the SYMPTOMS and still nothing would be addressing the real root of the problem.

The physical body affects the emotions when nutritional deficiencies are in place, and when the emotions are out of balance, the physical body can exhibit nutritional deficiencies, hormonal imbalances, immune conditions, or dis-ease symptoms.

In offering nutritional supplements and/or emotional support, the negative cycle can be interrupted and actually reversed, allowing dis-ease and depression to be replaced with healing and a better outlook on life. By approaching a health condition from multiple angles: discovering deficiencies and blocks, supplementing with nutrition and lifestyle changes, considering exercise options, and addressing underlying emotional patterns and beliefs, a client can progress towards optimal health at a more efficient and effective rate.

Of course, every person and condition is different and what has worked for one person may not work for another. However, looked at in another, more positive way, what has worked for someone MAY work again! And isn't it possible that when it works again, it can be dramatic and outstanding again? With a different person with different genes and mental outlook, why couldn't wonderful results be duplicated? What will we have if we don't try? What could we have if we do?

It is with excitement and conviction that holistic therapies and techniques are recommended at Bridge to Better Health. These help to address a client's emotional realm as well as the physical one. By combining these techniques within one practice, the truly holistic practitioner increases her effectiveness and ability to serve her clients and her community.

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Examples of Nutrition on Emotional Conditions

The following examples are just two that I presented in my dissertation. Both were taken from The Complete Guide to Your Emotions & Your Health: New Dimensions in Mind/Body Healing by Emrika Padus and the Editors of Prevention Magazine. They powerfully show the connection between diet and emotional health:

1. “Sarah” spent 12 hours each day grooming and washing her body. Mostly she washed her hands, so from the elbows down, her skin was raw, chapped, and sometimes bleeding. She underwent ten years of psychoanalysis, took every antidepressant available as well as every major and minor tranquilizer on the market, and even underwent six series of electroshock treatments. Still the washing continued. Today Sarah is free of her obsessive-compulsive disorder and leads a normal, productive life. For her, a change in diet alone was enough.

2. “G.S.” is a severely retarded seven-year-old who, before being treated, was in diapers, could not speak, and had an estimated IQ of 25 to 30. After his tissues and blood were analyzed, a nutritionist devised an appropriate supplement plan. It took several weeks of trial and error to get the balance just right – because G.S. did not speak. But once the correct dosage of vitamins and minerals was in place, the boy’s progress was remarkable. His physician at the time was Dr. Hardell and he reports, “In a few days, he was talking a little. In a few weeks, he was learning to read and write and he began to act like a normal child. When G.S. was nine years old, he read and wrote on the elementary school level, was moderately advanced in arithmetic and, according to his teacher, was mischievous and active. He rode a bicycle and skateboard, played ball, played a flute, and had an IQ of about 90.” According to IQ charts, scores of 90-110 are in the Normal range. This shows that G.S., in a two-year period, made remarkable recovery on a mental condition by using nutrition alone.

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Addressing Emotions for Physical Conditions

The following two examples were presented in my dissertation. They dramatically display the powerful relationship between emotions and physical conditions. In addition to these two examples, a list is provided of various physical conditions that emotions are believed to play a part in.

1. Evy McDonald was a nurse diagnosed with ALS, and given less than one year to live. At one point she described herself as a bowl of jello in a chair because she had so little mobility. (Stamwitz)

One day Ms. McDonald asked herself, “What is my life for? To sit here dying each moment or to celebrate the life I still have?” But she wanted to experience unconditional love before she died, so every day she would focus on some part of her body, praise it, and love it. (Stamwitz)

Gradually her self-acceptance jump-started her life force and her physical body began to repair. Seven years later, she says, “I am not only alive but as healthy as I’ve ever been in my entire life. Since I am one of the first people to have reversed this normally fatal disease, I have felt called to become a student of my own process of healing, seeking to understand and articulate the factors that reversed this death sentence … to understand the “miracle” of the mind/body/spirit connection.

Evy McDonald is now out of her wheel chair and serving as a Methodist minister. For her, a change of mind, or a new perspective of herself, renewed her life force that eventually enabled her to get out of her wheelchair.

For more information on Ms. McDonald, please see “Another Perspective of ALS,” by Evy McDonald in the American Holistic Health Association's newsletter, Holistic Medicine, March/April 1988 and “Eye of the Beholder,” by Alicia Stamwitz.

1. Another example involves a blind woman who came California to see Dr. Jerry Jampolsky at his clinic, The Center, in Sausalito, CA. She explained that her blindness was caused by a once-common medical procedure in which premature infants were put in oxygen tents. She started working with Dr. Jampolsky and making attitude changes as the doctor suggests, especially those dealing with forgiveness. She learned to let go of resentments, bitterness, and anger directed at her parents and her doctors.

About seven months later, her ophthalmologist said her vision had improved to the point that legally she was considered sighted by day. A year later she sent a letter telling Dr. Jampolsky that she had retired her Seeing Eye dog and that she was taking driving lessons. (Padus 520-521) It was her willingness to let go of negative emotions such as bitterness, resentments, and unforgiveness that made the difference.

This story was presented in The Complete Guide to Your Emotions & Your Health: New Dimensions in Mind/Body Healing by Emrika Padus and the Editors of Prevention Magazine.

These examples show dramatic changes and they demonstrate that emotions and the physical body can impact one another:

Physical symptoms may be relieved by working with the emotions, and emotional/mental conditions may diminish when support is given to the physical body.

As I compiled research for my dissertation, I made a list of various health conditions that someone found relief by addressing emotional roots. As time went on, I was amazed at the number of conditions as well as the types issues mentioned. This isn't to say that everyone with these diseases or conditions have emotional issues, nor does it imply that if you work on your issues, your issue, if it is on this list, will go away. On the other hand, I don't believe this list is complete and as people start applying therapies such as EFT to their physical complaints, I think we might see this list grow even longer!

The fact that even one person had a difference on his or her physical condition just by working on emotional components gives hope to other clients that it could happen again. This glimmer of hope can be the very thing to get the life force activated and flowing again within an ill client.

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Quotes on the Mind/Body Connection

The following quotes were taken from research gathered for my dissertation:

"For the most part, we’ve thought that the disease process is independent of mind…. Diagnose what’s the matter with the body, treat it, and then get on with your life. But as we begin looking at chronic illnesses like cancer and heart disease, … we see more and more evidence that how we live our lives and, in fact, how we think and feel over a lifetime can influence the kinds of illnesses that we have. So the mind/body connection really has to do with understanding that the mind and the body are only artificially separate, that they’ve always been together, and that they have an interactive influence on each other." -- Jon Kabat-Zinn

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"Emotional traumas and sufferings can create what is called ‘emotional congestion’ or emotional blockages and the physical body can respond to these stresses as well."-- Caroline Myss and Norman Shealy, MD

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“Scientists are proving that repeated episodes of anger and frustration cause nervous system imbalances that are detrimental not only to the heart, but to the brain and the hormonal and immune systems.” -- Dr. Linda Page, Naturopathic Doctor and author

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"Secreted by the brain, immune system and nerve cells, neuropeptides are hormones that act as chemical messengers and they carry emotions from the mind to the body and back again. They create an intricate and elaborate two-way communication system that links the emotions with all areas of the body.” -- Dr. Candace Pert, Ph.D

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Dr. Naomi Remen, MD and author of The Human Patient, talks about health in an interview with Bill Moyers. She says that the current trend of emphasizing the body through working out, eating healthier foods, and so on, is good, but that by focusing on the physical body, we may be missing out on a more important dimension of health. She says that some people begin to view the physical body as the sum total of the person and she believes that is a mistake. “We are as much our thoughts, feelings, and insights as we are our flesh and bones.” When asked how she defines health, Dr. Ramen answers, “There are people who are very healthy physically who are not living what I would call a healthy life. For them, life has no value, direction, or purpose. There are also people who are quite ill who lead a very rich life in terms of those parameters. I would call them healthier than the people who simply have physical health and no reason to live.”

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Through researching for this project, it was found that a wide variety of physical conditions and symptoms are associated with negative emotions, and many of them could go unnoticed because, seen in isolation, they may seem minor. A small sampling of the symptoms includes: indigestion, cold sores, heartburn, stomach cramps, diarrhea, and allergies. Some of the more serious conditions that people experience may be related to negative emotions but the average person may not make that connection. Research reveals that these types of conditions include: angina, Rheumatoid arthritis, Graves’ disease, arterial plaque, multiple sclerosis, and lupus.

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