 Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection
Gabor Maté, M.D.
2003
http://www.whenthebodysaysno.ca/
(also http://www.scatteredminds.com/ for Scattered, his book on ADD
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A sensitive and fascinating approach to the subject of how the mind and emotions interact with the body to produce disease. A compassionate and detailed examination of case histories of his patients supported with research data helps him explain the biological connection between emotional stress and a number of common diseases. To learn about the concept that health is radically influenced by thoughts, emotions, buried conflicts, happiness and unhappiness, this is a good introduction.
Cutting through the average statistics and generalizations that surround most discussions of disease, he focuses on the unique path each disease takes which reflects the unique coping mechanisms of each individual. For example, about cancer he says,
Since breast cancers have the potential to metastasize by the time they're a little over half a millimeter in diameter, if a tumor is going to metastasize, in general it will already have done so by the time it is clinically detectable. Microscopic spread of malignant cells seems to happen in many cases of breast cancer without ever causing clinical problems. In other cases, the metastatic deposit may lie dormant in distant tissues for years and then, unexpectedly, declare itself in the form of symptoms. The same dynamic operates with prostate cancer, which is why spread has already occurred in 40% of prostate malignancies by the time the diagnosis is made. In fact, in a striking similarity with prostate cancer, autopsy studies on women indicate that as many as 25 to 30% of all women have microscopic breast malignancies, far in excess of the number ever actually manifested. [See Dr. Matthias Rath for research showing Vitamin C and Lysine can prevent cancers from metastasizing.]
The issue, therefore, is not simply the prevention of spread, but why and under what conditions in some people already existing dormant deposits convert into clinical cancer. Tumor dormancy is affected by many hormonal and immunological influences, all of them functions of the PNI system and all of them highly susceptible to life stresses.
He has explored the emotional roots of a large number of degenerative diseases through in-depth interviews with the patients, and outlines Dr. Bruce Lipton's "biology of belief" that contributes to disease:
A key point in Dr. Lipton's astute explanation of biological activity is that at any one time, cells, like the entire human organism, can be either in defensive mode or growth mode but not both. Our perceptions of the environment are stored in cellular memory. When early environmental influences are chronically stressful, the developing nervous system and the other organs of the PNI super-system repeatedly receive the electric, hormonal and chemical message that the world is unsafe or even hostile. Those perceptions are programmed in our cells on the molecular level. Early experiences condition the body's stance toward the world and determine the person's unconscious beliefs about herself in relationship to the world. Dr. Lipton calls that process the biology of belief.
[For a dramatic animated illustration of this idea, see the film What the Bleep Do We Know?! http://whatthebleep.com/]
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