Psychosomatic Causes of Illness
Psychosomatic Illness There is a massive misunderstanding of the concept “psychosomatic”. The term is often very loosely or inaccurately used to mean illness that is imagined, non-existent or a bid for attention. “That’s just psychosomatic” is a phrase used dismissively, even by physicians who should know better. The phrase conveys to patients that they should just snap out of whatever ails them. What we have found is that stress is to illness what standing water is to mosquitoes. Stress does not cause illness but rather stress provides illness with a habitat. Current research suggests that stress impairs the effectiveness of the immune system by causing shifts in the levels of various hormones. This is a complicated process that we are just beginning to understand. Modern Western medicine has become good at dealing with the consequences of stress manifested as acute illness. Modern medicine is however often poorly equipped to deal with chronic consequences of stress. Nor does Western medicine deal well with what some call psychosomatic illness. The term “psychosomatic” originates from two Greek words that mean mind and body. Psychosomatic illness constitutes the vast number of illnesses that have psychological, psychosocial, lifestyle, emotional or stress-related components as contributing causes. Most doctors these days would agree that there are hardly any medical diseases that would not fall into this category. A few obvious examples could include migraine and tension headaches, some duodenal ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome and colitis, diabetes, pain syndromes, asthma, hypertension and some cardiac disease, eczema and psoriasis, obesity, the addictions, depression, and phobias. The list goes on. In fact, the role of anger and hostility in the origin of heart disease is by now well established. Research has suggested that even certain cancers have emotional or mind-body components as their...
Read MoreVideo: Stress and Illness
Peter Berndt M.D. discusses how stress is related to and contributes to illness…
Read MoreVideo: Life Transitions
Watch the Woodlands Stress Clinics therapists, Dr. Peter Berndt and Avery Neal, discuss life transitions, the changes in life that challenge us to move beyond our comfort zone and those that move our lives in a positive direction…
Read MoreRelaxation Techniques for Sports Anxiety
Treating Sports Anxiety and Stress Participating in sports can sometimes help relieve a stress-filled lifestyle. Unfortunately, the reverse is sometimes true too, as athlete’s can experience sports anxiety. Stress can adversely affect an athlete’s performance in a sport. It has been shown repeatedly that stress-reduction and mindfulness techniques such as meditation can go far to improve an athlete’s performance in their sport. These young athletes from The Woodlands, Texas recently came to one of my relaxation classes to help themselves with their pre-race anxiety. Many of today’s athletes experience this and with some techniques learned from my classes, they can find great relief and perform better as a result. You can read more about sports anxiety in athletics here. Please contact me if your athlete or sports team would like more information....
Read MoreCancer and Stress… Related?
Joe Paterno has died. When, in the context of the sex abuse scandal at Penn State, he came to the attention of the media and appeared on the TV screen, he did not look well. On the day he died he was reported to have “lost his battle against lung cancer”. It is probably no coincidence that he died when he did, given the massive stress that the events at Penn State must have placed on him. Stress and medical illness, and, in particular, stress and cancer can be and often are a deadly combination. Elizabeth Edwards is another person that I think of in this context. Here is a press clipping from the Today Show that alludes to the stress of events surrounding the separation from her husband John, a one-time presidential hopeful. “John Edwards, from whom Elizabeth Edwards separated last year after he acknowledged fathering a child with a former aide to his unsuccessful vice presidential campaign, was with his wife and their three children: Cate, 28; Emma Claire, 12;and Jack, 10. During an appearance on TODAY last year, Elizabeth Edwards said that while it was difficult not to be able to “lean” on the man she once called “my rock,” she thought it was important to not shut him out”. All this reminds me of a patient that I treated many years ago when I was still in family practice. She had been followed by her oncologist following a mastectomy for breast cancer. She had had her check-ups regularly and had been clear since the original surgery. One day she came to see me because she was not feeling well, had been coughing and losing weight. She also felt depressed and anxious because her husband of many years had left her for another woman several months earlier. I sent her for lab testing. A chest X-ray which had also been clear a year earlier had undergone dramatic changes, showing numerous small spots, like a blizzard. These spots showed that her cancer had been unleashed and had spread to her lungs. It killed her several months later. Could these histories of stress and negative outcomes for cancer patients be mere coincidences? I’m inclined to say...
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