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 cause.