Mind-Body Medicine

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Ashley Owen, Ph.D.
• Department of Family
• and Preventive Medicine

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Mind-Body Medicine

• What do you think of when you think of
• Mind-Body Medicine?

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Mind-Body Medicine
Voodoo?
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Mind-Body Medicine
Someone trying to sell you snake oil?
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Mind-Body Medicine
This guy?
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Mind-Body Medicine
Suspend disbelief
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Mind-Body Medicine
Try to open your mind
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Mind-Body Medicine
And consider the tomato fallacy
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Mind-Body Medicine

• "the tomato fallacy"
• In the 19th-century, it was widely believed that
• tomatoes were poisonous.
• Grown as ornamental plants.
• (Seed catalogs listed tomatoes as annual
  ornamental flowers ).
•  

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Mind-Body Medicine

• "the tomato fallacy"
• The Story
• Robert Johnson, citizen of Salem, MA publicly
  ate a basketful
• on the courthouse steps.
• When he didnt drop dead
• he had his converts.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• "the tomato fallacy"
• Now tomatoes lung,
• are known prostate,
• to reduce and and stomach
• risk of cancer .

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Mind-Body Medicine

• "the tomato fallacy"
• The point
• It is easy to become locked into only one frame
  of thought.
• Western Medicine is not immune to this error.
• Other viable models should be considered.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Current paradigm shift from
• biomedical
• to
• biopsychosocial/
• mind-body
• model of medicine.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• "the tomato fallacy"
• Dont get stuck in the tomato
• fallacy!
• You??? ?

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Question.
• Whats so special about this phenomenological
  line of research Im supposed to be keeping my
  mind open to?

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Question.
• Well, just how do YOU explain the following
  phenomenon?

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Myocardial Infarctions among Christians gt the day
  after Christmas.
• Rates of second Myocardial Infarctions gt when the
  patient is depressed.
• Mortality rates gt after the death of a spouse.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Answer.
• Candace B. Pert, Ph.D.
• Emotional states seem to affect the likelihood
  that an individual will live or die.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Question.
• Who exactly, is this Dr. Candace B. Pert?

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Answer.
• Me.
• Candace D. Pert is the
• neuroscientist who discovered the opiate receptor
• - leader in research on the role of neuropeptides
  in the immune system (psychoneuroimmunology)

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Psychoneuroimmunology
• Study of communication interface among
• emotions, neuroendocrine
• thoughts, and and immune
• perceptions systems
• at the biochemical level.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• The chemicals that are running our body and our
  brain are the same chemicals that are involved in
  emotion. (Pert)
• Feelings and thoughts literally
• alter immunological processes
• through neuropeptides.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• The molecules of emotion messengers
  (neuropeptides) carrying information to link
  major systems of the body into one unit we call
  the body/mind.
• 1
• Mind and body are one.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Essentially
• Through these neurochemical changes associated
  with
• emotions and thoughts
• the mind can influence
• whether or not the organism gets sick.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Example.
• The AIDS virus uses a receptor that is normally
  used by a neuropeptide.
• So whether an AIDS virus will be able to enter a
  cell or not depends on how much of this natural
  peptide is around,
• which . . . would be a function of what state of
  emotional expression the organism is in.(Pert)

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Mind-Body Medicine

• More evidence

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Stress from an evolutionary standpoint
• When lion is chasing
• an animal
• Needs to get energy into
• blood stream NOW to power
• its muscles to save its life.
• Heart rate, blood pressure, go up to deliver
  energy more quickly.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Stress from an evolutionary standpoint (contd.)
• Alternatively, (when a lion is chasing an
  animal)
• It shuts down long-term building projects
• (otherwise there is no long term)
• It turns off the immune system
• It grows antibodies, antlers, or babies later
• It digests its food later
• (otherwise it won t be needed for a tomorrow)

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Stress from an evolutionary standpoint (contd.)
• Fine and effective in the short term.
• However, human cognition allows us to
  anticipate, so they we tend to worry in advance
  of problems, while other animals don't.
• Ex. Y2K problem.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Dont see this
• too often!

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Stress from an evolutionary standpoint (contd.)
• Among humans, stress is often long- term,
  (we worry about responsibilities, evaluation
  of others , balancing the checkbook,
  mortgages)
• These stressors dont go away the way the stress
  of running from a lion does once youve escaped
• These are chronic stressors.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• With chronic stress - mobilization and inhibition
  processes needed for running from that lion
  continue to be activated.
• Contantly mobilized
• Energy never store it, more at risk for
  diabetes.
• Blood pressure hypertension, set up for
  atherloroscrerosis
• Neurotransmitters for acuity during an
  emergency damage and atrophy in learning and
  memory centers ex. glucocordicoids relation to
  depression

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Constantly inhibited
• Digestive system more at risk for colitis some
  versions of IBS
• Growth systems Stress dwarfism
• Reproduction cycles become irregular,
  testosterone levels go down, erectile dysfunction
• Immune system infectious diseases

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Stress suppresses
• immune system
• Chronic stress
• chronically stresses
• immune system.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• stress can trigger
• overeating or
• undereating

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Mind-Body Medicine

• One line of mind/body research investigates
  attempts to reverse the negative effects of
  stress on health.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Mind/Body Therapies
• interventions that facilitate the minds
  capacity to affect bodily
• functions and symptoms.
• (Johnson Kushner, 2001)

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Mind-Body Medicine

• In the early 1970s, Herbert Benson, a
  cardiologist interested in non-pharmacological
  approaches
• to hypertension, identified
• the relaxation response .

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Relaxation Response
• Benson found that meditation was related to
• - lower heart and respiratory rates
• - lower-than-average blood pressure
• - alpha waves indicating a state of relaxed
• alertness versus a sleep state.
• - general reversal of the sympathetic activation
  seen in the stress response.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Teach self-regulation of the autonomic,
  parasympathetic nervous system, returning the
  mind and body to a balanced, relaxed, state.
• Six exercise themes (heaviness, warmth,
  breathing, abdomen, forehead, and organ specific).

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Breathing Practices
• - The purpose of breathing
• practices is to increase
• circulation to all
• (lower as well as upper) lung tissue.
• - Promotes oxygen-carbon dioxide exchange
  (improved healing of cells throughout the body).

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Guided Imagery
• - thought process that
• invokes and uses all
• the senses
• - vision, audition, smell, taste, movement, and
  touch

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Mind-Body Medicine
Meditation

• - sitting quietly and using various
• techniques to cultivate stillness, or focused
  attention of the mind.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Processing Thoughts and Feelings

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Processing Thoughts
• Examining what you can change and cant.
• Where you can exert control.
• - What outlets work best for you.
• - How to tell the difference between a true
  intimate vs someone not really your friend.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Processing Thoughts
• Identifying cognitive distortions
• - situation may have been awful when it
• happened as a kid, but this is not that same
  situation.
• - youll not always fail even though it was
  awful
• that time you did.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Processing Emotions
• Expressing feelings good for your health?
• Group psychotherapy for women with metastatic
  breast cancer found to be associated with greater
  survival.
• 2007 publication showed repetition
• of this finding in women with
• estrogen receptor (ER) negative
• tumors (survival benefit of 21 months).

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Disinhibition (emotional expression and
  processing)
• Research
• Subjects who wrote about thoughts and feelings
  regarding past traumas (vs controls who wrote
  about trivial events) (Pennebaker)
• experienced
• enhanced T-cell responsivity
• improved overall health

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Disinhibition Research (contd.)
• However, research suggests
• for disinhibition health relation to exist
• previously blocked emotions need
• to be expressed AND cognitively
• processed, in a way where the
• emotion is understood and
• resolved (Pennebaker).

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Processing Emotions
• What happens psychologically when you have
  feelings you dont express emotions?
• - Internal obstacle
• - Use emotional energy to keep those feelings
  out of awareness
• When you acknowledge those feelings as real,
• they may have less control over you.
• Youre in control to re-channel that energy.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• Processing Emotions
• What happens biologically when you have feelings
  you dont express emotions?
• Pert hypothesizes
• -Stress prevents the molecules of emotion from
  flowing freely where needed
• -Biological processes collapse into simple
  feedback loops
• -By allowing thoughts and feelings to surface,
  peptides flow again, returning the body and mind
  to health.

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Mind-Body Medicine

• What have you learned?

• Molecules of emotion
• Chronic stress and biological systems
• Mind-body therapies

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Mind-Body Medicine

• the tomato fallacy