Tarnow Articles

The Relationship Between Emotion and Health:The Mind-Body Connection by: Ron Swatzyna Ph.D., L.C.S.W.

Millions of years of evolution have produced a superior human response system geared for survival. Emotions drive this complex survival system and for the most part, make it possible for our species to dominate this planet. However, this highly evolved system can be too responsive for the emotions evoked in modern-day environments. This complex system cannot differentiate between the emotions produced in a survival situation and emotions produced by many highly stressful life challenges. This is particularly true for those individuals whose autonomic nervous system is tuned too high or live under intense stress.

Some people have not developed adequate coping skills to manage the stress in their lives. Individuals, who fail to manage their stress well over time, will find themselves locked in a chronic stress response. Events in our lives, which elicit extreme emotions, cause a number of physical and chemical changes in the body. Although these changes have a positive impact in the short run, they begin to harm the very systems they are designed to enhance. It is like young male athletes taking anabolic steroids; initially they promote muscle growth and masculinity but continued usage causes irreversible changes such as baldness and testicular atrophy.

Acute vs. Chronic Responses to Stressors

Everyone has a different response to stress, emotionally and physically. When stressed the body system, which reacts more responsively, will likely be damaged or diseased if stress becomes chronic. Genetic predisposition influences how the body responds to stress. Evidence of this genetic predisposition can be found in many diseases most notably, cardiac disease (circulatory system), cancer (immune system) and diabetes (endocrine system). Additionally, how unhealthy a person becomes is affected by:

• the amount of stress in there life,
• the length of time they have lived with highly stressful events,
• the extent to which they neglect your nutritional and exercise needs, and
• the extent to which they are unable to control your reactions to stress.

Current studies find that 60 to 90 percent of all doctor visits are for stress related disorders many of which defy conventional medical treatment. There are three primary areas of intervention in the field of mind-body interventions: biobehavioral, psychological and social.

Mind-Body Interventions

Biobehavioral Approach to Mind-Body Medicine

Your health and state of well-being is interdependent upon many factors. How a person cares for their body is reflected in how they feel physically and emotionally. The human body operates optimally within a very narrow window of behavior. Adjustments in nutrition, exercise and rest have to be made proportionate to the level of daily need for optimal operation.

Nutrition

Maintaining adequate nutrition is based on the level of daily need dependent upon your metabolism. If the body if taking in too little calories it first resorts to using stored reserves (fat), lowering metabolism and than converting muscle tissue to fuel.

Starving your body reduces then your blood sugar. The brain operates best within a very narrow range of blood sugar. When blood sugar drops to low, thought processes are affected and the body becomes stressed. Likewise, eating too much food high in refined carbohydrates and sugar, taxes the body. Eating large amounts of these types of food causes the blood sugar rise too high and too rapidly (hyperglycemia) and then falls too low (hypoglycemia) and too rapidly as the pancreas secretes insulin to bring the sugar level down. These large swings in blood sugar are stressful to the brain, can affect fat metabolism and can eventually lead to diabetes particularly if a genetic predisposition exists. Ultimately, proper nutrition is an important component in physical, psychological and social development.

Exercise

In addition to proper nutrition, the human body requires a certain amount of exercise for optimal health. Our cardiovascular systems are enhanced from regular aerobic exercise and weight training stimulates growth hormones and retards our aging process. In fact, exercise can improve mood, performance and cognitive function. Exercise actually boosts the body's production of mood enhancing neurotransmitters such as serotonin, and dopamine and stimulates the release of endorphins to promote relaxation.

The fundamental premise of mind-body medicine is the connection of emotions to both a stress response and a relaxation response. The good news is that positive emotions can negate the impact of negative emotions. Positive soothing emotional experiences produce a relaxation response and this can improve almost anyone's quality of life and health.

Relaxation Response Training

A variety of techniques have been found to elicit an individual's relaxation response. These include meditation, paced respiration, yoga, prayer, tai chi, progressive muscle relaxation, and biofeedback, to mention a few. The problem is that in the hustle and bustle of modern-day society, many of these techniques require more time than we have.

Biofeedback Training

Recent advances in cardiology, particularly heart rate variability (HRV), have given way to development of sophisticated electronic equipment capable of monitoring your heart's stress or relaxation response. This information is fed back in the form of a graph on a computer monitor so one can learn how to relax very quickly by regulating respiration rate and depth. Meditators take years to master these methods of deep (diaphragmatic) breathing and total body awareness. The advantage to HRV biofeedback is that these skills can be developed in less than 10 sessions (6 to 8 on average) and only require practicing 10 minutes, one to two times per day. Eliciting a relaxation response daily can break the chronic stress cycle and have a positive impact on health and perceived well-being. Regular practicing of breathing exercises for only 10 to 20 minutes daily can break the chronic stress response. Additionally, these skills can help when you start to have an emotional response. During times of high anxiety (e.g., exams, public speaking, family conflict) consciously slowing and deepening respirations can regulate the stress response. Gaining this control can also lessen the psychological impact of the stressful event.

Psychological Approach to Mind-Body Medicine

Relaxation response training can help you change your physical response to stress, but what you expose yourself to and how you think determines the magnitude of your emotional response. Therefore, learning to recognize and then regulate an emotional response would lessen the amount of physical response you would need to control. There are three other areas of intervention that can reduce your emotional response and the physical impact to your health:

• change the stressor by changing your environment (disease)
• change the psychological response to the stressor by becoming educated, and
• change the interpretation of the stressor by changing your thoughts.

Modify Your Environment

To change the stressor, you may consider modifying your environment to lessen its emotional impact. For instance, riding a bus rather that driving may greatly reduce your rage at other drivers. Likewise, changing jobs may be in your best interest if staying that job is stressful and counterproductive to your health. Behavioral interventions such as these can actually ameliorate or cure many diseases.

Become Educated

Often we cannot change many of the stressors we have in our lives, but we can change the psychological response and thus limit the physical impact. Becoming educated about a disease, its treatments (including side effects of medicines), and likely outcomes can reduce the stress response. This method of dealing with disease takes time and effort but will greatly reduce the perception of the disease. On the other hand, denying the thoughts or attempting to escape the negative effects of the disease by using alcohol, drugs or work will actually exacerbate the disease.

Think Differently

Lastly, you can change your interpretation of the stressor. In the worse case scenario, where the physical stress has resulted in disease, techniques such as cognitive restructuring and reality testing can help people reframe the impact the disease has on their lives. Additionally, cognitive behavioral therapy specifically addresses how the person responds emotionally to a situation and teaches them to think rationally in the face of adversity. Hypnosis therapy also is a technique that can help change a person's perception of their symptoms or situation and can reduce their stress response.

Social Approach to Mind-Body Medicine

Application of a biopsychosocial approach to mind-body medicine also encompasses the social nature of being human. Multiple studies show that strong social networks help reduce stress and reinforce good health habits. It appears that depression is likely proportionate to one's feelings of separation from others. Therefore, therapy groups, support groups, social groups, religious groups, friends and extended family networks to mention a few, promote a sense of belonging, reduce feelings of isolation and increase a person's well-being. For many people, the most important group is one's own family. Chaotic families can be toxic to individual health while cohesive families promote individual health. Therefore, family therapy does not only work to solve family issue, but it has the potential to improve family health.

Biopsychosocial Integrative Approach to Mind-Body Medicine

The relationship between unmanaged stress and health is proving to be more relevant than ever imagined. Dr. Herbert Benson, a professor at Harvard Medical School states that nearly half of all Americans using some form of mind-body interventions. The field of mind-body medicine has great potential for bridging the gap between medicine and psychology. Although some insurance companies do not reimburse for mind-body interventions, Medicare is now reimbursing for certain relaxation techniques and more and more hospitals are opening mind-body clinics.

Mind-body interventions show great promise but rarely are all of the components integrated into a seamless treatment plan. The Tarnow Center for Self-Management^SM uses an integrated biopsychosocial approach to treatment. Two of Centers' psychotherapists (Ron Swatzyna, Ph.D. & Lesley Solomon, LPC) are skilled biofeedback therapists who specialize in the treatment of health-related disorders using the mind-body interventions discussed in this article. Together with a team of psychiatrists, psychologists, learning diagnosticians and speech and language pathologists provide an integrated biological, psychological and social evaluation and treatment for a variety of populations starting as young as age 3. For more information, to schedule an evaluation or a presentation, call Leslie Durham at 713-621-9515 ext. 339.