Do Emotions Rule Our Health

Do emotions rule our health? It is a pertinent question with a variety of answers. It is well established now that emotions do rule our health and psychophysiology and behavior. Experts in the field of behavioral medicine have demonstrated that we can increase our chances of avoiding disease by nurturing our minds as well as our bodies. There is always a link between a person’s emotional state and disease. Many people have sensed this link intuitively but the physicians of behavioral medicine got the scientific answers. Medical investigations have demonstrated that emotional upset triggers a chain of events involving the brain and the endocrine system. This neuro-endocrine response, which affects all vital bodily processes, is natural and necessary. Severe over-stimulation, however, may lead to disease. Neurophysiologists have demonstrated that passive emotions as grief and despair with feelings of loss or failure, register in the hippocampus, the part of the brain that activates the body’s pituitary-adrenal-cortical network. Hormones like cortisol, needed for the regulation of metabolism, are secreted in excessive quantities from the cortex of adrenal glands. Excessive release of cortisol may down regulate the immune mechanism thereby decreasing the defence against infectious organisms and tumors. Under such circumstances auto-immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and myasthenia gravis, in which body attacks itself, may be more likely to develop. More aggressive emotions like anger and impatience, or threat to one’s family, insecurity of job, kidnapping and threat to life affect a different section of the brain – the amygdala, which sets off the adrenal-medullary system. The medulla of the adrenal glands releases catecholamines and adrenalin. Catecholamines and adrenalin increase the heart beat rate, elevate blood pressure and raise the level of fatty acids in the blood. Prolonged and/or repeated activation may lead to migraine and hypertension. It has been observed that people with supportive home, work and social life remain far healthier than those expressing dissatisfaction with their private lives and work. Everyone has setbacks or threats in life, but we find that some people sail through such circumstances while others fall apart. Effective coping involves a capacity to maintain neuro-psychological equilibrium without experiencing undue neuro-endocrine arousal. Effective coping is entirely dependent on a person’s self-esteem and social ties that bind him to others.