The Mind-Body Connection
By Albert B. Kelly
For some time now, what we think of as modern medicine tended to see little connection between a person’s mental or emotional state and their physical condition. The focus was on the biology and the chemistry. This is understandable both because science got more skilled at seeing, measuring, analyzing, and identifying what happens in the body and because for centuries medicine only offered vague ideas about “miasmas” or “humors” as a diagnosis.
But over the last couple decades, there has been a growing sense that the state or condition of someone’s mind and emotions has a huge impact on their physical health and well-being. Some of this change comes from the influences of eastern medicine over the years, some from the growing interest in herbs and supplements as preventative measures, and some from the fact that diagnostic tools can measure things we couldn’t see before.
For example, science now understands that stress and panic can contribute to heart problems. They know for example that stress and panic in a person’s mind and emotions leads directly to the body releasing adrenaline and something called cortisol. These hormones are powerful causing the heart to beat much faster, blood vessels to expand or get smaller, and other bodily reactions.
We’ve all had that sudden scare, whether a car accident or a loud noise startling us and we know how draining it can be physically. We recall that it took many minutes before our pulse rate went back to normal and we were able calm down. Then there’s rage and anger, also closely tied to stress and panic, these also release adrenaline and cortisol.
If this release happens only rarely, then it probably will not be a problem, but if this flood of hormones is chronic happening all of the time because we’re stressed, worried, angry or enraged, then over time it will cause heart problems- it will affect the body.
I could go on about how our bodies act and react whether someone is grieving, depressed, discontented, or guilty. My point is that our thoughts and emotions have a direct impact on our bodies and our physical well-being.
I thought about this a lot lately within the context of the “body politic”. As far as the dictionary goes, “body politic” is defined as “a group of persons politically organized under a single governmental authority”. Others have defined it as “the people of a nation, state, or society considered collectively as an organized group of citizens”.
I like to think of the body politic, like our physical bodies of bones, nerves, and organs; as comparable to our institutions both formal and informal, along with our laws, customs, structure of government, media, industry and the processes by which these all work i.e., our metabolism. For me, the question is how our collective thoughts and emotions will impact the body politic.
We have just been through one of the hardest year’s any of us could remember topped off with a divisive election that brought to a head the baggage of the last four years. I was a young teenager in 1968 which is the year most often used as a point of comparison when thinking about the mess that is 2020. It took years to recover from 1968. This year is not over yet, so who knows what may still lie ahead.
What I suspect is that the body politic has had its form of adrenaline and cortisol coursing through its veins for the last few years. Our immune system hasn’t been right and is quite possibly attacking the very body it’s supposed to protect. We need a rest now because if we’re not careful, this chronic flood of adrenaline and cortisol will kill us.
I do not know what the future will bring, but my hope is that whether our chosen candidate won or lost a given election or whether the side we’ve aligned ourselves to is waxing or waning, that together we might make the decision to do those things that make for a healthier body. We simply cannot continue as we are and hope to achieve better health.
As far as a treatment, they say that time heals and believe it does. In the context of the body politic as the patient, time allows us to reflect, gain new perspective and reorder priorities. If we’re willing, we can lower the pulse rate of the body politic to something more in line with rest and recover.