The Good Die Young

Stress has a profound effect on our health. When we take on too much stress, whether at work or in our personal lives, when we are unable to say no because we "simply go with the flow" or are too nice, inevitably our bodies will say it for us and we will develop one type of disease or another.

To be whole is much more than to experience the absence of the disease. While holistic approach to health makes sense and separation of mind and body is an erroneous view which is more and more incompatible with science, the social aspect of our lives is also crucial to our health. Many scientists agree, for example, that the human brain itself is a social organ, shaped in its neurophysiological and neurochemical development by social activities we engage in from early on in our development as well as by social patterns we establish later on in our lives. In one of the scientific articles the following was stated:

"The interaction of genes and experiences literally shapes the circuity of the developing brain, and is critically influenced by the mutual responsiveness of adult-child relationships, particularly in the early childhood years."

So, we human beings are biopsychological creatures whose health or illness reflects our relationship with the world we inhabit. While science shows that people's lifetime emotional experiences profoundly influence the health, mainstream medical practice largely ignores the role of emotions in the physiological functioning of the human organism.

Some doctors are already seeing a relationship between emotional distress and progression of diseases. They say that their patients with chronic disease of all kinds are also characterized by certain emotional life patterns. Among those are the chronic repression of the so called negative emotions, especially of "healthy" anger, an overriding sense of duty, role and responsibility. In addition, we have also noticed on many occasions and been baffled by our observations that people whom we describe as nice or good, people who seem to place the emotional needs of others at the expense of one's own, are at a special risk of developing chronic illnesses and may even die early as the saying says, good die young.

While this self-imposed stress appears to stem in some people from the concept of what it means to be a good person, in others it seems to be the result of materialistic approach to life. Our value depends on what we produce, achieve or consume. We believe that we must continually prove and justify our worthiness and that we must keep having and doing to justify our existence. Yet in others, emotions are repressed because societal pressures of putting others ahead of ourselves is seen as worthy accomplishment. So this compulsive self-disregard and emotional repression is not deliberate or conscious, this is simply a by-product of our materialistic life style and tradition.

We forget that we are whole and each time when we repress emotions, or when we are at their mercy during the moments of rage, we are playing havoc with our nervous system, hormonal apparatus, immune system, intestines, heart and other organs. This is because all is connected and one affects the other. The result, at best, can be acute and this is when we learn to kill it quickly by relaxation but the chronic, unchecked stress, will turn against us eventually resulting in many types of illnesses.

While it is still not widely accepted that illness arise as a result of stress and emotional burden, modern epidemic of addiction, including the obesity, clearly shows that stress may be the main culprit behind our illnesses. This epidemic shows us that our bodies search instinctively for ways to escape the stress and emotional pain and we search for them by succumbing to drugs, alcohol, tobacco, gambling and even food now.

So the epidemic of addiction is nothing else but epidemic of stress and emotional pain. We are sabotaging our lives because we feel hopeless, even the medical practitioners cannot help us because they are not trained to perceive us holistically and emotions are ignored or ridiculed. What are we to do then when doctors who are supposed to be gatekeepers to health care are blind to the basic realities of what generates health and their prevailing ideology of medical response is predominantly pharmaceutical? When their training denies them knowledge of the unshakable unity of mind and body, of emotions and physiology. When they do not recognize that social factors can be far more powerful determinants of health than genetic predispositions?

We read that healing flows from within and to be whole is much more than to experience the absence of disease. Science has already accepted that reductionist approach to biological inquires is limited and realized that in order to study biological processes we need to study them from various angles, we need to look simultaneously at how different parts of the organism actually work together to accomplish a particular task. Medicine will soon follow suit, and hopefully we will have doctors who will be practicing personalized medicine and look at us as a whole.

So far we have learned that nutrition and healthy ecology are important to our health. Our past actions also have shown us that the environment free of toxins and pollution is critical in preserving nature but also it is very important to our health. New observations and studies on stress and emotional negligence imply that health cannot be achieved in separation or alienation from others, it arises from social patterns of interaction, community ties and mutual support. So there is more and more evidence in favor that the sense of wholeness both on physiological and social levels bring joy to our lives, sense of completeness, and health.