London Times article on mind affecting health

I find it odd when articles appear out of the blue, lacking any particular context for why it is appearing in a given publication at a given time, but that seems to be what happens in newspapers in particular. So here's an out-of-the-blue article about the mind-body connection in the (London) Times. The article's lead source is Harvard's Herbert Benson, although we are not told why the Times in London is abruptly quoting him.

The title--"Mind Control: Meditate Your Way to a Healthier Body"--is kind of random too. The article is basically about some actual, documented ways the mind can affect the body, not always having to do with meditation. Comments from actual, traditional medical folks who are open to the concept are included. This is not any sort of self-help article, as the title may imply.

The article is straightforward and informative, but I can't help feeling that its utter randomness is connected to how we culturally tend to look at mind-body medicine topics, when we bother to look at all, in this sort of cordoned off manner. We put some aspect of it on display in a sort of curio case; we can read it, go, "Hmmm. Interesting," and then proceed on with our usual world view.

Oddly enough, the article even pays lip service to the idea of using this information effectively, asking at one point, "So can we implement this mind over matter approach in our daily lives?" It proceeds, however, to fail to answer the question in any but the most general of terms.

"By repeating mantras to yourself, or practicing conscious repetitive actions such as tapping each time you think about the relevant topic," we are told, "you can manipulate your mind."

Oh, okay. Will do!

Weary of gender assumptions

There's an interesting article in the Boston Globe about psychologist Alice Domar and her study of something she calls the "perception deception"--the tendency for women to be very critical of themselves at all times, which can often lead to health problems.

Domar is executive director of the Domar Center for Mind/Body Health in Waltham, Massachusetts; she is also an assistant professor at the Harvard Medical School. She has a new book on this very topic coming out next month, entitled Be Happy Without Being Perfect: How to Break Free from the Perception Deception.

All of this is well and good and informative. But I am growing weary of the way discussions like this proceed along such strict gender lines. Women do this; men do that.

I understand the need to paint in broad strokes. But when I read this article, I find myself emotionally aligned with many of the issues discussed as "women's" issues. This happens to me a lot.

The bottom line is that these matters are not always so clear-cut. It is probably more accurate to talk about feminine and masculine tendencies, to reflect the underlying energy picture informing our emotional realities, rather than "women are like this" and "men are like this."

I am a heterosexual man who happens to have a fairly well-developed feminine side. I know it complicates matters in these sorts of discussions but I am real and I know there are others like me and I wish there could be a way to have these discussions that would include me rather than leave me yet again with the idea that I am some sort of alien being--neither from Venus nor from Mars.

Friday quotation

"When one is pretending the entire body revolts."
- Anaïs Nin

Mind-body medicine in the mainstream media

U.S. News & World Report has an article on a new study that shows that daily stress has an impact on how a woman's immune system responds to the cancer-causing virus HPV, and then an accompanying article featuring a short interview with Anne Harrington, author of The Cure Within, for some perspective on the mind-body connection at work here.

The feeling of stress continues to be just about the only emotional state that we feel okay, culturally, about relating to health issues. And even then it seems we do it at arm's length, continually looking to biology for the "real" reasons something may be physically wrong with us.

Back pain persists; the New York Times is puzzled

"Americans are spending more money than ever to treat spine problems, but their backs are not getting any better."

That's the first line in an article in Wednesday's New York Times, and that pretty much tells you the story.

As strong as the article is on statistics and evidence of the widespread problem, the Times remains as puzzled about it as the medical mainstream whose actions are being tracked, and, seemingly, as close-minded:

"It is not clear why more people appear to be suffering from back and neck pain," writes health reporter Tara Parker-Pope. "It could be because of rising obesity rates, researchers suggested. Or excessive treatment of back problems could lead to more problems."

More accurate it would be to say that it is not clear to tradition-bound western medical practitioners why more people appear to be suffering from back and neck pain. But to other experts--Dr. John Sarno among them--it's very clear. Our culture is in the midst of an epidemic of mind-body disorders. The back pain is largely psychogenic.

But that is not, apparently, for the Times to say, or even insinuate. Had the article left it an unaccountable mystery, we would have been better off. Instead, Parker-Pope passes along two suggestions from her medical sources that are, frankly, unscientific and borderline comical.

"Rising obesity rates"? Someone should tell that to *my* back. And note the ever-popular evasive attribution: "researchers suggested." The obesity witch hunt continues, and it is not, I don't think, unrelated to our medical establishment's inability to absorb the reality of an intimate mind-body connection. I'll save that for another post someday.

As for the second suggestion--the idea that "more people appear to be suffering from back and neck pain" because "excessive treatment of back problems could lead to more problems": um, well...huh? I can understand how excessive treatment of back problems could prolong existing conditions. But how could excessive treatment of people who already have back pain create more people with back pain? That was the original puzzle: "why more people appear to be suffering from back and neck pain."

That American doctors might actually think that this makes more sense than acknowledging the fact that our bodies and minds are connected and influence each other shows us, sadly, how far we yet have to go in moving mind-body medicine into the mainstream here in the U.S.

Friday quotation

"We tend to be particularly unaware that we are thinking virtually all the time. The incessant stream of thoughts flowing through our minds leaves us very little respite for inner quiet. And we leave precious little room for ourselves anyway just to be, without having to run around doing things all the time. Our actions are all too frequently driven rather than undertaken in awareness, driven by those perfectly ordinary thoughts and impulses that run through the mind like a coursing river, if not a waterfall. We get caught up in the torrent and it winds up submerging our lives as it carries us to places we may not wish to go and may not even realize we are headed for."
- Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are (Hyperion, 1994)

The pursuit of happiness

In Newsweek, an article on how "The push for ever-greater well-being is facing a backlash, fueled by research on the value of sadness."

The rather mindless cultural drive to assure us that we're all supposed to be happy practically all the time strikes me as an insidious symptom of the lack of general medical understanding of the mind-body connection. We treat the body as only body; we treat the mind as only mind.

Working hard to convince everyone that our goal is unalloyed, 24/7 happiness seems to be the emotional equivalent of attempting to gain a bulked-up, Mr. Universe-style physique--neither natural nor desirable for most people, and loaded with unintended side effects for later in life.