Emotions and the immune system

In 1974, research in a laboratory at the school of medicine and dentistry in the university of Rochester, USA, rewrote biology's map of the body. A psychologist, Robert Ader, discovered that the immune system, like the brain, could learn. His finding sent shock-waves trough the medical world. he prevailing wisdom had been that only the brain and central nervous system could respond to experience by changing how they behaved. Ader's finding led to the development of what is now the leading edge medical science of psychoneuroimmunology or pni. It prompted the investigation of what are turning out to be myriad ways in which the nervous system and the immune system communicate - biological pathways that make the mind, the emotions and the body not separate, but intimately entwined.

The immune system is the body's "brain" defining the body's own sense of self of what belongs within it and what does not. A network of researchers is finding that the chemical messengers that operate most extensively in both brain and immune system are those that are most dense in neural areas that regulate emotion. It was already known that emotions have a powerful effect on the autonomic nervous system, which regulates everything from how much insulin is secreted to blood-pressure levels.

David Felten then detected a meeting point where the autonomic nervous system directly "talks" to lymphocytes and macrophages, cells of the immune system. In electron-microscope studies, he found synapse-like contacts where the nerve terminals of the autonomic system have endings that directly abut these immune cells; indeed they signal back and forth. In later experiments with animals,

Felten concluded that the nervous system not only connects to the immune system, but is essential for proper immune function

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Another key pathway linking emotions and the immune system is via the influence of the various hormones released under stress arousal. While these hormones surge through the body, the immune cells are hampered in their function. Stress suppresses immune function, at least temporarily, presumably in a conversation of energy that puts priority on the more immediate emergency , which is more pressing for survival. But, if stress is constant and intense, that suppression can become prolonged.

However, while many studies have found stress and negative emotions to weaken the effectiveness of various immune cells, evidence that the rate of these changes is great enough to make a medical difference is also now being produced. An American mass analysis combining results from hundred and one smaller studies confirmed that perturbing emotions are bad for health. People who experienced chronic anxiety, long periods of sadness and pessimism, unremitting tension or incessant hostility, or a relentlessly cynical/ suspicious nature were found to have double the risk of disease a toxicity risk factor as high as smoking or high cholesterol are for heart disease.

Equally these recent studies are proving a rational explanation as to how therapies which communicate direct with the subconscious mind (the controller of our emotions, behaviour patterns, nervous and immune systems) can be so effective in engineering positive change in physiological as well as psychological illnesses.

(Review complied by Adam Michael Sanders)