The Link Between Stress and Cancer: Insights from Psychoneuroimmunology

In ALS the motor neurons, nerve cells that initiate and control muscle movement, gradually die. Without electrical discharges from the nerves, the muscles wither. Initial symptoms depend on the area of the spinal cord or the brain stem where the disease first strikes: people may experience muscle twitching or cramps, loss of normal speech or difficulties swallowing. Mobility and limb movement are eventually lost, as is speech, swallowing and the capacity to move air in and out of the lungs. Despite a few reported cases of recovery, early death is usually inevitable.

The life histories of people with ALS invariably tell of emotional deprivation or loss in childhood. Characterizing the personalities of ALS patients are relentless self-drive, reluctance to acknowledge the need for help and the denial of pain whether physical or emotional. All these behaviours and psychological coping mechanisms far predate the onset of illness.

The conspicuous niceness of most, but not all, persons with ALS is an expression of a self-imposed image that needs to conform to the individual’s (and the world’s) expectations. Unlike someone whose human characteristics emerge spontaneously, the individual seems trapped in a role, even when the role causes further harm. It is adopted where a strong sense of self should be–a strong sense of self that could not develop under early childhood conditions of emotional barrenness. In people with a weak sense of self, there is often an unhealthy fusion with others.

It is artificial to impose a separation between hormones and emotions. While it is perfectly true that hormones are active promoters or inhibitors of malignancy, it is not true that their actions have nothing to do with stress. In fact, one of the chief ways that emotions act biologically in cancer causation is through the effect of hormones. Some hor-mones- estrogen, for example- encourage tumour growth. Others enhance cancer development by reducing the immune system’s capacity to destroy malignant cells.

The body’s hormonal system is inextricably linked with the brain centres where emotions are experienced and interpreted. In turn, the hormonal apparatus and the emotional centres are interconnected with the immune system and the nervous system. These are not four separate systems, but one super-system that functions as a unit to protect the body from external invasion and from disturbances to the internal physiological condition. It is impossible for any stressful stimulus, chronic or acute, to act on only one part of the super-system.

In most cases of breast cancer, the stresses are hidden and chronic. They stem from childhood experiences, early emotional programming and unconscious psychological coping styles. They accumulate over a lifetime to make someone susceptible to disease.

Repression of anger increases the risk for cancer for the very practical reason that it magnifies exposure to physiological stress. If people are not able to recognize intrusion, or are unable to assert themselves even when they do see a violation, they are likely to experience repeatedly the damage brought on by stress.

Adults with a history of troubled childhoods may not encounter more serious losses than others do, but their ability to cope will have been impaired by their upbringing. Stress does not occur in a vacuum. The same external event will have a greatly varied physiological impact, depending on who is experiencing it.

The death of a family member will be processed in a markedly different way by someone who is emotionally well integrated and in a supportive relationship than it will be by a person who is alone.

Smoking no more causes cancer of the lung than being thrown into deep water causes drowning. Fatal as immersion in deep water can be to the unprotected non-swimmer, for someone who swims well or is equipped with a life jacket, it poses little risk. A combination of factors is necessary to cause drowning. It is the same with lung cancer.

Psychological influences make a decisive biological contribution to the onset of malignant disease through the interconnections linking the components of the body’s stress apparatus: the nerves, the hormonal glands, the immune system and the brain centers where emotions are perceived and processed.

Biologic and psychological activity are not independent; each represents the functioning of a super-system whose components can no longer be thought of as separate or autonomous mechanisms.

Psychoneuroimmunology_-or, more comprehensively and accurately, psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology–is the name of the discipline that studies the interrelated functions of the organs and glands that regulate our behaviour and physiological balance.

The brain, nervous system, immune organs and immune cells and the endocrine glands are joined together through several pathways. As more research is done, more links are likely to be discovered. The combined task of this psychoneuroimmunoendocrine (PNI)* system is to ensure the development, survival and reproduction of each organism. The interconnections among the components of the PNI system enable it to recognize potential threats from within or without, and to respond with behaviours and biochemical changes coordinated to maximize safety at minimal cost.

Primary immune organs are the bone marrow and the thymus gland, located in the upper chest in front of the heart. Immune cells maturing in the bone marrow or in the thymus travel to the secondary lymph organs, including the spleen and the lymph glands. Fibres issuing from the central nervous system supply both primary and secondary lymph organs, allowing instant communication from the brain to the immune system. The hormone-producing endocrine glands are also directly wired to the central nervous system. Thus the brain can “talk” directly to the thyroid and adrenal glands, or to the testes and ovaries and other organs.

The hormones from the endocrine glands and substances produced by the immune cells directly affect brain activity. Chemicals from all these sources attach to receptors on the surfaces of brain cells, thereby influencing the organism’s behaviour.

Source : When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress by Gabor Maté

Goodreads : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/450534.When_the_Body_Says_No

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