Is stress making you sick?

Have you ever wondered what it is about being stressed that makes you feel sick? In the classes I teach, we talk about how the events of our lives and the way we think about them can unleash a torrent of stress hormones and throw our bodies into disequilibrium. When this imbalance becomes chronic, we can feel sick and even develop illness.

In The Balance Within - The Science Connecting Health and Emotion (2001), Esther Sternberg, MD, a respected rheumatologist and neuroscientist, explains recent insights into the mind-body connection and how chronic psycholgical and physical stresses (sleep deprivation, divorce, and social isolation, for instance) make people ill by negatively affecting their immune and hormonal responses. She then describes the research that shows how belief can heal.

I just listened to her 2007 interview on "Speaking of Faith" on NPR, where she presents these ideas in language we can all understand. Through anecdotes about her own experiences with stress and inflammatory arthritis, she explains how stress makes us sick and belief can make us well. She suggests that much like the computer that has locked up from too many emails and too many programs running, the best thing we can do for ourselves is to "go offline and reboot."

If you are curious about the connections between health and emotion, or you want to learn more about going "offline," I invite you to listen to this facinating broadcast by clicking here.