How to Keep Your Immune System Healthy.

How do you handle stress?

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.Just as the level of the hormone insulin in your bloodstream is determined by what you eat, the level of the hormone cortisol is determined by what you think.

Cortisol has far-reaching systemic effects relating to many of your bodies functions. Any discussion of weight gain would have to include the effects of cortisol; however, cortisol is best known as the stress hormone. It is the relationship of stress to immune function that is the focus of this post.

When the immune system is alert and active, it is busy protecting you. It removes toxins and other debris from the body’s bloodstream and tissues; and, it attacks invaders that pose a threat to your survival (bacteria, viruses, and cancer cells).

Your body is programmed to protect you; survival is the body’s primary directive. Your body must operate by specific rules of survival. The function of a traffic light makes a good analogy of how the body responds to stress and controls the function of its immune system.

Cancer and What Your Doctor Hasn’t Told You.

What is wrong with this picture?
New ideas are not readily accepted.

When you are diagnosed with cancer you need the best of conventional Western medicine to cure your cancer or put it into remission. This includes surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and immunotherapy. These Western medical techniques are known as evidence-based medicine.

In the past decade it has become increasingly clear that mind-body medicine plays an equally important role as evidence-based medicine as part of your path to recovery from cancer.

There is an abundance of proof, based upon sound scientific research, that thoughts and emotions have direct physical effects on the cells in your body. Your thoughts and emotions cause hormones to be released into your bloodstream. These hormones can turn off cancer fighting immune cells.

Your immune system is the best oncologist in the world. Like a bloodhound, a healthy immune system will track down cancer cells, killing them upon contact. If your thoughts can turn off cancer fighting immune cells and there is something that you can do about it, then why haven’t your doctors told you about it?

Four reasons why your doctors do not discuss the importance of mind-body medicine in fighting cancer.

Can Your Thoughts Cause or Cure Cancer?

Rubin’s Vase with Hidden Faces

What are you? Are you all the physical processes in your brain, or are you something more with an immortal soul? Does your mind exist inside of space or outside of space?  How you answer this question has a lot to do with your health.

Would you agree: you are a composite of a mind (the mental realm of thoughts, beliefs, pains, sensations, emotions) and a body (the physical realm of matter – atoms, neurons, chemicals)?

Most important, how would you answer the age-old question: what is the relationship between mind and body?

Science now has a definitive answer that can be proved using the scientific method: events of the mind can cause events in the body; and, events in the body can cause events in the mind. There is clearly a mind–body connection.

I’ll briefly discuss the science behind this statement in a moment, but first I want to get you thinking about the mind-body connection. Look at the picture at the top of this post. On the right of the picture are two physical objects – a girl and a vase. These two objects exist in physical space. Now look at the space between the girl and the vase. Can you see the silhouette of a man?

How You Can Take Control of Your Health

Who doesn’t want to be more in control of their health?

Who is ultimately in control of your health? Is it your body, driven by hormones, or your mind/spirit which is your soul, your thoughts, your intellect, and your free will? What is the role of your mind in healing your body?

Religion and medicine have wrestled with the mind-body question for thousands of years. It has only been since the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment that the split between religion and medicine became final and complete.

The Roots of Western Medicine

Modern Western medical practices are based upon the views of René Descartes (1596 – 1650). Descartes’ theory of the fundamental separation of mind and body remains today as the foundation of Western intellectual thought and Western medical science.

In his treatise on man, De Homine, Descartes declared that both animals and humans are wonderful machines. Because modern Western medicine is grounded in Descartes’ writings it is important to understand some of the history behind the publication of his writings.

The first of Descartes’s writings were completed in 1633. A friend of his, Maron Mersenne, wrote to him of Galileo’s fate, that same year, at the hands of the Roman Inquisition. Galileo was threatened with torture and convicted of heresy. He was placed under house arrest for life – his crime, you might recall, was stating that the sun, not the earth, is the center of the universe.

Descartes immediately suppressed publishing his own treatise, until he came to an agreement with the Pope – his writings would not have anything to do with the soul, the mind, or the emotion. The mind remained the jurisdiction of the church. Medicine and science would deal only with the physical body.

Nervous Energy – Burn It or Store It

Blood sugar is burned now or stored as fat for later use.

“I just don’t have any energy,” he told me.

I knew what he meant. Since he was a friend seeking advice, I could speak to him frankly. “Your problem,” I said, “is that you have way too much energy, and it’s stored in your midsection. You are suffering from chronic fatigue. It is most likely caused by your fast paced, stress filled, lifestyle.”

 Nervous Energy Is Stored Fat

“Energy,” as it pertains to how our body operates, means “fuel.”   Just as gas in your automobile’s fuel tank is the energy that makes the engine operate. Blood sugar (glucose) is the fuel in your bloodstream that keeps you going.

When you get too much glucose in your bloodstream, your body scrambles to get rid of it. Your body has two alternatives. The cells of your body can take in the blood sugar to be used (burned) or it is stored as fat. Too much glucose in the bloodstream is called a sugar high. My friend was stuck in the sugar high/sugar low cycle. This is a common cause of chronic fatigue.

4 Words That Stop Chronic Stress

Stop Stress Hormones That Have Run Amuck

You must stop runaway stress hormones before they kill you.

We have all seen dramatic movies where the tension mounts as we watch a runaway stagecoach with the heroine trapped inside. How will it ever be stopped in time? What about the runaway train bounding toward the bridge that is out; or a bomb that must be disarmed before the time runs out; or the asteroid on a collision course towards Earth? How will they be stopped in time?

Chronic stress causes a runaway flow of stress hormones (cortisol and adrenaline) that cascade through your body. Medical research has documented the connection between stress and serious chronic illnesses.

A growing number of studies confirm that chronic stress plays a major role in the progression of heart disease and cancer, the number 1 and number 2 biggest killers in our nation. How can this flow of stress hormones be stopped in time?

Does Stress Cause Cancer?

Stress is the soil the supports cancer growth

“I know stress caused my cancer.”

This is a common belief of many cancer patients. In studies, women will state over and over they are absolutely convinced stress caused their breast cancer. They will say they can pinpoint the growth of their cancer to a specific time of extreme emotional distress that occurred five or more years before being diagnosed.

Is their intuition correct? Can chronic stress cause cancer?

I have learned, when it comes to their health, a woman’s intuition sometimes seems uncanny. I am convinced, when it comes to their children’s health, a mother needs to listen very carefully to their intuition. Although these situations are anecdotal, a common belief of cancer patients is that stress caused their cancer.

The Relationship Between Chronic Stress and Cancer

Stress Induced Weight Gain

Stress causes you to crave high carbohydrate sugary comfort foods.

Chronic stress causes weight gain. “Oh great!” you think. “Now I’ll stress out because stress causes weight gain. How can I ever get out of this cycle?”

Stress causes a gain in abdominal fat. Abdominal fat causes specific chemical signals (hormones) that lead to lower metabolism and a craving for sweets. This in turn leads to even more weight gain which causes more emotional stress.

Our Bodies Are Designed to Protect Us

Your body is programmed to keep you alive. Your stress reaction is meant to protect you. When your mind senses danger, it causes two key hormones to be released into your bloodstream – adrenaline and cortisol. Each of these hormones cause a series of other hormones to be released, which trigger specific stress responses in your body.

Adrenaline prepares you to be able to take action. Your heart rate increases, your blood pressure elevates, and the supply of energy to your muscles is increased.

Cortisol increases blood sugar (glucose) in the bloodstream, enhances your brain’s use of glucose, and increases the availability of substances that repair tissue. It is assumed that if you get in a fight for your life situation, you are going to expend a lot of energy.

Number 1 Way to Turn Off Stress

It Is Not a Matter of Half Full or Half Empty

Chronic Stress is serious business. It is not an abstract concept. Stress has serious physical consequences. The top two causes of death in the United States are heart disease and cancer. Both are stress related chronic diseases.

Stressors are those life circumstances that cause stress hormones to cascade throughout your body. A bolt of lightning and a crack of thunder startle you. Cortisol and adrenaline, the “stress” and the “fight or flight” hormones spike in your bloodstream. Muscles tense, your heart rate increases, and your rate of breathing increases. When you realize the danger is over, your body and mind relax and your heart rate returns to normal.

However, with chronic stress caused by long-term stressors –social pressures, financial pressures, a difficult family situation, a serious illness, etc. – the flow of stress hormones does not shut down.

Positive Thinking Reduces Stress by Eliminating Negative Self Talk

Mind – Body Connection and the Immune System

Your Thoughts Produce Physical Outcomes

Can you stop the flow of stress hormones and ramp up your immune system with positive thinking? Absolutely!

In the past there has been an ongoing debate in the medical community as to whether cancer patients could really improve their chance of remission by staying positive and upbeat. Western scientific medical research has not embraced the Eastern healing concept of a mind-body connection because… well, it isn’t very scientific.

Eastern medicine has accepted the mind-body-soul connection for over 3000 years. Western medical methods depend upon empirical evidence and the validation of a theory by the scientific method.

We know today, as a result of groundbreaking research by Candace B. Pert, Ph.D., the brain communicates with every immune cell in your body in response to all of your thoughts. Dr. Pert discovered