My notes from the book
Healing and the Mind
The Mind & Body Connection
Author: Bill Moyers
Bio-chemicals called peptides from the brain are sent out throughout the body to latch onto proteins and cells to act as receptors (like a satellite dish) to communicate with the rest of the body.
Emotion is within, throughout the whole body and has a big impact on the ability of these receptors to communicate which can affect our immune system’s response to disease.
Depression is an EMPTY feeling. When you are in the midst of depression, you feel empty of all emotion, completely drained.
Grief can result in sadness or depression. Each thought we think has a bio-chemical effect on the body – creating many hormones from our own pharmacy in our brain.
People who feel isolated have 3-5 times more heart disease than those who feel a part of a group.
Thoughts, feelings and our very personality can affect our personal health.
Why is it in a world full of pathologists, some people become sick while others do not?
The immune system is directly connected to our emotions and feelings. The nerves control our immune system. Controlled by emotion, our immune system has a memory of past insults that have come in as a defense system and our brain has a memory of past experiences. The two great memory systems are not independent, but talk to each other extensively, meaning the things that affect our mind or brain have a direct effect on our health.
Our mind can be conditioned to control our health. Taste and smell can be utilized to condition our minds to react as if we were getting medication to control sickness.
For example: Introduce a potent taste or smell (such as cod liver oil or rose perfume)
with medication and after a time, the medication can be reduced to zero while the mind and body will still react as if the medication were still being received, even though only the taste or smell are being used.
Another example was an experiment done with five groups of similarly clinically depressed patients. One group was given a standard dose of anti-depression medication, the second group was given a placebo (just a sugar pill or nothing of any medical value), the third group was given nothing, the fourth group was required to stand in front of a mirror and smile at themselves for five minutes each day, and the fifth group was required to meet as a group and discuss their past and/or present troubles. Only three of the five groups showed improvement. The group who talked about their problems showed a small improvement, while the group on medication and the group who smiled
at themselves for five minutes had the same dramatic improvement. See the power of the brain!
The mind and body are inseparable components.
Neuro-peptides – strings of amino acids (like a string of pearls) diffuse throughout the body –binding and tickling the receptors on the surface of every cell.
They are messenger molecules – they direct where the body should put its attention at each moment. These are bio-chemicals of emotion. They are released in response to emotional states. I as a whole person am talking to myself as a sending and receiving device – intelligence is in every cell of our body. The mind is more than the brain – it is enlivening energy that allows the body to talk to every cell.
Emotions are stored in the body. Our emotions come rising from the trumpet sounding from our mind.
Our peptides are always changing shape, wiggling and vibrating the molecules of each cell or protein they are coupled up to each moment. They are very dynamic, fluid energy molecules changing each millisecond – sending chemical messages throughout the body.
Biofeedback is an excellent demonstration of this action.
Emotional support of patients plays an important fact in their recovery from illness.
The attitude with which you confront your illness and what you go home with will affect your recovery.
Technology tends to distance the patients from doctors.
People who have a lot of education about their operation, what to expect during and after the operation have a great deal to do with their recuperation.
Bonding with a baby that is expected to die has to come before grieving of its death.
Nutrition and the Mind
By: Marvin Heikkila
Imagine you are a clinical practitioner. A well-established professional man, happily married for 12 years comes into your office for help. One evening after celebrating his birthday together, he and his wife were relaxing with a drink in their living room. The husband states that he doesn’t like the taste of his drink anymore and was just too tired from the long day to enjoy it. Now without reason or warning, his wife shouts, “YOU’RE TOO TIRED!” and then jumps up, grabs one his golf trophies off the fireplace mantel and throws it through the living room window while continuing shouting at him, accusing him of everything imaginable- selfishness, neglect, abuse. Then she runs crying from the room screaming and sobbing, slams the door as she runs out of the house and gets into her car. She yells “Happy Birthday” and then speeds off. She comes home several hours later, goes to bed and remains there most of the next day. He asks you, a trained clinical practitioner, what you think could be going on with his wife to suddenly act like that. Was it a mental problem or a physical problem? Your reply was…………well let’s see what he says after we delve into the interaction between nutrition and the mind. I am going to persuade you that nutrition, not only the right amounts and types of food, but also the right combination of nutrition for each genetically unique person is vital to maintain a healthy body and mind.
Every function of the body involves a chemical process, whether it is physical or mental activity, even just breathing and feeling. When we get sick, we are suffering from a metabolic upset, a chemical imbalance that has caused our body to become weakened and lose its capacity to fend off infections. The brain is especially susceptible to changes in body chemistry. Look at some of the processes that affect our physical and mental well-being. A thyroid deficiency can cause a person to feel exhausted all of the time. An over productive thyroid produces the opposite effect, while also changing personality traits by producing anxiety, excitability, and nervousness. A lack of Vitamin B may lead to such serious diseases as pellagra and beriberi that can affect brain metabolism, producing symptoms of mental disorders. You’ve probably heard the comparison of our body to a furnace, each needing fuel to burn. What do you think would provide the longest burning, hottest fuel to heat a house: a few crumpled wads of newspaper or a solid log of oak? That question might seem like a no-brainer to you but was designed to help you understand the importance of needing proper fuel. Our body doesn’t use paper or wood to burn, but a simple kind of sugar, specifically glucose, which is circulated in our blood as blood sugar to all of the body‘s tissues such as the heart, liver, muscles and brain. Although glucose can be directly obtained from honey or grapes, the body manufactures most of its requirements from other carbohydrates (potatoes, bread and cereals), milk sugar (lactose), fruit sugar (fructose), as well as from meat and other protein foods. In addition to glucose, many cells in the body can burn fat for energy, though it is not the fuel they prefer. The brain however, relies heavily on glucose for its energy and cannot switch to fat when sugar is not available. The brain is only 2 ½ percent of our total body weight, but requires 25% of the total glucose the whole body consumes. If the blood sugar level is too low, insufficient glucose is available to the brain and results in loss of emotional control in forms from simple nervousness, unexplained weeping and depression all the way to the urge to smash something, anything. Blood sugar level is directly maintained by the interaction of all of the nutrients we consume. All of the carbohydrates (starches and sugars) and half of the proteins you eat are converted directly into glucose and resemble the crumbled up wads of paper thrown into the fire to provide instant energy. The presence of fat (butter and the fat contained in meat) in our diet directly also influences the blood sugar level. Our body typically stores enough glucose to last about 4 hours. After that, unless there are other stored fuels, the fire goes out and you are all worn out. Protein, which is more slowly digested is converted into glycogen, liver sugar and is stored between meals in the liver and released when needed. After our 4-hour supply of glucose is used up, the liver releases more to continue the fueling process.
There is a need to regulate the proper balance of our three basic nutrients, carbohydrates, proteins and fats since there is an interdependence of all three nutrients to successfully produce the needed glucose amounts to operate our body. Unless there is sugar being burned in the body from carbohydrates and/or fats, proteins cannot be converted into either liver sugar or blood sugar. So neither a low carbohydrate, high protein diet, or a high carbohydrate, low protein nor totally fat-free diet provide for optimal energy production. The brain alone needs 500 calories of carbohydrates per day. Each person’s oxidation rate, the rate at which their cells turn sugar into energy, varies with inherited genetic differences and explains why different people eating the same “balanced diet” will derive different energy levels and health benefits from the same food. We are each as unique in our fuel utilizing processes, as are our facial features and fingerprints. We are much the same in many ways, but also differ in many small ways. Many are affected by allergies to various chemicals, and other things, causing respiratory, digestive, or other reactions. Others are highly affected by certain drugs causing violent and sometimes deadly side effects, while others are helped from the same drugs. In each case, the drugs, chemicals or other external stimuli cause either a helpful or harmful effect on the people exposed to them depending upon their genetic disposition to the items.
Are you still wondering about the wife who threw her husband’s golf trophy through the window and the cause of her actions? After some probing of the husband, the clinical practitioner discovered that the couple had returned home a month earlier from a trip to Central America and had taken precautions to avoid the stomach and bowel infections that often attack tourists in the tropics by taking sulfa drugs immediately as they got off the plane and the wife was still taking the drug as an extra precaution after returning from the trip. While taking the drug it was possible to eat certain foods and drink liquids that normally contained harmful bacteria without suffering the usual effects of becoming very ill from them. But not only does the sulfa drug prevent bad bacteria from growing in the intestines of the person taking the drug, it also prevents any good bacteria from populating, which feed on starches eaten and synthesize a number of vitamins –riboflavin and biotin (both B vitamins) and vitamin K, particularly important to maintaining a healthy nervous system. All of these vitamins cannot be taken in large enough doses as oral doses of vitamins or are in as a natural form as the type manufactured by the body to meet all of the body’s needs. Normally if a person has this type of problem, a cessation of the offending drug and a few large helpings of natural yogurt, a source of good bacteria in the form of acidophilus is enough to return the process back to normal in about two hours. But it didn’t work in the case of this woman. Her blood oxidation level
still showed a 30% reduction below her optimum operating level. The man’s wife then stated that she had gained some weight on their vacation and had gone on a zero carbohydrate diet after returning home. The reaction she had as a violent outburst was the result of a combination of two things: diminished digestion and synthesizing of B and K vitamins and a complete absence of carbohydrates essential for direct conversion to glucose and the conversion of protein to sugar causing the brain to malfunction resulting in a personality change, an emotional/mental imbalance and violent actions.
Now I’m going to mention another important component in maintaining a healthy body, but maybe contrary to thinking about keeping a fire going…..WATER! Our bodies are made up of nearly 75% water. Water not only is the means for making the blood thin enough to flow in our veins and carry nutrients in the form of glucose and oxygen to all of our cells, but it also carries away the spent fuel waste and toxins produced during the process. Imagine having an indoor furnace without a chimney! You’d have a house that was so smoky that you couldn’t stand to live in it! The same would be the case if you had no way to rid the body of its burned waste products. How much water do we need to drink every day? A good rule of thumb is to divide your body weight in half and use that number in ounces as your requirement. In other words, if you weigh180 lbs. you would need half of that, or 90 ounces, approximately nine - 10 oz. glasses every day to maintain proper fluid levels.
There are many other possible negative effects from other combinations of external stimuli and out of balance nutrition, but I want you to leave today understanding the inseparable connection of the mind and body in relation to proper nutrition and urge you to exercise 3-4 times per week, eat well, drink plenty of water, avoid harmful chemicals and drugs and eventually come to know yourself enough to find your perfect balance of all the right nutrients for your body makeup for optimal health and energy.