Terms of Use
The Mind Body Approach
Mind Body Medicine focuses on the interactions among the brain, mind, body, and behavior, and on the powerful ways in which emotional, mental, social, spiritual, and behavioral factors can directly affect health. It regards as fundamental an approach that respects and enhances each person's capacity for self-knowledge and self-care, and it emphasizes techniques that are grounded in this approach.
It is an approach to healing that uses the power of thoughts and emotions to positively influence physical health. As Hippocrates once wrote, "The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well." This is the essence of mind/body medicine.
The idea that the mind and body interact is not new, however. It can be traced to Old Testament times and to Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine. The ancient Hebrews attributed some physical illnesses to grief or anger. Hippocrates believed that health depends upon a balance of the body, mind and environment, and that disease is caused by imbalances in these areas. As modern science progressed, the mind and emotions became neglected, since researchers found it difficult to measure and quantify mental states with the scientific methods and equipment that were so highly valued.
Today, with the help of new technological advancements, and the many clinical studies conducted concerning the complex interaction between mind and body, confirm that our well being and state of health, depends on more then just an invasion of bacteria or virus as the cause of illness. Our emotions and thoughts have a great influence on our state of health, therfore, they are important factors that must be considered and explored when an an unhealthy state arises. ( to learn more about this, read Psychoneuroimmunology below)
For more information on Mind-Body Medicine,click on the this link---> Herbert-Benson Institute For Mind Body Medicine
Coping with Chronic Thyroid Disease
Alternative & Holistic Information by Dr. Jan Nicholson
Jan Nicholson, EdD is an integrative clinical psychologist in Virginia who brings innovative mind-body approaches to her therapeutic work. Here, she shares her advice regarding chronic illness and the role of mind-body medicine.
Q: Can you talk a bit about the emotional and mental effects of chronic illness in general?
JAN NICHOLSON, EdD: Symptoms of depression and anxiety go hand in hand with chronic illness for many people. It is so demoralizing to be tired much of the time, to have poor concentration and memory, to have to cut back on doing things including the things you love most, to not be able to perform up to one's former level of competence, to have to say no to friends and family over and over in order to take care of yourself, I could go on and on.
It is easy to get into self-defeating thought patterns that actually reinforce a state of illness, such as "I might as well give up, nothing ever works out for me." Research has shown that chronic pain ages the brain up to 20 years; a huge complaint for people with chronic pain and/or illness is brain fog, a compromised ability to focus and concentrate or to remember things. This affects one's self-esteem and self-confidence. For some people, becoming isolated from others becomes a problem; for others, becoming perhaps even overly dependent on others can become a problem.
Q: Even with treatment, many of us with chronic thyroid disease face long-term emotional symptoms that affect our daily life, including depression and anxiety. Do you have any thoughts on how men and women with a chronic illness should approach coping with or even overcoming these sorts of chronic symptoms?
JAN NICHOLSON, EdD: Support groups have proven to be enormously helpful for people who are ill, so seeking a group of people with a similar illness who hold regular meetings can be a great source of social support; also, participating in chat rooms online can be greatly helpful. In either, it's important that the people involved tend toward being proactive, sharing helpful suggestions with each other, keeping each other's spirits up. Some venting can be helpful but if the group tends to only do that, it can become depressing in itself, so watch out for that.
Doing healthy things for mind and body, such as yoga, meditation, exercise, nutritious eating, and regular sleep is important. Be mindful about negative self-talk and try to shift it into a more positive attitude. Seeing holistic providers who do massage, acupuncture, and other healing methods such as mind/body therapies (e.g., hypnosis, guided imagery) can help with both symptoms of the illness and of mood.
Psychotherapy with a psychotherapist who has a strong background in mind-body approaches can be highly beneficial. Sometimes, particularly if symptoms are intense and long-lasting, medication is beneficial to address anxiety and depression.
There are excellent books out there, for instance, The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness, by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn. A wonderful resource involving guided imagery CDs and downloads for nearly every illness as well as depression, anxiety, weight loss, general wellness and so on is Belleruth Naparstek.
There are mind-body things you can do to help yourself such as experimenting with imagery to shift your experience of symptoms; learning to manage symptoms to some degree alleviates feelings of helplessness and thus, of depression and anxiety. For instance, if you imagine that your hands are warming up to the point that they actually do warm, you can alleviate vascular constriction in your body, which can help with a symptom such as a headache. If a painful area feels sharp and prickly, you can imagine something occurring that shifts it into feeling more smooth and calm; this can actually reduce the intensity of the pain. If someone with a burn immediately starts thinking about coolness, the burn may not progress into being as serious as it might have been. That is how powerful the mind-body connection is.
Q: When someone has a chronic illness, one of the most overlooked people in the equation is the spouse. Some people have spouses who end up overfunctioning -- taking care of everything -- i.e., children, housework, etc., because the one with the illness is simply too exhausted. On the other end of the spectrum, we see spouses who are unsupportive, and because someone with a chronic thyroid problem typically doesn't look obviously ill, they don't understand the illness, believe the spouse is truly sick, or even think that their spouse is "malingering." Do you have any specific thoughts directed at the spouses of someone with a chronic illness? And do you have any thoughts directed at someone with a chronic illness, regarding how best to effectively live well with both their spouse and a chronic illness?
JAN NICHOLSON, EdD: It is important for a spouse to become informed so that they do understand the illness, so they have a sense of when the person with the illness can safely do more and when they cannot, so that they have more compassion. The person who is ill needs to ensure that their spouse is educated and that he or she does understand as much as is possible without firsthand knowledge of the condition. This might mean asking (and pushing if necessary) a spouse to be more involved, perhaps in attending some medical appointments, doing some relevant reading, attending a lecture.
If it is something they can afford, it is helpful for a couple to decide what they can hire someone else to do for them so the healthy spouse does not feel overly burdened. Learning how to cope with stress is as important for the spouse as it is for the person with the chronic illness. Once having learned, make sure to practice the favorite stress management technique(s) on a daily basis. Taking time out to re-fuel is crucial, whether that is taking a walk, a bubble bath, exercising, sitting in stillness in meditation or prayer, getting together with friends, taking a vacation, going on a retreat.
If a spouse is thinking their partner is malingering, they need to talk about it with each other. Like any couple, both need to initiate communication if they are feeling misunderstood. The person who is ill needs to be as clear as possible with the spouse about when they are feeling up to doing more and when they are not, not expecting the spouse to be a mind reader about when they need help and emotional support. Seeing a therapist for couples counseling might be beneficial if communication has gotten bogged down, and if resentment is building for either partner.
Integrative clinical psychologist Jan Nicholson, EdD is a 1983 graduate of Harvard University's Counseling and Consulting Psychology program, completing her predoctoral internship at Children's Hospital in Boston. Additionally, she completed a two-year training program in Gestalt Psychology at the Washington Center for Consciousness Studies, and a semester in International Trauma Studies at NYU. Her passion has been to explore mind-body medicine throughout her career and to integrate such approaches into her therapeutic work, including meditative awareness, guided imagery, clinical hypnosis, coreSomatics, SomatoEmotional Release, Reconnective HealingTM, Reiki, and EMDR. She has a private practice with offices in both Alexandria and Falls Church, Virginia. You can read more about her work at her web site .
Holistic & Natural Health Counseling (Naturopathy)
This approach focuses on preventing illness and maintaining health. It views health as a balance of body systems - mental, emotional, and spiritual, as well as physical. All aspects of a person are seen as interrelated - a principle called holism, meaning "state of wholeness." Any disharmony is thought to stress the body and perhaps lead to sickness.
Although conventional medicine recognizes that many physical symptoms have mental components (for example, emotional stress might promote an ulcer or chronic headaches), often, the general approach is generally to suppress the symptoms, both physical and psychological.
The H.H.W.C. approach assesses the symptoms as a sign or reflection of a deeper instability within the person, and it tries to restore the physical and mental harmony that will then alleviate the symptoms.
The Six Key Principles of Holistic Health & Wellness Counseling.
1. Promote the healing power of nature.
2. First do no harm.
H.H.W. counselors choose healing methods with the intent to keep possible side effects to a minimum and not suppress symptoms. 3. Consider and work with the whole person.
3. Consider and Work with the WHOLE person
A person's health is affected by many factors, such as physical, mental, emotional, genetic, environmental, and social ones. All these factors are considered when choosing various natural healing approaches whose goal is to restore balance and help regain a healthy state.
4. Discover and try to eliminate the cause.
H.H.W. counselors seek to identify and try to eliminate the causes of a disease or condition, rather than its symptoms. They believe that symptoms are signs that the body is trying to fight disease, adapt to it, or recover from it.
5. Prevention is the best cure.
Counselors teach ways of living that they consider most healthy and most likely to prevent illness.
6. Education
H.H.W. counselors consider it important to educate their patients in taking responsibility for their own health. This education will also result in understanding the integration of both Holistic and Natural Health Counseling, and the individual’s active role and participation in the healing process, so that he/she may fully comply with the necessary changes and modifications which may be required to ultimately achieve optimal health.
The best illustration of H.H.W.C. is the fact that ancient Chinese doctors were paid only when their patients were healthy, not if they became ill.
Note: Prescription drugs, x-rays, and surgery are several of the practices that are not used.
Psycho-Neuro-Immunology
Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) is a branch of science that studies the interactions between the nervous system, endocrine system, immune system, and the subsequent effects of these interactions upon disease development/progression. The most appropriate name for the current field should be psychoneuroendocrinimmunology (PNEI), because of this bidirectional communication betwenn the 3 systems.
The term psychoneuroimmunology was coined by Robert Ader, a researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, New York. In the 1970s, studies by Ader and other researchers opened up new understandings of how experiences such as stress and anxiety can affect a person's immune system.
Many PNI studies have focused on how stress, hostility, and depression impact the immune system. These numerous studies have revealed that there is a direct correlation between the patient's desire to get well and the outcome of a disease. Many conditions such as heart disease, osteoporosis, arthritis, delayed wound healing, and premature aging, are related to stress and negative emotions.
Researchers emphasize that they are not simply providing scientific backing for beliefs that happy people live longer, or that people who hold in their anger give themselves cancer. Instead, they are discovering how the immune system communicates with the neurological and endocrine systems.
Some studies focus on the function of cytokines, which are substances secreted by cells of the immune system. The two main classes of cytokines are pro-inflammatory (producing inflammation) and anti-inflammatory (fighting inflammation). Studies of cytokines show that psychological factors such as stress depress the immune system, but that deviations in the immune system can also trigger psychological and behavioral changes. The communication goes both ways.
A person, who is fighting infection, perhaps from a cold, undergoes behavioral changes like fatigue, irritability, and loss of appetite. PNI maps complex interactions among the body's systems. Factors studied include mood, illness, immune response, susceptibility to disease, and maintenance of health.
Recommended Reading Resources
"
The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness," by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn. Published in 2007 by Guilford Press.
"Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness," by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Published in 2005 by Hyperion.
"Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting," by Myla Kabat-Zinn and Jon Kabat-Zinn. Published in 1997 by Hyperion.
"The Power of Now," by Eckhart Tolle. Published in 1999 by New World Library in Novato, CA and Namaste Publishing in Vancouver, B.C.
"Stillness Speaks," by Eckhart Tolle. Published in 2003 by New World Library and Namaste Publishing.
"The Symptom Path to Enlightenment: The New Dynamics of Self-Organization in Hypnotherapy: An Advanced Manual for Beginners," by Ernest L. Rossi. Published in 1996 by Zeig, Tucker, & Co, Inc., Phoenix AZ.
"A Path With Heart," by Jack Kornfield . Bantam Books, NY, 1993.
"Kitchen Table Wisdom," by Rachel Naomi Remen. Riverhead Books, NY, 1996.
"What the Bleep Do We Know!?" a 2004 film now out on DVD.
Web Sites
healthjourneys.com A full library of guided imagery CD's and downloads for nearly every health condition, created by Belleruth Naparstek.
thyroid.about.com www.thyroid-info.com
Comprehensive health resource sites created by Mary Shomon, patient advocate.
Includes resources for chronic fatigue, weight loss, fibromyalgia, and autoimmune disease.
Meditation CDs
Krishna Das Devotional chanting with a western influence.
Steven Halpern Peaceful soothing music for meditation & relaxation.
Jonathan Goldman Jonathan Goldman is a writer, musician and teacher. He is an authority on sound healing and a pioneer in the field of harmonics.
