Our bodies are amazing machines. All of our body’s systems, structures and functions work in concert to create the miracle of life while also preventing illness and repairing the body daily.
In his book, “The Body is the Hero,” Ronald Glasser, M.D., describes how physicians can assist the body in this constant job of defending and repairing. Medical interventions, however, are relatively small and only work if the body is able to heal itself. The true hero, then, is the patient.
Ultimately, the patient is the one who must heal. Such healing occurs when three distinct dimensions of health—mental, physical and emotional—are addressed and operate together to help a patient think, feel and live.
The Mind-Body-Spirit Connection
Understanding this mind, body and spirit connection is vital to living well. How we think, how we make decisions, how we perceive ourselves, events and the future, and our ability to cope with stress for better or worse can all affect physical health.
Physical ailments can spread to become mental and social/emotional disorders. Similarly, illnesses that start mental or social/emotional can spread to and manifest themselves as physical symptoms.
Most patients can quickly recall a time when an event, news or surprise affected them physically. For example, as a patient awaits results from an important test or for an interview, his heart pumps faster, his breath speeds up and his palms sweat in anticipation. When a patient hears tragic news, she may feel like she has been “hit by a train.”
Reducing Stress
Once a patient understands the mind, body, spirit connection, he or she can make choices to improve healing. One of the biggest factors in overall health, for example, is allowing destructive stress to erode mental and physical well-being.
Psychologist Richard Lazarus described two types of stress in life: eustress and distress 1. Eustress is healthy stress, whereas distress is destructive and negatively affects physical health. Eustress is productive and engages the mind, spirit and body in activities that tap into imagination, education and moral compass. Eustress is vital to good health, helping people to uplift, improve and problem solve.
Conversely, it is important to identify and diminish exposure to distress to improve overall health. Such an effort includes minimizing violations of conscience (one of the greatest sources of distress), minimizing deviations for planned routines, improving relationships within families and organizations, improving sleep habits, and minimizing risks of external forces dictating life choices. Sometimes it is not possible to minimize external forces causing distress in our lives in the short term, so then we must focus on strategies to cope with distress in the long term. These may include physical illness, financial problems or family discord. Good diet and exercise habits, prayer and meditation, as well as good friend and family support are all helpful in coping with distress.
Piecing Together Better Health
Piecing together the bigger picture of health for each patient is like a puzzle, as patient and doctor work together over time to explore patterns that point to physical, mental or emotional causes of symptoms or complaints. Patient and physician cannot focus solely on physical solutions. This approach may possibly mask symptoms, but it may not get at the underlying cause.
A comprehensive solution for a symptom that may have a mental or social/emotional cause should not stop at alleviating the complaint, but should also try to minimize or eliminate the cause. As patients work along with support from physicians, family and friends to improve lifestyle choices, they can heal in more holistic ways.
There is no greater satisfaction for a doctor than to work with a patient to identify disease and help them heal. But physicians are not the heroes; they have simply learned to use the mind-body-spirit connection to help their patients become the heroes in their own lives.