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Resources | Health News | Therapies | Fitness |
The Mind-Body Connection: Complexity in Weight Loss |
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There was a time when people regarded the physical body as a system quite separate and distinct from the mental realm. The conventional wisdom of cultures throughout the world typically acknowledge and honor a connection between the mind and body, but in the realm of Western science, emotional and cognitive activity has been held as though it exists almost independent of the flesh. Yet anyone who’s ever gone for the chocolate when they were feeling blue knows, intuitively, that it’s all connected. And in the last 25 years or so, science has been getting a grip on the physiology underlying the profound connection between our minds and our bodies, and coming up with ways to help us not only understand it, but use it effectively to improve our health and habits, including the habits that have led to the national obesity crisis. Mind-Body Interplay Disease and stress research in particular have yielded vast evidence of the inter-related nature of our minds and bodies, showing how people who endure high-pressure lifestyles can experience both acute and chronic health problems because of it. But our daily lives are full of simpler examples of the mind-body connection, and it’s not always a problem: consider how certain words can make you blush; a sad scene in a movie or song can bring you to tears; a phone call or email from a special someone can make your heart go pitty-pat. Your thoughts are affecting your body chemistry and creating distinct physical responses. And obviously, it works the other way, too, when what your body experiences produces responses in the brain. A particular smell can stimulate a nostalgic memory. Tickling and rough-housing a grumpy child will often cheer him right up. These are such familiar examples that it’s hard to imagine anyone ever disputed the connection. But what science has been able to prove in the last couple decades is just why –neurologically— that tickling works to cheer the child. It’s not merely that you’ve distracted him from whatever got his goat. In truth, both laughter and physical exercise cause the release of mood-elevating chemicals in the brain. Laughter really is the best medicine, and you’ve just given him a double dose. On the other hand, research has proven that a stimulus such as anxiety —a feeling— can trigger the release of nerve-fiber chemicals, which then tell the immune system what to do to help protect the body in a time of emotional stress. No body (part) is an island Pioneering scientists say that other systems in the body are also connected in this way, together creating a virtual telephone network of transmitters and receptors, and that’s changing the way we look at how our thinking and habits influence disease, including obesity. Diseases that used to be studied just within their own body system are looked at more comprehensively now. Diabetes was traditionally considered to be a disease of the endocrine system. But it’s now also understood as an autoimmune disorder — an immune system attacking itself — that typically results from specific lifestyle choices. Is it any wonder then that the treatment of obesity is so complex? There are powerful forces at play in a problem that used to be reduced to a simple formula: “too much in, not enough out.” With emotional influences on behavioral choices resulting in physical changes that cause physiological adaptations, how could anyone think it’s a simple problem? That doesn’t mean you have to become a psychoneuroimmunologist in order to drop a few pounds. But if you have struggled futilely with a excess weight and the health problems associated with it, you can take some real encouragement from the advancing scientific understanding of the challenges you live with. Because if physical activity can change your brain chemistry, affecting how you think and feel, and thoughts can affect your body’s responses, then there’s real hope that you can train your body to train your mind, and vice versa. The whole nine yards It’s all one wonderful machine, and comprehensive bariatric weight-loss treatment takes that into account. Even the most nutritionally sound dietary plan cannot be effective in producing lasting weight loss if it’s not coordinated with developing new thinking and habits. Obvious, right?
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