Emotional tension and stress make the body sick

1899
David Holt
Emotional tension and stress make the body sick

For years it has been discovered that emotional stress gradually and inexorably damages the body because it tends to burst like psychosomatic illnesses. The psycho-emotional damage to the body is such that it is considered that out of a hundred diseases, seventy or eighty! they are psychosomatic. And one of the most interesting investigations in contemporary psychology refers to the interference of stress in health, scourge and murderer of the modern human being.

Contents

  • Psychological stress and bodily illness
  • Social stress
  • Psychosomatic discomfort
    • References

Psychological stress and bodily illness

In this conversion mechanism, the person unconsciously transforms a psychological conflict into a physical symptom. That is, the mind (psyche) makes the body (soma) sick.

For a time it was believed that there were no physical disorders caused exclusively by psychological factors. It was thought that a bodily disorder necessarily had a biological component that combined with environmental, social and psychological factors, developed a psychosomatic illness.

However, research has shown that the brain is capable of making the body sick because it communicates with blood cells that move throughout the body through blood flow, lymphatic vessels, and nerves. For example, hives can be caused by a physical allergy or a psychological reaction. Depression can predispose the depressed to certain infections, such as those caused by flu viruses, preventing the immune system from protecting them.

In other words, emotional tension (depression, anxiety, anger ...) and stress (caused by financial problems, job pressure, emotional breakdown, death of a family member ...) poorly treated or misdirected can trigger tragic moments in humans, causing them including death.

Social stress

Both social and psychological stress can activate or aggravate a wide range of diseases such as diabetes mellitus, lupus, leukemia and multiple sclerosis. Of course, the importance of psychological causes varies widely between different people with the same disorder..

Although we know that for internal stress to lead to depression depends on genetic predisposition, it affects the vegetative nervous system (autonomic nervous system), the sympathetic system and the pituitary gland. After an acute stress response, an impact is produced on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis: the hypothalamus regulates the impact and the pituitary gland is activated, producing adenothyrotroph or corticotropin (ACTH), which is released into the bloodstream. and targets the adrenal glands, and the production of adrenaline (epinephrine) or cortisol, the stress hormone, is activated. From this moment, a variety of reactions take place as this cortical hormone reaches the whole organism in a short time, causing an increase in heart palpitations, an intensification of the pulse, the irrigation of the muscles; fat and sugar stores are moved and muscle reaction increases and blood clotting is increased. A perennial stressful situation frequently leads to acute psychological, emotional and physical crises. Not to mention what happens in the spirit, axis or spinal column of the integral health of the human being.

Pituitary, hippocampus

A famous psychologist has summed it up this way: “God forgives our faults; people also sometimes forgive them. But the nervous system not He never forgives them ”. Worries, stress, emotional tension, hatred, resentment, anger and other repressed or misdirected emotions sooner or later take their toll. (The male condor in captivity destroys the eggs of his own offspring due to stress. For this reason they change the cage. In reality, many animals in captivity present typical behaviors of stress and other emotional disorders).

Psychosomatic discomfort

If things are that big, what is the appropriate medicine to cure a psychosomatic illness? Is it conventional medicine? Will alternative medicine be? Not! The right thing to do is to resolve the emotional conflict and learn to react to environmental and internal stimuli so that the psychosomatic discomfort disappears, that is, a change of attitude in the face of internal conflict and external pressure. It's not as simple as it sounds, but it's not impossible to practice either.

Even when the work environment is little or nothing controllable or changeable, my reaction to its pressures is within my reach; I must unlearn inappropriate reactions in order to prevent the environment from controlling my mood.

If I am aware that an emotional shock with someone affects me with an unbearable headache, the indicated thing is to take out (do not repress) or allow me to feel the emotion by squeezing a rubber ball, writing down what I felt or counting from one to ten, until the discomfort disappears. That is, the displeasure must be resolved and released so that the physical pain disappears. The intake of medications will help little, because the physical loses weight and goes where it came from if I resolve the emotional. (Many, due to lack of self-knowledge, do not know how to identify their emotions -the tones of feelings- and they confuse them with what they think of them).

The author is a journalist, Enrique Cáceres-Arrieta

References

Bloom, F.E. i Lazerson, A. (1988). Brain, Mind, and Behavior. New York: Freeman and Company.

Bradford, H.F. (1988). Fundamentals of neurochemistry. Barcelona: Labor.

Del Abril, A .; Ambrosio, E .; De Blas, M.R .; Caminero, A .; De Pablo, J.M. i Sandoval, E. (eds) (1999). Biological basis of behavior. Madrid: Sanz and Torres.

Martínez Sánchez, F. & García, C. (1995). Emotion, stress and coping. In A. Puente (Ed.), Basic psychology: Introduction to the study of human behavior (pp. 497-531). Madrid: Pyramid

Selye, H. (1960). The tension in life. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Cía. General Fabril

Selye, H. (Ed.). (1980). Selye's guide to stress research. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold

Tobeña, A. (1997). Harmful stress. Madrid: Aguilar.

Turner, R. J., Wheaton, B. & Lloyd, D. A. (1995). The epidemiology of social stress. American Sociological Review, 60, 104-125.

Valdés, M. & Flores, T. (1990). Psychobiology of stress (2nd ed. Actual.). Barcelona: Martínez Roca


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