Wellbeing Matters - A Personal Guide to Radiant Health by David Gore Graham, Integral Integrity

A Society of Hypochondriacs
12th December 2009

A few days ago I was browsing in a 2nd hand book store and in a book promoting natural health from the 1980’s I found a photocopied article from Time Magazine of June 18th 1990 by Norman Cousins who was on the medical faculty of UCLA (University of California in Los Angeles). Who photocopied it I know not. However, it is even more relevant, and to a wider audience today, than it was when it was written. I reproduce it here in full:

The main impression growing out of twelve years on the faculty of the medical school is that the No. 1 health problem in the US today, even more than AIDS or cancer, is that Americans don’t know how to think about health and illness. Our reactions are formed on the terror level. We fear the worst, expect the worst, and thus invite the worst. The result is that we are becoming a nation of weaklings and hypochondriacs, a self-medicating society incapable of distinguishing between casual, everyday symptoms and those that require professional attention.
Somewhere in our early education we become addicted to the notion that pain means sickness. We fail to learn that pain is the is the body’s way of telling us that we are eating to much or the wrong things; or that we are smoking too much or drinking too much; or there is too much emotional congestion in our lives; or that we are being worn down by having to cope daily with overcrowded streets and highways, the pounding noise of garbage grinders, or the cosmic distance between the entrance to the airport and the departure gate. We get the message of pain all wrong. Instead of addressing ourselves to the cause, we become pushovers for pills, driving the pain underground and inviting it to return with increased authority.
Early in life, too, we become seized with the bizarre idea that we are constantly assaulted by invisible monsters called germs, and that we have to be on a constant alert to protect ourselves against their fury. Equal emphasis, however, is not given to the presiding fact that our bodies are superbly equipped to deal with the little demons, and the best way of forestalling an attack is to maintain a sensible life-style.
The most significant single statement about health to appear in the medical journals during the past decade is by Dr. Franz Ingelfinger, the late former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. Ingelfinger noted that almost all illnesses are self-limiting. That is, the human body is capable of handling than without outside intervention. The thrust of the article was that we need not feel we are helpless if disease tries to tear away at our bodies, and that we can have greater confidence in the reality of the healing system that is beautifully designed to meet most of its problems. And even when outside help is required, our won resources have something of value to offer in a combined strategy of treatment.
No one gets out of this world alive, and few people come through life without a least one serious illness. If we are given a serious diagnosis, it is useful to try to remain free of panic and depression. Panic can constrict the blood vessels and impose an additional burden on the heart. Depression, as medical researchers all the way back to Galen have observed, can set the stage for other illnesses or intensifying existing ones. It is no surprise that so many patients who learn that they have cancer of heart disease – or any other catastrophic disease – become worse at the time of diagnosis. The moment they have a label to attach to their symptoms, the illness deepens. All the terrible things they have heard about disease produce the kind of despair that in turn complicates the underlying condition. It is not unnatural to be severely apprehensive about a serious diagnosis, but a reasonable confidence is justified. Cancer today, for the most part, is a largely treatable disease. A heavily damaged heart can be reconditioned. Even a positive HIV diagnosis does not necessarily mean that the illness will move into the active stage.
One of the interesting things researchers at the UCLA medical center have discovered is that the environment of medical treatment can actually be enhanced if seriously ill patients can be kept free of depression. In a project involving 75 malignant melanoma patients, it was learned that a direct connection exists between the mental state of the patient and the ability of the immune system to do its job. In a condition of emotional devastation the immune system is impaired. Conversely, liberation from depression and panic is frequently accompanied by an increase in the body’s substances that help the immune system and help active that cancer-killing immune cells. The wise physician, therefore, is conscious of both the physical and emotional needs of the patient.
People who have heart attacks are especially prone to despair. After they come through the emergency phase of the episode they begin to reflect on all the things they think they will be unable to do. They wonder whether they will be able to continue at their jobs, whether they will be able to perform satisfactorily at se, whether they can play tennis or golf again. In short they contemplate an existence drained of usefulness and joy. The spark goes out of their souls. It may help for these people to know that in addition to the miracles that modern medicine can perform, the heart can make its own bypass around the occluding arteries and that collateral circulation can provide a rich supply of oxygen. A heart attack need not be regarded as consignment to mincing life-style. Under the circumstance of good nutrition, a reasonable amount of exercise and decrease in the wear and tear of stressful events, life expectancy need not be curtailed.
Plainly the American people need to be re-educated about their health. They need to know that they are the possessors of a remarkably robust mechanism. They need to be de-intimidated about disease. They need to understand the concept of a patient physician partnership in which the best that medical science has to offer is combined with the magnificent resources of mind and body.
We need not wait, of course for a catastrophic illness before we develop confidence in our ability to rise to a serious challenge. Confidence is useful on the everyday level. We are stronger than we think. Much stronger.

I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments expressed. Since 1990 we have learned how diet and lifestyle can prevent the diseases he mentions for occurring altogether, how diet and lifestyle directly affects depression, how the content of our mind affects the expression of our genes (epigenetics), how to heal our unconscious programming such we attract less illness ourselves, and finally how a spiritual understanding of life leads to health-giving peace and harmony within. I describe all these in detail in my book Wellbeing Matters.

Take charge of your own health and stop being a helpless hypochondriac. Bring out that inner strength that lives within you and live with radiant health.

David Gore Graham B. Sc.

Author of Wellbeing Matters – A Personal Guide to Radiant Health and Wellbeing.

Tags: hypochondria, germs, AIDS, Cancer, stress, UCLA, Norman Cousins, immune system, depression, heart disease, wellness.