How do our emotions affect our health?

We all know that there is some connection to our emotional state and our state of health. With the world situation as it is; this is probably more apparent now than ever. Stress has been implicated in many disease patterns. Stress, however, is a vague term and I would like to offer you an explanation of how specific emotional states interact with our physical body. This explanation is based on Traditional Chinese Medical theory (TCM). In TCM there are a number of concepts that are unique to Eastern thought. The concept I will discuss here is that of Wu Xing, loosely translated as 5 Phase theory. The chart below outlines some basic correspondences.

There are many other correspondences, but for the sake of convenience I only showed those immediately relevant to this discussion.

In TCM the mind and body are intimately related and cannot be separated. For that matter there is an intimate relationship within all the correspondences. Disease is not a linear process; cause and affect are often blurred. Someone may have an emotional imbalance that brings about a physical disharmony or a physical disharmony which then brings about an emotional imbalance. Either way, treatment is aimed at balancing out the relationship outlined above. I will now offer some real life examples from my practice.

A young girl, we'll call her Mary, in her early 20's came in with a complaint of chronic asthma. She was using an inhaler on a regular basis to help her breathe. Upon questioning Mary's history of this breathing problem, (Lung, Metal Phase), it came up that when she was 10 years old a close friend of hers passed away. Mary confided in me that she never actually cried or grieved this untimely passing. (Grief, Metal Phase) Mary has held onto the grief of losing her friend and developed asthma as a result. During Mary's first treatment she cried for over one half an hour continuously. After the session was over Mary told me that she was able to take in a deep breath for the first time in over 10 years.

A woman in her early 30's, we'll call her Brenda, came in with a number of disharmonies. Brenda complained of stress, menstrual cramps, insomnia, and constipation. At first glance these may seem unrelated, however, the beauty of TCM its ability to look at the body and mind as a whole and come up with an underlying pattern, thereby treating the root cause of the disharmony. Stress, as I stated above is a very vague term, so let's look at how it manifested. For Brenda, stress was described as a general feeling of unease, anxiety, and her shoulders would get tight, her chest would constrict making it difficult to breath and her heart would race. She would also get constipated with pain and distension in her lower abdomen. Her menstrual cramps started about a week before her period and were accompanied by lower back pain, severe bloating, breast tenderness, fatigue, pain running down her leg and loose stools during this time. The insomnia was described as difficulty falling asleep with an inability to shut down her mind and she would also awake around 2:00 am.

Brenda came to see me after a talk that I did and therefore was aware of the mind / body connection. She was already trying to make connections on her own as to what could be happening. There was a history of family abuse; so emotional speaking here is a somewhat complex case with underlying anger, grief and sadness. These unresolved issues were beginning to take their toll on Brenda physically. The anger was affecting her Liver energy, which in TCM is responsible for the smooth flow of emotions and the smooth flow of the menstrual period. Complicating this was the other issues of grief and sadness affecting the lung and heart. The heart stores the spirit and in cases of insomnia, the heart or spirit is always treated. The fact that Brenda always awoke at around 2:00 am implicated further involvement of the liver energy with her insomnia. The liver in TCM is said to house the Hun, the ethereal soul and when liver blood is deficient the Hun will wander from its residence and result in awaking somewhere between 1 and 3 am. The chest tightness, and difficult breathing could be related to the heart or the lung energy and in reality there is probably an overlap with both. The large intestine is referred to as the yang paired organ to the lung, and the constipation is related to the grief, and holding onto of childhood issues. The large intestine allows us to let go, i.e. We breathe in with the lung and let go through the large intestine. The loose stools during her menstrual period are due to the wood energy overacting on the spleen.

After the first treatment, Brenda began to bleed outside of her menstrual cycle. The blood was dark and clotted, so I actually took this as a good sign. Brenda's body was beginning to let go of old memories and emotions. There were some minor changes in the way Brenda felt the first week, but nothing of significance. After the second treatment Brenda's insomnia improved to the point were she would fall asleep in a short time and only awoke occasionally at 2:00 am and the few times she did awake she would fall right back asleep. Also during the second week her bowels became regular, she was no longer holding it all in, physically and emotionally. Brenda is still coming for treatment, many of her symptoms have improved, however, in more complex cases it usually takes about 3 months of treatment for a full resolution.

In both of these examples the patients were ready to make a change. They came to me looking for treatment, and while TCM can effectively treat the disharmonies that they presented, it is my belief that being emotional ready to make a change plays just as an important role as the acupuncture or Chinese herbal medicine itself.