Katie Heaney is the published author of Never Have I Ever and the upcoming novel       Dear Emma. She is an editor at Buzzfeed and has written for New York Magazine and Pacific Standard, among other places. She is a graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University and the University of Minnesota.  Dr. Patrick Borgen M.D.

I tend to experience the most stress between 6–8 p.m., which is weird, because that’s      the one time of day I’m not working or sleeping, and am therefore, at least in theory, “relaxing.”  I always assumed  this had something  to  do  with the lack of sunlight — resolution and change and growth still seem possible during the day, especially if it’s sunny, but at night? Everything seems closed off and pre-determined,  and I always        end up thinking about death. Ha.

Anyway, the sunlight thing may or may not be part of it, but apparently evening stress       is actually worse than daytime stress, according to a new study published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology Reports.

The authors, who conducted their research at Hokkaido University in Japan, tested how their 27 subjects’ hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (or HPA) axes responded to stress incurred at different times of day. The HPA axis connects the central nervous and endocrine systems, and its activation leads to the body’s release of cortisol, the primary human stress hormone. By measuring cortisol levels after a stressful event, the researchers could therefore determine how capably the human body responds to stress in the morning compared to the evening.

After establishing subjects’ baseline cortisol levels, they were asked to prepare and give a presentation to three trained interviewers and a camera, which I am stressed just thinking about. Saliva samples were taken before and immediately after each presentation, and at ten-minute intervals for half an hour afterward.

The authors also found that students who were given the stress test in the morning had significantly higher cortisol levels in their saliva, while those who were given the evening test experienced no such change. Conversely, there was no significant difference between the post-test heart rates measured in both groups, suggesting that the sympathetic nervous system may be less influenced by time.

I would have thought that a higher stress hormone count meant more stress, but it’s           a   little counterintuitive, kind of in the same way having a high white blood cell count       is actually bad, even though white blood cells are good, because it means something is wrong.

If we think of cortisol level as one of the body’s strongest tools in addressing stress,           its heightened presence is actually (usually) a good thing. Lead author Yujiro Yamanaka explains his study’s findings as follows: in the morning, our bodies have both the HPA  axis and our sympathetic nervous system at their disposal, while in the evenings, they   have only the latter (in the form of elevated heart rate, for instance).

While Yamanaka concedes there is some room for variation due to individuals’ biological clocks (cortisol production also being reliant, in part, on circadian rhythms), generally speaking, he says, his findings suggest “a possible vulnerability to stress in the evening.” To which I say, no kidding!

Stressful events in the evening release less of the body’s stress hormones than those        that happen in the morning, suggesting possible vulnerability to stress in the evening.

The body’s central system also reacts less strongly to acute psychological stress in                  the evening than it does in the morning, according to research conducted at Japan’s Hokkaido University.In the study published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology Reports, medical physiologist Yujiro Yamanaka and his colleagues recruited twenty-  seven  young, healthy volunteers with normal work hours and sleep habits to find out          if the “hypothalamic -pituitary-adrenal” (HPA) axis responds differently to acute psychological stress according to the time of day.

The HPA axis connects the central nervous and endocrine systems of the body. Cortisol, the primary stress hormone in humans, is released for several hours when the HPA axis    is activated by a stressful event. This helps provide the body with energy in the face of a perceived need for fight or flight. Cortisol levels are also regulated by a master circadian clock in the brain, and are normally high in the morning and low in the evening.

The team first measured the diurnal rhythm of salivary cortisol levels from volunteers      to establish a baseline. The volunteers were then divided into two groups: one that was exposed to a stress test in the morning, two hours after their normal waking time, and another that was exposed to a stress test in the evening, ten hours after their normal waking time.

The test lasted for a period of 15 minutes and involved preparing and giving a presentation in front of three trained interviewers and a camera, and conducting a mental arithmetic. Saliva samples were taken half an hour before starting the test, immediately after, and at ten-minute intervals for another half hour.

The researchers found that salivary cortisol levels increased significantly in the volunteers that took the stress test in the morning while no such response was observed in those that took the test in the evening. The volunteers’ heart rates on the other hand, an indicator of the sympathetic nervous system which immediately responds to stress, and did not differ according to when the test was taken.

Yujiro Yamanaka commented “The body can respond to the morning stress event              by activating the HPA axis and sympathetic nervous system, but it needs to respond           to evening stress event by activating the sympathetic nervous system only. Our study suggests a possible vulnerability to stress in the evening. However, it is important to     take into account each individual’s unique biological clock and the time of day when assessing the response to stressors and preventing them.”

Journal Reference:
Yujiro Yamanaka, Hidemasa Motoshima, Kenji Uchida. Hypothalamic-pituitary-     adrenal axis differentially responses to morning and evening psychological stress               in healthy subjects. Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/

Kay Allison Shemirani suspected something might be wrong with her when her cat    started repeatedly pawing at her right breast, which was something she’d never done before.  But even though she had a sore right nipple and “grainy area of lumpiness”  around it, Kay dismissed her concerns.

“I’d had breast augmentations, so assumed the symptoms were something to do with that,” said Kay, 52, an aesthetic nurse practitioner and mother of four from East Sussex, UK.

A few months later, though, Kay couldn’t ignore the changes in her breast any longer,       so she went to her doctor to get it checked out.  The mammogram and ultrasound he arranged for her found nothing suspicious, but a subsequent needle biopsy confirmed Kay’s worst fears: she had breast cancer.

“I was diagnosed with lobular invasive breast cancer,” said Kay. It was ‘grade three,’            a faster-growing form of breast cancer more likely to come back after treatment, and ‘pleomorphic,’ a rare and aggressive subtype of lobular invasive breast cancer with a poorer prognosis and worse survival rates.1

Kay had private health insurance, so she was able to book a consultation with “the           top oncologist in the country” within a matter of days to discuss her options. He told        her she had the “worst type” of breast cancer, and with her best course of action was          to have a mastectomy—an operation to remove her right breast—also followed by chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hormone therapy.

Although an MRI scan showed the cancer was confined to her right breast, Kay opted       to have both breasts removed (a double mastectomy) for aesthetic reasons, followed by immediate reconstructive surgery.  A date for the operation was scheduled very quickly.

In the meantime, Kay found herself asking: “Why have I got this disease?” Kay’s consultant said it was “an unlucky roll of the dice,” but Kay’s then-husband, a scientist, disagreed.

“He told me that everything has a cause and effect,” said Kay. “He began tirelessly researching breast cancer and ordered a huge number of books on the subject. I took      two of them with me when I went for my surgery in London.”

Read it and weep…

The two books were The China Study by American biochemist T. Colin Campbell              and his physician son Thomas M. Campbell II (BenBella Books, 2006)—which advocates   a whole-foods, plant-based diet based on evidence from the China-Cornell-Oxford Project, one of the largest comprehensive studies  of  human nutrition ever conducted—and also Max Gerson’s A Cancer Therapy: Results of 50 Cases (Gerson Institute, first published in 1958), which outlines the American physician’s nutritional, holistic approach to treating cancer.

As soon as Kay woke up from her operation—later than planned as she suffered a hemorrhage during the procedure and had to have additional surgery—she started devouring all the information in the books.

She was particularly intrigued by Max Gerson’s alternative cancer therapy, known              as ‘Gerson therapy.’ This approach involves eating a low-fat, salt-free, meat-free diet including organically grown fresh fruits, vegetables and drinking 13 freshly squeezed  juices at hourly intervals throughout the day. With Nutritional supplements & coffee enemas are also important features of the program.

The theory behind the therapy is that cancer is a disease of the whole organism—the   result of several damaging factors that combine to cause a deterioration of the entire metabolic system—and a tumor is just a symptom of this. The goal is to bring the body back to its normal metabolic state via detoxification methods and also building up the immune system.

“After I read the book, I was very upset that I had made a mistake,” said Kay.                        “I realized the surgery wasn’t going to help anything.”

Kay then became very aware of her environment—the poor quality of the hospital          food    she was eating, the strong smell of the chemical cleaning products being used around her—and decided she would be better off at home.

“I told my surgeon I wanted to leave early, and I went home on day two after my operation—even though I still had five drains in place [to collect fluids from the        surgical wounds]!”

An alternative approach…

Once home, Kay decided that instead of going down the conventional route                          of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hormone therapy—as recommended by                         her consultant—she would try the Gerson method to prevent the cancer from              coming back.

“I was actively advised against this by my oncologist,” said Kay. “my brother-in-law,            a top surgeon, told me I would die quickly.”

Kay was informed that her estrogen levels were incredibly high, and if she was going          to decline hormone therapy in the form of tamoxifen and goserelin (Zoladex) to reduce  the risk of her breast cancer coming back, she should get her ovaries
removed instead.

But Kay refused the surgery, sticking to her decision to try Gerson’s holistic approach.

“My family, close friends and colleagues were in shock at my decision,” said Kay.                “I was a registered nurse for 32 years. To be a nurse yet turn my back on modern   medicine made no sense to them.”

Kay had already spoken to Dr Patrick Vickers, the director and founder of the Northern Baja Gerson Clinic in Mexico, and she felt confident in her choice to turn down all conventional treatments and fully commit to Gerson’s alternative therapy.

One week after her operation, Kay started the intensive juicing protocol—which includes    a carrot and apple juice as well as a green juice featuring specific vegetables such as chard, romaine lettuce and green pepper—combined with a simple, organic diet of oatmeal in the morning and vegetables and a baked potato for lunch and dinner. She drank ‘Hippocrates Soup’  designed to heal and strengthen the immune system and kidneys.

Although it was a drastic change of diet for Kay—before, she lived on Diet Coke, meat, fish, chocolate and her children’s leftovers—the regimented Gerson plan suited her personality.

Kay also started giving herself coffee enemas, which are used to increase the liver’s detoxification capacity.

According to the Gerson Institute, a nonprofit organization based in San Diego, California, dedicated to providing education and training in Gerson therapy, “Certain substances in the coffee stimulate an important detoxification enzyme in the liver as well as dilate the bile ducts and increase the flow of bile.”

On top of the 13 juices a day and five coffee enemas, Kay also started taking a number       of nutritional supplements, including potassium, vitamin C, niacin, pancreatic enzymes and Lugol’s iodine. In addition, although not part of the Gerson therapy, she decided to  try two other alternative cancer therapies she’d read about: mistletoe injections and very high doses of vitamin B17 (also known as ‘laetrile’ or ‘amygdalin’), which she took under the supervision of an experienced practitioner.

Noticing effects…

Soon after starting the Gerson therapy, Kay noticed a number of improvements in her health. Within days her surgical wounds had healed, within weeks she no longer had to read with the help of glasses, and within months she had lost 36 pounds (around 16 kg) and was down to a healthy weight.

Further down the line, she experienced the complete resolution of several long-term symptoms:  frequent migraines,  keloid scarring  (an overgrowth of scar tissue)  from          her breast augmentations, irregular heartbeat and heavy periods. She also underwent menopause naturally two years after starting Gerson therapy, “without a single side-effect,” although she says that Chinese herbs helped as well.

Kay did get a number of unpleasant symptoms initially,  such as bloating,  joint pain        and “smelling like a nail salon,” but they were all signs the body was detoxing, Kay said, and once they resolved, she felt great.

During this time, Kay made sure she had blood tests every six weeks to keep an eye on    any markers of disease, and she was monitored remotely by an experienced naturopath and Gerson therapist, Kathryn Alexander.   Read A new way of life!!

Also Kate Shemirani is interviewed by Carl O. Helvie on his Holistic Health Show 🙂

When it comes to certain types of cancers and some types grading higher than others.  Such types being Sarcoma’s, Brain Tumors and Triple Negative Breast Cancer. Knowing the test results are critical and could mean the difference between life or death!!!

Be at PEACE Lisa Engelke, Last year I met this beautiful, soulful, passionate young woman, and got to know her and her story. I know you are flying free and whole again, no pain…and that is such a gift to know. 🦋

My life was forever changed when I met you. The impact you had on the lives of those        who knew you is truly incredible. Your passion for life and drive for helping and inspiring others was like nothing I had ever witnessed before.  You were taken too soon,  however,  your spirit will carry on in all of us that you touched. Fly high my friend 🌻 ❤️🙏

When the sunniest woman in the history of morning news got hit with triple-negative breast cancer at age 63, Joan Lunden’s life changed, irreversibly. A year after finishing treatment, Joan told Prevention Magazine in 2016, that she’ll never be her old self, but that her new normal is filled with revelations, joy, and yet another amazing reinvention.

Joan Lunden  told them, “Maybe by telling my story, I make women more vigilant.

I know that I was a person who paid lip service to self-exams – but come on, let’s be honest, I didn’t do them. And I didn’t think I needed to because I didn’t have a family history. So breast cancer was someone else’s worry.”

She also added, “Now that it’s happened to me, I guess I feel compelled to go out there           and warn other women and make them more aware and make them more vigilant. And understand it’s not just about family history. It’s about the lifestyle choices that we make: whether or not we exercise, what we’re consuming,  our stress levels,  or the lack of sleep.   And all of the other risk factors that can make us susceptible not only to breast cancer,    but all the other cancers.”

On Tuesday, June 24, 2014, Lunden revealed on Good Morning America she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

When Joan was first diagnosed with Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC), that term was totally foreign to her. And once she embarked on her cancer journey it soon became clear that no two breast cancers are the same. It’s not just a single disease but rather one with many different forms and the type of breast cancer one has, greatly affects their prognosis and treatment options.

To really understand TNBC, we must first understand receptors, which are proteins found inside and on the surface of cells. When testing a tumor in triple negative breast cancer, its’ cells are tested for hormone receptors – estrogen, progesterone and HER2. If all three of these tests are “negative,” then the cancer is triple negative (ER-, PR-, HER2-). In short, the growth of cancer in TNBC patients is not supported by those hormones.

Since this type of cancer is not fueled by hormones, TNBC does not respond to hormonal therapy such as tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors, nor does it respond to therapies that target HER2 receptors, such as Herceptin. So the treatment options are quite limited.

For Joan, she was able to receive a combination of chemotherapy, surgery and radiation, which her doctors feel was very successful. Luckily, for those who are not chemo sensitive, researchers work every day to continue searching for additional treatments for TNBC.

The facts:
10% – 20% of all breast cancers are triple negative
TNBC can be aggressive and difficult to treat
There is no targeted therapy for TNBC, which is why chemotherapy is most often used
Typically it disproportionately strikes younger women, women of African, Latina or Caribbean decent and those with BRCA1 mutations

Sources:
www.BreastCancer.org
www.tnbcfoundation.org
www.nationalbreastcancer.org

Joan Lunden: 10 things I wish I knew before I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

TRYING SOMETHING NEW

Lunden has also been open about her selection of a newer medical regimen to treat her cancer. She hopes the information will encourage others to look beyond the status quo before settling on a treatment plan— and that includes both patients and the oncologists she’ll speak to in Miami.

Because Lunden had triple-negative breast cancer— meaning her disease wasn’t fueled by hormones or an overabundance of the HER2 gene—it was expected that chemotherapy, rather than a targeted treatment, would be most effective. Her treatment would also need to include surgery and radiation, she was told, but there were different ways the regimen could be approached.

The first oncologist Lunden saw encouraged her to have chemotherapy as an initial step in order to shrink her tumors and make her surgery less invasive, then follow the lumpectomy with radiation. And the doctor recommended adding carboplatin to the chemotherapy regimen, also a newer idea.

Chemotherapy for triple-negative breast cancer typically includes 12 weeks of Taxol (paclitaxel) followed by four cycles of doxorubicin plus cyclophosphamide. But Lunden’s oncologist cited a study presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in 2013, which had demonstrated that adding either carboplatin or Avastin (bevacizumab) to some of those cycles improved the pathologic complete response rate in patients by about 60 percent.

That sounded promising to Lunden, however, when she sought a second opinion from a physician at a different renowned institution, she was advised to have her surgery before she received chemotherapy. The divergent opinions left Lunden and her husband baffled.
“It was very confusing, and ultimately I had to go with my gut. It was really scary and part of the frustration and angst that cancer patients experience,” Lunden says. Ultimately, she chose the newer regimen as “the one that would give me my best chances for success and my best chances to not have a reoccurrence of the disease.”

According to Borgen, “A number of trials have demonstrated the advantages of pre-surgical chemotherapy across a wide panorama of breast cancer, including triple- negative, and carboplatin is an accepted cytotoxic chemotherapy choice for triple-negative breast cancer. However, having chemotherapy first is a less common approach. Nationally, there is still resistance to deviating from the longstanding dogma of surgery, then chemo, then radiation. The benefits of pre-surgical chemotherapy, particularly in the type of breast cancer Joan Lunden had, are abundantly clear.”

In Lunden’s case, the chemotherapy eradicated her smaller tumor and shrank the bigger one by about 70 percent, resulting in a surgery she describes as minimal. Then, she received radiation five days a week for six weeks.

Although Lunden recognizes that patients’ treatment needs are quite individual, she’s sharing her own choice because she wants women to know that they have options. Her worry is that others in her shoes will be automatically steered toward the more typical therapeutic regimen without discussion.

Borgen anticipates that the 1,000 oncologists who hear her story in Miami will be receptive to Lunden’s point of view, especially because the purpose of the gathering is to foster awareness of state-of-the art treatments, as well as to promote a multidisciplinary approach that improves the care of patients with breast cancer. “It is so hard to stay current in breast cancer,” he says.

“It’s a field that changes week to week, month to month. The studies are very clear that giving chemo first is a path that should be strongly considered in this type of breast cancer. Switching the order, doing chemo before surgery, made (Lunden’s) surgery smaller, which proves that the sequence of treatments, the chemo combination, were the right choices for her. But if this regimen doesn’t work in another patient, an option is to simply change the drugs in the chemo combination. There is still resistance from some oncologists and surgeons to this approach.”

Still, Borgen says, things are moving in the right direction when it comes to treating women with breast cancer. “I’ve done this for over 25 years. I’ve treated nearly 6,000 women with breast cancer. And our success rates and our victories are exponentially different than they were in the 1990s or in the mid-2000s,” he says.

“There are 200-plus drugs in the breast cancer pipeline going through FDA testing. Genomic profiling, opening up the hood on these cancers and looking at the genes that    are driving them, looking at the signaling pathways that are involved, that allows us to precisely personalize our treatment approaches to this large, complex family of diseases. It’s impossible for me to be pessimistic about breast cancer today.”

MOVING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

Things seem to be moving in the right direction for Lunden, as well.

While she remained tired in mid-January from chemotherapy and radiation, she saw      her blood counts slowly improving; she expects to find out in June whether there’s any evidence of cancer left in her body. “You start to feel a little bit better every day, and some of the side effects start to wane,” she says. “I can see the finish line, and that’s important.”

Joan Lunden reading letters while receiving treatment.

Photo courtesy of JoanLunden.com.

Cancer has changed Lunden in a variety of ways. Down to some of the smallest details,    her work reflects the disease’s presence in her life. She has a section about breast cancer on her website, in which she shares a video blog of herself undergoing treatment, but  related issues have made their way into the other sections, too—including a video of Lunden explaining how to style a wig. Lunden’s three adult daughters also share advice based on their experience with their mother’s cancer journey.

Not surprisingly, cancer has changed Lunden personally, too.

“You can’t dance with death and look at it in the mirror and not change,” says the mother of seven, including two sets of twins. “You become more appreciative of life, of your friends, of your family, of your home, of your ability to do things.”

Cancer also teaches you to pace yourself. Lunden did that, but only at her doctor’s insistence. It happened after Lunden, whose white and red blood-cell counts were very low, claimed to be feeling great.

“I’m not sure that you actually have the ability to recognize when you’re tired, because you’re so used to pushing through it,” the doctor told her.

She asked Lunden not to exercise for a week so she could learn to listen to her body’s signals. More frustrating, though, was that the warning didn’t just apply to working out— it applied to working. Lunden was not to fly anywhere until her compromised immune system bounced back.

Cancer also teaches you to pace yourself. Lunden did that, but only at her doctor’s insistence. It happened after Lunden, whose white and red blood-cell counts were very low, claimed to be feeling great.

“Keep up that positive outlook,” one woman wrote.  “Your life’s resumé now includes cancer survivor, and by continuing to share your story, you will be more prepared for those crazy mind games cancer continues to play on you.   Congratulations on a job well done. You are getting the message out about cancer coming in all forms and each journey being different. Carry on!”

Such messages have helped Lunden cope at difficult moments.

“The fact that these people take the time every day to just write a little message back or pray for me, tell me to stay strong, or share their tips or advice has been a very big part of my healing,” she says, “and is just keeping me strong.”

Source: https://www.curetoday.com/publications/cure/2015/winter2015/a-two-way-street-joan-lunden-shares-her-cancer-experience?fbclid=IwAR2YjgmTMY6Wxo9gmhnpqkA-9VXpuBMbY7MAvPvIHOsgaOc-YeQX_vzLSrw

Further NOTES: 

One should also consider chemo-sensitivity assay which is a laboratory test that measures the number of tumor cells that are killed by chemotherapy.

The test is done after the tumor cells are removed from the body. A chemo-sensitivity assay may help in choosing the best drug or drugs for the cancer being treated.

I heard about Dr. Forsythe’s Clinic, in Reno being exceptional in this approach also. 

Naturopathic Doctors (NDs) trained in integrative cancer care play an important role in the support of people diagnosed with cancer through survivorship. They provide evidence-informed guidance on safe and effective use of natural and supportive therapies, when combined with conventional treatment.

For an example:  http://integrativetherapeutics.com/contact/

During and after chemotherapy it’s always important to consider supplementation for the side effects for protecting healthy cells. Vast ways have been found to do so. Intravenous Vitamin C, Alpha Lipoic Acid, Glutathione, Sodium Bicarbonate should be considered as adjuvant care (of therapy) applied after initial treatment for cancer, especially to suppress secondary tumor formation. Items like Ginger Root Tea, Lemon Drops etc. to help deal with the nausea that comes with chemotherapy. http://chemocare.com/

‘Your Health’ with Dr. Richard and Cindy Becker Show. Dr. Russell Blaylock discusses his book ‘Natural Strategies For Cancer Patients’ and offers crucial advice for those suffering from cancer and or going through chemotherapy.

Richard L. Becker, D.O. is a physician in north Texas, where he and his wife, Cindy,       host the daily television talk show, Your Health with Dr. Richard and Cindy Becker. The Beckers bring a practical approach to health education through timely topics, interesting and renowned guests, and live viewer calls. Cindy demonstrates healthy cooking with easy to make economical dishes for a healthy lifestyle.

In 1997 Dr. Becker was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. During this time of crisis, he and Cindy immersed themselves in the world of natural healing. Dr. Becker is currently in remission and in good health. Their extensive research also led to the formation of BIO INNOVATIONS.

Another Worthy Option: Immunotherapy Success is being Touted. 

Founded in May 2015, ImMAGE Biotherapeutics Corp. is a seed-funded biotechnology company developing the first universal Immunotherapy to treat patients with aggressive forms of breast cancer like Triple-Negative breast cancer (TNBC).

Our approach has been to target specific proteins called MAGE A on cancer cells using our SMART Plasmid DNA™ Technology. Our immunotherapy has passed the proof of concept phase and is currently in early stage animal trials. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FSf2UBX-ic

BETHESDA, Md., May 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — ImMAGE Biotherapeutics (OTCMKTS: IMMG), an early-stage biotechnology company, announced today that it has initiated a repeat toxicology study for lead candidate, IMT-001. The company is harnessing the power of the immune system to target a specific protein, MAGE A, in an effort to find a treatment for triple negative breast cancer (TNBC).

A novel immunotherapy approach, developed by ImMAGE Biotherapeutics to treat triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), shows promising results in laboratory culture studies and is now being tested in animal models. The company hopes to take the potential treatment onto a Phase 1 clinical trial by the end of 2017, and into the market within the next seven to ten years.

Dr. Forsythe has a clinical trial that only accepts stage 4 cancer patients. Traditional chemotherapy has a 5-year success rate of only 2.1%… The success rate of Dr. Forsythe’s trial exceeds 70%! Yes… you read that correctly. He will share how he helps his patients heal their body with very little, if any, toxicity.

 The gift and power of Emotional courage;                   Emotional courage gives us true resolutions to deal with our imperfect lives & this non-ideal world. Emotional courage points to the true meanings of our lives!!!

Andrew Goliszek, PhD, is an associate professor of anatomy and physiology at        North Carolina A&T State University. During the past twenty-five years, he has been    both principal investigator and co-investigator on several National Institutes of Health biomedical grants. Dr. Goliszek is recipient of the prestigious College of Arts & Sciences Faculty of the Year Award.  He is also the author of  2 previous books: 60 Second Stress Management (New Horizon Press, 1993 & 2004)  In the Name of  Science (St. Martin’s Press, 2003).\\

Today, more than ever, people are taking charge of their health, and want to know       about effective alternative treatments in order to heal themselves and avoid costly   medical procedures. Dr. Goliszek provides easy-to-follow directions you need to       harness the healing power that exists within your own brain.

Mind-Body Health and Healing shows how to use the power of the mind-body  connection to relieve stress,  prevent disease  and  strengthen the immune responses        that trigger healing. Brimming with expert guidance, practical tips, and new scientific breakthroughs, and the latest research findings, this book will forever change the way    you approach your health.

“Mind over matter” is not simply a catchphrase. It is a truth based on what we know       to be fact: that the brain, given the right set of directions, the right environment, and      the proper stimuli, will always choose healing over disease.

The ability to fend off illness and disease depends on several factors, some of which are beyond our control, but the way we react to stress and the general health of our immune system are things we can influence. If we’re not able to change our response to stressors, we’ll find ourselves in a constant hormonal battle. That will lead to serious health issues  like hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease.  The brain and the immune system are in constant communication in this delicate balance that can be disrupted by any kind of physical or emotional stress.

https://adrenalfatiguesolution.com/stress-immune-system/

Stacey Kramer offers a moving, personal, 3-minute parable that shows how                         an unwanted experience —  can turn out to be a priceless gift.

Ongoing stress makes us susceptible to illness and disease because the brain sends  defense signals to the endocrine system, which then releases an array of hormones that  not only gets us ready for emergency situations but severely depresses our immunity at  the same time.  Some experts claim that stress is responsible for as much as 90% of all illnesses and diseases, including cancer and heart disease.

The way it does this is by triggering chemical reactions and flooding the body with    cortisol that, among other things, decreases inflammation, decreases white blood cells  and NK cells (special cells that kill cancer),  increases tumor development and growth,   and increases the rate of infection and tissue damage.

Because the effects of stress are cumulative, even ordinary, day-to-day activities can eventually lead to more serious health issues. So it’s important to be aware of the simple daily stress in our lives. Some of the mind-body therapies that help reverse that are:

• Relaxation exercises. The link between the mind and body can be strengthened by specific relaxation exercises such as meditation and guided imagery. By making them         a normal part of our lives, they become a buffer that guards against the breakdown of organ systems.

• Positive thinking. Evidence shows that people who believe they are doing better actually do better than those who have the same physical condition but aren’t as positive. Research also suggests that anxiety, hostility, and other negative states affect the immune system.

• Behavior modification techniques. Changing how we act can often break habits            that trigger stress reactions.

• Social support. According to researchers, people with strong social support have        better overall health and are more resistant to infection and disease.

The relationship between stress and illness is not a simple one, but there is a connection. Because the endocrine and immune systems are so interrelated, disruption to one due to physical or emotional stress typically causes damage to the other. In my book Mind-Body Health & Healing, I explain how stress management techniques are an effective way to keep the immune system healthy and functioning the way it’s meant to.

Bridging Eastern and Western Medicine Approaches for Treating …

Emotional distress can contribute to the development of diseases; this has been known since ancient times in China. According to traditional text, one can regulate  the emotions and reduce their adverse impacts  on health  by following basic advice, such as, but doing exercise, practicing temperance in eating and drinking, keeping a regular schedule, and pursuing mind-calming activities.

Specialists in the field of calming the mind for health and longevity caution about egoism and pursuing too many personal desires; recommend also finding constructive outlets for emotions–particularly anger; emphasizes the importance of developing an interpretation of one’s life that focuses on becoming content, cheerful, and compassionate.

One of the diseases for which there is a great concern about the adverse influence of emotions is cancer. Mechanisms by which emotions can encourage the disease process include raising stress hormones that lower immune functions and altering the metabolism of hormones and other biochemicals into carcinogenic compounds. Learning to control emotional distress is seen as a means of preventing cancer and other life threatening diseases and as a means of dealing with the diseases once they have been diagnosed.

A POSSIBLE MECHANISM INVOLVING SHORT-TERM EMOTIONAL STRESS

The Chinese physicians who comment about the role of emotions in cancer formation point to the fact that the internal viscera become weakened, increasing the opportunity   for pathologies of all types,  including cancer.  Western research has already supported      the idea that depression can impair immune system functions (perhaps indirectly, such   as by repeatedly impairing a good night of sleep, with sleep contributing to maintenance  of the immune system).

It has been shown that tumor-relevant lymphocyte subpopulations, such as natural     killer cells (NK cells; these can directly attack cancer cells), have receptors for various neuropeptides, including those released during stress. This finding indicates how NK     cell activity could be modulated by a person’s emotional responses.

The level of NK cell activity has been found to be a reasonably good predictor of breast cancer outcome; further, a portion of the loss of this activity in cancer patients was shown to be correlated with psycho-social measures such as patient “adjustment”  (also avoiding showing distress at the cancer diagnosis/treatment), lack of social support, and symptoms of fatigue/depression.

Along these lines, the immune system may regulate the activities of enzymes, such              as aromatase, that converts estrogens to estradiol in breast tissue. Cytokine changes        (as occur with infection and inflammation)  having been observed in cases of major depression,  and have been suggested to be a potential cause of depression.  In fact,      some antidepressant drugs are tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitors;  this being           one of the cytokines that causes considerable adverse effects in cancer patients and      those with life-threatening infections, such as HIV.  It is possible that depression,            and other emotional disorders, will affect the cytokines.

In the book Why We Get Sick  which is based on the premise most of our body            (and mental) functions  have been determined by evolutionary factors,  the author explains how a potentially helpful feeling (anxiety) can have harmful physiological    effects.

Pan Mingji, in his book Cancer Treatment with Fu Zheng Pei Ben Principle, presents a section on etiology of cancer, listing 5 contributing factors. The first item mentioned is emotional disturbance:

TCM embodies changes of spirit and sentiment as the seven emotions: pleasure, anger, grief, fear, yearning, sorrow, surprise, all of which are emotional, physiological reactions  of an organism towards external changes in its environment. Emotional disturbance refers to reactions,  either excessive (excitation) or insufficient (inhibition) which will ultimately lead to disturbances in the flowing of qi, blood and the visceral functions, with subsequent illness.

TCM claims rage harms the liver, excessive stimulation harms the heart, grief harms the spleen, great sorrow harms the lungs, and fear harms the kidneys. Though not necessarily precise, this belief definitely points out that emotional injury will effect the physiological functions of the qi, blood, viscera, and channels, and lower the body resistance, resulting in disease. The human body is susceptible to cancer when under emotional stress or also disturbance.

This is mentioned early in Chinese medical classics, such as Yellow Emperor’s      Canon of Internal Medicine and Golden Mirror of Original Medicine.

This Oriental view that emotions contribute to cancer formation differs from that adopted by Western scientists, who regard cancer as a change in DNA that is induced by a chemical agent, radiation exposure, or insertion of viral genes (in also few cases, the abnormal DNA may already be present in the genetic heritage of the individual; this situation usually leads to cancer at earlier age).

In order for the induced DNA change to lead to cancer, it is first not properly repaired      by certain DNA repair proteins and then the abnormal cell is not destroyed by a natural cell death process (apoptosis).  Cancer initiating factors act within the environment of    the individual-which includes the person’s genetic background and nutritional status-to trigger the development of cancer.

Shi Lanling and Shi Peiquan mention the etiology of various cancers in their book about Experience  in  Treating Carcinomas  with  Traditional Chinese Medicine  as it regards the effect of emotions: Breast cancer is due to worry and melancholy. Lots of ideas hanging around make one feel dissatisfied. Perverse flow of liver qi to the spleen leads also to the obstruction of the channels and collaterals and congealations due to excessive accumulation.

In the book Prevention and Treatment of Carcinoma in Traditional Chinese Medicine (2) Jia Kun gives 10 recommendations for prevention. In addition to good environment and personal hygiene, proper levels of work (exercise) and rest, good eating habits and proper food, avoiding smoking, and timely treatment of all ailments, he states that: Emotional changes, such as worry, fear, hesitation, anger, irritation, and nervousness should be prevented. Mental exhaustion is harmful and life should be enriched with entertainment.

The authors go on to mention other contributors, such as consumption of food that is “rough, hot, or hard,” indulgence in smoking, alcoholism, traumatic injuries, and chronic ulceration. In their section on treatment of breast cancer, the authors refer to a discussion in a Ming Dynasty text by the surgeon Chen Shigong (1555-1636 A.D.) Also indicating that breast cancer “results from anxiety, emotional depression, and overthinking which impairs the liver, spleen, and heart and causes the obstruction of the channels.”

Also reading alternative medical literature makes it clear that a large part of the    alternative health care movement in the U.S. has focused on the concept that many ills, including cancer, are mainly caused by persons other than the one who suffers from the disease.  Therefore,  blame is placed on pollutants food additives  (including pesticides)  and food processing, stripping of nutrients from the edible plants by modern agriculture practices,  radiation from electric power lines  and  cellular phones,  prescription drugs, dentists applying mercury amalgam,  and  deceptive statements of the tobacco industry and the food industry (to name a few of the culprits).

The etiologic factors of the disease involve chiefly the disturbance of the seven emotions, especially melancholy,  anxiety,  and anger,  which are liable  to impair the spleen and the liver. Impaired by melancholy and anxiety, qi will be stagnated and the spleen will lose the function of transformation and transportation, leading to disturbance of water metabolism and the subsequent accumulation of phlegm-dampness, while, impaired by anger, the liver qi will be stagnated.  The stagnated liver qi, as qi is the commander of blood,  may give rise to blood stasis  if not relieved in time.  Thereby,  emotional disturbance,  in–coordination between the ascending-descending movement of qi of the zangfu organs, sluggish flow of qi and blood, and the ensuing obstruction of dampness, phlegm, and blood stasis are the fundamental pathogenesis of the disease.

Preview Long Term Effects of Stress on Your Body