When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection by Gabor Maté M.D.
BOOK REVIEWS BY BINOD
BINOD’S RATING: 7/10
Can a person literally die of loneliness? Is there a connection between the ability to express emotions and Alzheimer’s disease? Is there such a thing as a ‘cancer personality’?
Drawing on deep scientific research and Dr Gabor Maté’s acclaimed clinical work provides the answers to critical questions about the mind-body link – and the role that stress and our emotional makeup play in an array of common diseases.
My top 20 points (direct quotes):
1. The problem is not the external stress but an environmentally conditioned helplessness that permits neither flight not fight.
2. The 3 factors that lead to stress- uncertainty, lack of information and loss of control- are all present in individuals with chronic illnesses.
3. The fight or flight response was indispensable in a world where humans had to confront predators etc. In a civilized society this reaction is triggered in situations where it’s neither necessary or helpful, leading to disease.
4. Emotional stress is a major cause of breast cancer.
5. Suppression of anger and a passive, stoic response style seems to be linked to biological risk.
6. The importance of psychosomatic risk factors has been grossly underestimated in many studies
7. Much of what we call personality is not a fixed set of traits, only coping mechanisms acquired in childhood. There’s an important distinction between inherent CHARACTERISTIC, rooted in an individual without regard to his environment, and a RESPONSE TO THE ENVIRONMENT, a pattern of behaviors developed to ensure survival.
8. Pain is a powerful secondary mode to alert us when our primary modes have shut down. It provides us with data we ignore at our peril.
9. Many organs of the body become vulnerable to inflammation & harm during or after periods perceived as threatening. Social support is crucial. Medical students under the stress of exams were shown to have diminished immune system activity, but the most isolated of them were the most vulnerable.
11. Poorer marital quality was strongly & positively related to poorer immune response.
12. The less powerful partners (Women) are absorbing their husband’s stresses & anxieties while also having to contain their own.
13. Whatever undermines autonomy is a source of stress.
14. Anxious mothers are likely to rear anxious offspring.
15. Cancer & autoimmune diseases are diseases of civilization. Industrialized society has created numerous new pressures even for those who don’t need to struggle for the basics of existence.
16. Although the media and the medical profession promote the idea that next to hypertension and smoking, high cholesterol poses the greatest risk for heart disease, the evidence is that JOB STRAIN is more important than all the other risk factors combined.
17. People who exercise greater control over their work and lives enjoy better health.
18. Most of our tensions and frustrations stem from compulsive needs to act the role of someone we are not.
19. Negative thinking allows us to gaze unflinchingly at what does not work. We’ve seen in study after study that compulsive positive thinkers are more likely to develop disease & less likely to survive.
20. You’ve to take care of yourself because you can’t take care of anybody else unless you do.
The book also talks about ‘The Seven A’s of Healing’, principles in healing and the prevention of illness from hidden stress that can be applied in daily life.
This book is full of case studies and anecdotal evidence in support of the author’s hypothesis so in that respect it lacks scientific rigor and is hard to digest. Nevertheless, it carries an important message.
An essential read for our times.