From: Linda.Cummings@f34.n375.z1.fidonet.org (Linda Cummings)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Birmingham Pain Clinic Visit #5
Date: 13 Apr 92 20:51:46 GMT
Reply-To: Linda.Cummings@f34.n375.z1.fidonet.org
Organization: FidoNet node 1:375/34 - Batteries Included , Montgomery AL

Index Number: 21035

[This is from the Chronic Pain Conference]

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE MIND AND THE BODY
Handout from the Birmingham Pain Clinic on 4/1/92

Rene Descartes was a great 17th Century French philosopher and
scientist who proposed a view of the relationship between the mind
and body known as *dualism*.  This view basically holds that the
mind and body are separate and distinct.  The body is material,
physical and mechanical and can be understood by applying the
principles of scientific investigation.  The mind, on the other
hand, is spiritual, nonmaterial, and mystical.  If the mind obeys
any laws or principles, they are different from the physical laws
of the body and are not knowable through application of the
scientific method.  While dualism was a view prominent in early
philosophy and should be mainly of historical significance, it is
still the dominant view held by many nonscientists.  This dualistic
view of the mind and body, separate and distinct, has caused a
tremendous amount of confusion in our understanding of ourselves in
general, and chronic pain in particular.  The following statements
or beliefs all reflect this basic misconception that the body is
one thing and the mind is something totally different:

    1.  My pain is real; I'm not imagining it.
    2.  His pain is "all in his mind."
    3.  I can't find anything wrong; you ought to see a psychiatrist.
    4.  If the doctors can't find anything causing my pain, then it
        must be all in my head.
    5.  Just ignore it and don't think about it and it will go away.
    6.  Don't try any of that psychology business on me; my pain is real.

The *modern view* of the relationship between the body and the mind
holds that the mind is the brain.  Of course, the brain is an organ
of the body.  In a sense, it is the master organ for it controls
the rest of the body all the time.  Mental events (thoughts,
feelings, emotions, images, etc.) are the result of biochemical
events in the brain, and bodily changes (heart rate, blood flow,
digestion, etc.) are directly and indirectly influenced by the
brain.  Thus the mind and the body are interacting parts of one and
the same overall system, and each influences the other.  According
to this modern view, the mind and the body are one, and any event
is a product of the interaction of both.  Pain, for example, is an
experience with both mental and physical components and can be
looked at as being both 100% emotional and 100% organic. The
remainder of this handout presents examples of how the mind and
body interact to determine ones experience, especially the
experience of pain.

One interesting example of this interaction comes from research on
*biofeedback*, which is teaching us that the mind can have a
tremendous effect on altering our physiology.  There are physical
processes that no one ever thought could be controlled mentally
that we now know can be controlled, such as heart rate, blood flow
and muscle tension.  As a matter of fact, many of these functions
were thought to be involuntary and under the complete control of
the autonomic nervous system, meaning that they were automatic.
Many painful conditions, as you know, are aggravated by muscle
tension and by abnormal circulation patterns, and it has become
very clear with biofeedback that we can learn to alter our blood
flow and our muscle tension on a partially voluntary basis.
Research in the area of *stress* is teaching us that stress affects
virtually every system of the body, including metabolism, muscle
function, blood pressure, circulation, and even the functioning of
the immune system that protects us against disease.  For example,
recent research has shown that individuals under a high degree of
stress are more likely to become ill.  One recent study looked
at thousands of widowers and found that during the first year of
being widowed, men were much more likely to develop cancer than
were other men of the same age who had not undergone that stressful
experience.  Research on *depression* is showing us that
our emotions, thoughts, and activities have an important effect on
neurotransmitters -- substances in the brain that allow nerve
impulses to be transmitted from one cell to another.  People
suffering with depression often have an associated chemical
imbalance involving these neurotransmitters.

Moreover, we know that physical activity helps to bring these
neurotransmitters into better balance and can thereby serve as an
antidepressant.  On the other hand, we also know that chemicals
introduced into the body can have a profound affect on the way we
think and feel.  There are drugs that relieve depression, drugs
that cause depression, drugs that make us pessimistic, drugs that
make us optimistic, and even drugs that make us see and hear things
that are not there!

Just in the last ten years, there has been some exciting research
regarding the relationship between our mind, our behavior, and our
experience of pain.  It has been discovered that there are
substances that are produced within the brain that are very similar
in their chemical structure to morphine and which have the ability
to directly decrease the experience of pain.  These chemicals are
called *endorphins and enkephalins*.  It has been found that these
endorphins and enkephalins are present in very large concentrations
when an individual is exposed to a painful stimulus, such as a
bodily injury.  It has also been found that there is another
chemical called naloxone that prevents the brain from producing
endorphins and enkephalins, and if naloxone is injected into an
individual, pain can become overwhelming.

What is fascinating is that we have the ability to alter the
concentration of endorphins and enkephalins in our system through
our behavior and our thought patterns.  One study looked at the
concentration of endorphins in response to electric stimulation to
the gums.  It was found that giving a person a placebo drug (a
sugar pill or salt tablet that has no chemical effect) actually
increased the concentration of endorphins in those individuals'
central nervous systems. Because the placebo medication had no
direct effect on pain relief, it had to be *positive thinking* on
the part of the individuals who received the placebo that made the
difference!  In other words, the individuals who *believed* that
they were getting a pill that would relieve their pain actually
produced within their nervous system endorphins which helped them
to tolerate much better the pain from electric stimulation.

This was discovered because naloxone, which prevented endorphins
from being formed, would result in these individuals having much
higher levels of pain after taking this placebo medication.  The
naloxone blocked the placebo effect by blocking the endorphins
produced by the expectation of relief.  So what this experiment
implies is that positive thinking actually has an effect on the
chemicals in the brain that help us to control pain -- another very
interesting example of the interaction of the mind and body.

(to be continued in next message)

--
Uucp: ..!{decvax,oliveb}!bunker!hcap!hnews!375!34!Linda.Cummings
Internet: Linda.Cummings@f34.n375.z1.fidonet.org