The Effects of Body Over Mind When Sickness and Diseases Hits Us

I am constantly amazed at the efficiency of antidepressants in the treatment of depression. If nothing else, the elevation of mood which results from their judicious use clearly shows the 'physical' nature of depression. A physical agent, a drug, can bring about a beneficial effect on the psyche. The depression itself is often the result of stressful life events, and the adverse circumstances may still exist, but that does not prevent a response to physical treatment. I am not hereby advocating the indiscriminate use of antidepressants for every 'touch of the blues', and I personally favor the use of counseling to achieve better coping strategies in the face of stress, but that's not the point. The point is that 'physical' and 'psychological' are again seen to be intertwined. There are many other examples of this. In fact, over 200 prescription drugs - from the oral contraceptive pill to blood pressure tablets - are capable of altering the mood in some way. Similarly, alcohol, a social drug, has immediate and well-known effects on the psychological state; and illicit drugs such as marijuana and heroin, apart from their mood-altering effects, are known to provoke psychosis in susceptible people.

Psychological symptoms may also arise from physical disease. I am not talking here about a patient's psychological reaction to physical disease, but about the fact that the molecular process of disease can cause psychological symptoms. There are many examples of this:

1. Depression may precede an emerging Parkinson's disease or cancer by many months, long before the patient knows they are ill.
2. Depression may be caused by an underactive thyroid gland.
3. Anxiety may be caused by an overactive thyroid gland.
4. Anxiety may be the first symptom of anaphylaxis etc.

I could go on and on! Delusions, hallucinations and even personality disorders can all be induced by physical disease. We call them Organic Brain Syndromes, which is just another way of saying body-mind syndromes. These are 'psychological' symptoms driven by 'physical' mechanisms. Specifically, they are the result of immune-brain and endocrine-brain interactions. Remember, psychosomatic symptoms originate in the psyche and are felt in the soma. These symptoms, in contrast, originate in the soma and are felt in the psyche, they are somatopsychic. In the light of this, we can no longer say that depression is just 'all in the mind'!

Throughout this book you will have come across many cases of somatopsychic 'allergy'. Hyperactive children and depressed or fatigued adults who improve on a Low Allergy Diet fall into this category. The depression and anxiety that so often complicate chemical sensitivity and gut fermentation may be considered in the same vein. Once again, we have to admit that we cannot understand the precise molecular mechanisms by which these interactions occur, but we respect the clinical observation that they do. Indeed, there may be other somatopsychic effects still to consider. Why, for instance, do a minority of autistic children improve on a Low Allergy Diet? The possibilities are interesting to say the least. One of them relates to gluten. This food molecule is, in fact, a very complicated piece of work. When eaten by healthy individuals, it is broken down into smaller parts called peptides, and thence to even smaller parts, called amino acids. Gluten peptides behave like opioid peptides, substances with opium-like activity! If an autistic child was lacking the enzyme to break down these opioid peptides, they could build up in the blood and exert a direct effect on brain function. There is a group of autistics who have high levels of gluten peptides in their urine and low levels of enzyme in their blood.

We may eventually unravel the mechanisms of somatopsychic fatigue or depression by discovering similar defects in this or other enzyme pathways. Similarly, we may discover why it is that some patients become anxious and over breathe when they eat something they are intolerant to. However, and as interesting as it is, the wise and impartial reader will want to know what role the placebo effect plays in all of this. This is a reasonable request, and it should be treated with respect.

Source: Gut Instincts by Andrew Brett and Andrea Carson