The Myth of Normal 41

psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology, this new discipline is predicated on the unity between all our constituent parts: mind, brain, nervous and immune systems, and the hormonal apparatus (that’s the “endocrine” part). The pieces can be studied separately, but we cannot fully understand any of them without grasping the whole picture. From the cerebral cortex to the brain’s emotional nuclei to the autonomic nervous system, from the solid or fluid aspects of the immune apparatus to the hormonal organs and secretions, from the stress-response system to the viscera . . . it’s all one. That evolution has furnished us with instincts, emotions, complex behaviors, and individuated organs and systems does not, in the slightest way, diminish this unity. No matter how sophisticated our minds may be, the fact remains that their basic contents—what we think, believe consciously or unconsciously, feel or are prevented from feeling—powerfully affect our bodies, for better or worse. Conversely, what our bodies experience from conception onward cannot but affect how we think, feel, perceive, and behave. This, in a nutshell, is psychoneuroimmunology’s core lesson. One fascinating example is the demonstrated link between the brain’s fear center, the amygdala, and cardiovascular disease. The more stress someone perceives or experiences, the higher the resting activity of the amygdala and the greater the risk of heart ailments. The pathway from amygdala overactivation to heart problems runs through increased bone-marrow activity and arterial inflammation. [15] Emotional stress affects the heart more generally as well. In 2012, a study from Harvard Medical School showed that women with high job strain are 67 percent more likely to experience a heart attack than women in less stressful jobs. [16] A Canadian study from the University of Toronto in the same year found that men sexually abused as children had a tripled rate of heart attacks. [17] The researchers’ natural assumption was that abused men would be more prone to high-risk behavior, such as smoking and drinking, which would account for their higher rate of heart attacks. To the team’s surprise, the impacts of abuse were more direct, quite independent of behavioral factors. The Machinery of Stress