Medicine and Mind in 21ST Century (Part 1)

Swami Vijnananand Vision

In series of Blogs under “Disease Cure”, we saw in details the relation of Health with Emotions directly and Mind indirectly. The theory of ‘Recipropathy’ is also explained in details. The advice of Swami Vijnananand to “add peace to the prescription” is seen to be acceptable as per the latest findings in the field of human health. Some of these are listed below. 

Swamiji often mentioned while he put forward his analysis fifty and odd years earlier, that “I am telling the facts which shall be appreciated in 21^st century”.

While the mental stress related reasons have assumed major base for the ill-health and as depression has become the second largest disease of 21^st century, thinkers in the field are required to go into the details of remedies and peruse the  policy makers to evolve suitable policies for implementation.

We shall see some of the latest development in the field of health in light of the information provided under the articles in this series. (Source - Daily Science News)

1 Even mild stress is linked to long-term disability, study finds.

2 How our bodies interact with our minds in response to fear and other emotions.

3 Negative emotions in response to daily stress take a toll on long-term mental health

4 Emotions adjust not only our mental, but also our bodily states.

5 Our feelings and beliefs impact our every cell.

We shall see details in brief.

1 Even mild stress is linked to long-term disability, study findsMarch 24, 2011, BMJ-British Medical Journal

Even relatively mild stress can lead to long term disability and an inability to work, reveals a large population based study published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

It is well known that mental health problems are associated with long term disability, but the impact of milder forms of psychological stress is likely to have been underestimated, say the authors. Between 2002 and 2007, the authors tracked the health of more than 17,000 working adults up to the age of 64, who had been randomly selected from the population in the Stockholm area.

All participants completed a validated questionnaire (GHQ-12) at the start of the study to measure their mental health and stress levels, as well as other aspects of health and wellbeing.

During the monitoring period, 649 people started receiving disability benefit -- 203 for a mental health problem and the remainder for physical ill health. Higher levels of stress at the start of the study were associated with a significantly greater likelihood of subsequently being awarded long term disability benefits.

But even those with mild stress were up to 70% more likely to receive disability benefits, after taking account of other factors likely to influence the results, such as lifestyle and alcohol intake. One in four of these benefits awarded for a physical illness, such as high blood pressure, angina, and stroke, and almost two thirds awarded for a mental illness, were attributable to stress.

2 How our bodies interact with our minds in response to fear and other emotions
April 7, 2013, British Neuroscience Association

New research has shown that the way our minds react to and process emotions such as fear can vary according to what is happening in other parts of our bodies.

In two different presentations on April 8 at the British Neuroscience Association Festival of Neuroscience (BNA2013) in London, researchers have shown for the first time that the heart's cycle affects the way we process fear, and that a part of the brain that responds to stimuli, such as touch, felt by other parts of the body also plays a role.

Dr Garfinkel and her colleagues hooked up 20 healthy volunteers to heart monitors, which were linked to computers. "Our results show that if we see a fearful face during systole (when the heart is pumping) then we judge this fearful face as more intense than if we see the very same fearful face during diastole (when the heart is relaxed). To look at neural activity underlying this effect, we performed this experiment in an MRI [magnetic resonance imaging] scanner and demonstrated that a part of the brain called the amygdala influences how our heart changes our perception of fear.

"Lastly, we have demonstrated that the degree to which our hearts can change the way we see and process fear is influenced by how anxious we are. The anxiety level of our individual subjects altered the extent their hearts could change the way they perceived emotional faces and also altered neural circuitry underlying heart modulation”

In a second presentation, Dr Alejandra Sel, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology at City University (London, UK), investigated a part of the brain called the somatosensory cortex -- the area that perceives bodily sensations, such as touch, pain, body temperature and the perception of the body's place in space, and which is activated when we observe emotional expressions in the faces of other people.

"In order to understand other's people emotions we need to experience the same observed emotions in our body. Specifically, observing an emotional face, as opposed to a neutral face, is associated with an increased activity in the somatosensory cortex as if we were expressing and experiencing our own emotions. It is also known that people with damage to the somatosensory cortex find it difficult to recognize emotion in other people's faces," Dr Sel told the news briefing.

However, until now, it has not been clear whether activity in the somatosensory cortex was simply a by-product of the way we process visual information, or whether it reacts independently to emotions expressed in other people's faces, actively contributing to how we perceive emotions in others.

The researchers found that there was enhanced activity in the somatosensory cortex in response to fearful faces in comparison to neutral faces, independent of any visual processes. Importantly, this activity was focused in the primary and secondary somatosensory areas; the primary area receives sensory information directly from the body, while the secondary area combines sensory information from the body with information related to body movement and other information, such as memories of previous, sensitive experiences.

"Our experimental approach allows us to isolate and show for the first time (as far as we are aware) changes in somatosensory activity when seeing emotional faces after taking away all visual information in the brain. We have shown the crucial role of the somatosensory cortex in the way our minds and bodies perceive human emotions. These findings can serve as starting point for developing interventions tailored for people with problems in recognizing other's emotions, such as autistic children," said Dr Sel.

3 Negative emotions in response to daily stress take a toll on long-term mental health
April 2, 2013, Association for Psychological Science

Our emotional responses to the stresses of daily life may predict our long-term mental health, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Psychological scientist Susan Charles of the University of California, Irvine and colleagues conducted the study in order to answer a long-standing question: Do daily emotional experiences add up to make the straw that breaks the camel's back, or do these experiences make us stronger and provide an inoculation against later distress?

Using data from two national surveys, the researchers examined the relationship between daily negative emotions and mental health outcomes ten years later. Participants' overall levels of negative emotions predicted psychological distress (e.g., feeling worthless, hopeless, nervous, and/or restless) and diagnosis of an emotional disorder like anxiety or depression a full decade later.

The results were based on data from 711 participants, both men and women, who ranged in age from 25 to 74. They were all participants in two national, longitudinal survey studies: Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) and National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE).

According to Charles and her colleagues, these findings show that mental health outcomes aren't only affected by major life events -- they also bear the impact of seemingly minor emotional experiences. The study suggests that chronic nature of these negative emotions in response to daily stressors can take a toll on long-term mental health.

4 "Emotions adjust not only our mental, but also our bodily states."
December 31, 2013, Aalto University

Researchers found that the most common emotions trigger strong bodily sensations, and the bodily maps of these sensations were topographically different for different emotions. The sensation patterns were, however, consistent across different West European and East Asian cultures, highlighting that emotions and their corresponding bodily sensation patterns have a biological basis.

The findings have major implications for our understanding of the functions of emotions and their bodily basis. On the other hand, the results help us to understand different emotional disorders and provide novel tools for their diagnosis."

The research was carried out on line, and over 700 individuals from Finland, Sweden and Taiwan took part in the study. The researchers induced different emotional states in their Finnish and Taiwanese participants. Subsequently the participants were shown with pictures of human bodies on a computer, and asked to color the bodily regions whose activity they felt increasing or decreasing.

The results were published on 31 December, 2013 in the scientific journal Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences.

Healing of body through Mind.

In the words of one of the leading thinkers in health care of this century:

“We have forgotten the inner ability of the body for self-cure and we are so much engrossed on the technology, we have lost touch with one of the most important things what body knows to do. Every empowered patient and every conscious health care provider should start to think this way about the health. It is the healers’ job to give calming influence to the amygdala, to remember the healing power of love, show support to nurturing, caring. I am not suggesting to ditch the power of   modern medicine and technology. It has its place of importance. But that alone is not enough! Even the good diet, exercise and taking vitamins is not enough!! We have to take next step to see how do we deal with the stress response and develop relaxation response so that we help the body to heal itself.”

(To be continued)

Vijay R. Joshi.

God, Belief, Science.

God, Belief, Science.

From eons there is a continue debate between God believers and atheists. Some believe God, some not. Since the advent of ‘Science’ some people have accepted it as their God and rejected the conventional God. What about the stand of scientists, who have attained very high rank; by their performance, in the world of science? Here too we find that some believe God, some believe Science and some respect and believe both. Anyway, God or no God, belief is unavoidable. Let us try to understand the views on this.

How a Scientist can believe God?

I am a serious scientist who seriously believes in God. But to many more people, I am someone just like them. A scientist can believe in God because such belief is not a scientific matter. By contrast, religious statements are not necessarily falsifiable.

Why do I believe in God?

As a physicist, I look at nature from a particular perspective. I see an orderly, beautiful universe in which nearly all physical phenomena can be understood from a few simple mathematical equations. I see a universe that, had it been constructed slightly differently, would never have given birth to stars and planets, let alone bacteria and people. And there is no good scientific reason for why the universe should not have been different. I believe in God because I can feel God’s presence in my life, because I can see the evidence of God’s goodness in the world, because I believe in Love and because I believe that God is Love.

Does this belief make me a better person or a better physicist than others?

I know plenty of atheists who are both better people and better scientists than I. (however) I do think that this belief makes me better than I would be if I did not believe.

Am I (theist) free of doubts about God?

Hardly. Questions about the presence of evil in the world, the suffering of innocent children, the variety of religious thought, and other imponderables often leave me wondering if I have it right, and always leave me conscious of my ignorance. Nevertheless, I do believe, more because of science than in spite of it, but ultimately just because I believe. As the author of Hebrews put it: “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

Being atheist how do you recognize belief?

Despite the fact that I’m an atheist, I recognize that belief offers something that science does not.

Why along eons the religious belief remains relevant?

It might be argued that religious belief remains relevant because of the comfort it can provide.  But this one doesn’t do much for me. Solace; is not benign when reality proves the solace to have been misplaced, nor are beliefs that reduce anxiety when the belief system is so often what generated the anxiety in the first place.

So why is belief still relevant?                                                                
To this I’d offer a very a-scientific answer. It is for the ecstasy. I mean those instances where you’re suffused with gratitude for life and experience and the chance to do good where every neuron is flooded with the momentness of feeling the breeze on its cellular cheek.              A scientist or a  consumer of science may feel ecstatic about a finding—that it will cure a disease, save a species, or is just stunningly beautiful—but science, as an explanatory system, is not very good at producing ecstasy. By contrast, the potential for ecstasy is deeply intertwined with religiosity, where the mere possibility of belief and faith in the absence of proof is where it can be an ecstatic, moving truth.

Does scientific attitude require any faith?                                              

Science itself employs a kind of faith, a faith all scientists share, whether they are religious in the conventional sense or not. Science is built upon a faith that the world is understandable, and that there is logic to reality that the human mind can explore and comprehend. It also holds, as an article of scientific faith that such exploration is worth the trouble, because knowledge is always to be preferred to ignorance.

Is there a genuine place for faith in the world of science?

Indeed there is. Far from standing in conflict with it, the hypothesis of God validates not only our faith in science, but our sheer delight at the gifts of knowledge, love, and life.

Is the belief in God a delusion?

We do not abandon science because our human efforts to approach the great truths of nature are occasionally hampered by error, greed, dishonesty, and even fraud. Why then should we declare faith a “delusion” because belief in God is subject to exactly the same failings? Albert Einstein once wrote that “the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.” Today, even as science moves ahead, that mystery remains.

Did science make belief in God obsolete?

It depends. The answer turns on whether one emphasizes belief or God. Science does not make belief in God obsolete, but it may make obsolete the reality of God, depending on how far we are able to push the science.

On the question of belief in God, the answer is clearly no. Surveys conducted in 1916 and again in 1997 found that 40 percent of American scientists said they believe in God, so obviously the practice of science does not make belief in God obsolete for this sizable group. Neither does it make absolute for the hundreds of millions of practicing Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and members of other faiths, who both believe in God and fully embrace science.

Of course, reality does not bend to the psychology of belief. Millions of people believe in astrology, ghosts, angels, ESP, and all manner of paranormal phenomena, but that does not make them real.

Has faith has any relevance in our scientific age?                                             
In the end you have no answer to why science works, why the physical logic of natural law makes life possible, or why the human mind is able to explore and understand nature. And I agree that there is no scientific answer to such questions. That is precisely the point of faith–to order and rationalize our encounters with the world around us. Faith is human, and therefore imperfect. But faith expresses, however poorly, a reality that includes the scientific experience in every sense, and therefore

 

Here is my honest problem with your position, the same problem that drove me from believer to nonbeliever: if God is, in your words, "without form, immeasurable" and exists "in a dimension that cannot be quantified or depicted by science," how do you know God exists? How can I–or anyone else for that matter–know God exists?  As corporeal beings who form beliefs about the world based on percepts (from our senses) and concepts (from our minds), how can we possibly know a being who by definition lies outside of both our percepts and our concepts?

Indeed, it is not possible to prove that God exists; we cannot be sure, and people of faith do doubt. Such doubt is not restricted to my own tradition. Paul Tillich, a Protestant theologian, asserted that the basis of true faith is doubt.

So I have one final question for you: why believe in God at all? Why not just be an agnostic?

Why believe? I have no rational answer. This is the cognitive dissonance that people like me live with, and with which we often struggle.

Atheists assert God does not exist. How do they know?

It is a matter of assumption, just like blind faith. That blind faith is what drives people to fly planes into the World Trade Center or to launch Inquisitions.

CONCLUSION: Atheist or theist; objection is not to the rational belief in God or Religion, but to the extremists’ superstitious attitude on both sides, which has potential to harm.

‘This stimulating conversation has moved from the question of whether science has made belief in God obsolete to the question of whether, on balance, society would be better off with or without religious faith’.

“If only religious believers throughout the world were as thoughtful, open-minded, ecumenical, and tolerant then, indeed, we could imagine no 9/11, no 7/7 bombings in London, no suicide terrorists, or abortion clinic bombers.”

“We want people of religious faith and without religious faith to act with genuine concern for the well-being of others. In the end, I think we should agree with Charles Darwin that in matters of faith all of us must make our own decisions”.

This is an abridged summary of the essays and debate on 'Does science make belief in God absolute?' with respect to 'Belief'.

Source: A series of conversations among leading scientists and scholars about the "Big Questions." John Templeton Foundation. (http://www.templeton.org/belief/)

Vijay R. Joshi.