EMOTIONAL DIS-EASE, ROOT CAUSE OF MANY DISEASES

By I.M.Soni

The body and the mind are two essential parts of a unified whole. An understanding of this reality is important for maintaining good health. Medical science accepts that there is an inter-relation between our emotions and diseases. Besides this there are emotional reactions to organic diseases and organic reactions to emotional crises. A system operating within our body combats stress produced by emotional upheavals. If the stress is too much or the crises too drawn-out, the capacity of this system is either reduced or exhausted.

Flanders Dunbar maintains that human emotions are manifested in the weakest of the organs. In other words, the soundness of a persons health is determined by his weakest organ. The fact is that our thinking and attitudes result in multifaceted disorders and ailments. Bottled up personalities for example, suffer from high blood pressure. Very hard driving ones are constantly under tensions. Fear, tends to upset stomach cause frequent motions. Anxiety inhibits bowel movement. Shut-in people too suffer from emotional troubles and it has been found that the diabetic is a repressive personality.

Guilt is linked with skin eruptions. The scourge of the teenagers, acne and pimples, are also partially traceable to emotional factors in addition to excessive secretions from glands.

Fear and heart ailment are also interlinked. Fear quickens the heart- beat and the emotions which generate fear, damage the heart. That is why it is dangerous to have a Cardiac Neurosis.

Dr. Dunbar says that cancer strikes a "cancer personality." He describes a cancer personality as the one who harbours secret bitterness.

Peptic ulcers afflict those who live in a state of perpetual conflict. Those who remain all wound up within themselves are possible targets of sinus ailments. Sigmund Freud, the renowned psychoanalyst says, "Failure to express or relieve emotions through normal channels of voluntary activity, becomes a source of chronic psychic or physical disorders.

Repression of emotions and feelings leads to sexual disorders too. Many men and women who look upon sex as dirty feel that some invisible moralist is looking down upon them. This inhibits their natural healthy urges and they begin to suffer from frigidity. Impotence in males too is attributed to emotional factors. No wonder a modern authority like Masters and Johnson team came out with the thesis that no man is impotent. It is all in the mind".

Negative emotions and their accumulation are thus potentially dangerous because they are capable of straining and even destroying healthy human relationship.

Modern medical science has now fully realised the importance of thinking as a powerful factor determining health. Donald Gurtis, in Daily Pourer for Joyful Living observed, Medicine is coming round more and more to the point of view that mental and emotional attitudes are the most important factor in diagnosing an illness. An understanding of the patients thoughts, attitudes and emotional factors is often more helpful in treating a case than prescriptions or surgery."

What can we do to keep off the poison of bitter, wasting frustrations, negative feelings, resentments and grudges which gnaw at the mind and sometimes result in sickness? The most essential thing is the spring- cleaning of the mind. Another is the cultivation of a philosophy of robust and pink optimism. Thoughts of tranquil living, happiness and strength build up stamina and add zest to life. They increase our resistance to disease. The human body is a sensitive instrument which responds to thought that touch it.

Irrational fears, crippling thoughts and repressive emotions corrode the mind and increase our proneness to ailments reducing our immunity. Anything which produces a should be kept at bay.

liaking ourselves too seriously means a life of misery and anxiety. It plunges us too often in the dark pit of frustration. As a result we keep ourselves on,pins and needles. On thl contrary life rnust betaken with a bit of levity. Ithelps us in removing the death- dealing feelings.

-Cheerful thinking restores the mental house to order, chases out depressing and neurotic feelings. Neurosis is nothing but dis-ease. By warding off neurosis, we ward off an oncoming disease, remove consuming conflicts and improve our capacity for love and efficient work.

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine but a broken spirit drieth the bones. Though an-old adage, its efficiency in effecting our health is perhaps more relevant now than ever before. There is no doubt that an emotional upset, literally "dries the bones. It is now well-established that fibrosis, a painful muscular disease, is emotionally induced.

Thus, a merry heart prevents not only this but several other ailments. A sunny disposition brings sunshine in our life. The dark and dismal thoughts cloud our existence.

Excessive brooding on trifles, minor hurts and irritations only create a vicious circle where ailments occur more often than before. One who gets an attack of neurosis is more likely to have another than the one who rules his emotions.

Trifles can upset a person with a fragile sense of personality. We are all familiar with such people who flare up if someone breaks the queue, gets in their way or just brushes past them in the market. This fragility has to be overcome.

Enjoy life. Do not endure it. In many homes, it is a habit to stress on the frustrations and failure. Misery is their most loved word. Such families are lame-duck targets for emotionally induced illness. They are the ones who have the maximum number of sickness of varying hues.

The families that practice cheerfulness are happier than the ones that hug misery and gloom. Such families also see the vast possibilities and incidental joys of life.

They avoid bickering, heated arguments and corroding of happiness by nagging. The People who suffer most at our hands are the people who are always with us. Thus both become emotionally sick.

A family trait is likely to convert into an individual characteristic. But you can avoid it. Just refuse to enter into acrimonious dialogues. Hurt egos brood and tend to be sick.

Learn to agree with People even if they hold opinions contrary to those of yours. This should be practiced in the family and at your place of work. I agree with you, carries a ring of smoothness whereas l disagree with you, carries a note of discord.

A person who gets off balance on trifles, over a stray remark or plunges into the depth of despair, acquires a thought pattern which eventually pushes him/her into sickness. The mastery over emotions is therefore necessary for leading a happy and healthy life.