Many New Age-ists and alternative medical providers have been speaking for years on the subject of mind over body, but it has been difficult to prove in all cases. Science is now catching up with this theory, which will probably make it more credible to the medical community. The brain’s neural networks connects the cerebral cortex to the adrenal medulla. This connection is responsible for the body’s quick response in stressful situations.
Neuroscientists at the University of Pittsburgh are responsible for these findings that have been published in the online Early Edition of the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. These findings report proof of the neural basis for a mind-body connection. Stress, depression, and other mental states are the primary focus of the studies, and how these states of mind can alter the function of our organs. These studies also prove that the experience of psychosomatic illnesses truly exist. There is a real connection between the anatomical and the psychological.
According to Science Daily, “Our results turned out to be much more complex and interesting than we imagined before we began this study,” said senior author Peter L. Strick, Ph.D., Thomas Detre Chair of the Department of Neurobiology and scientific director of the University of Pittsburgh Brain Institute.
While previous investigators suspected that only one or two cortical areas would be responsible for the responses of the adrenal medulla, recent scientists were surprised by the large number of networks that were discovered. The actual number of pathways is uncertain. There are many alternative physicians and professional healers that are validated by this particular study and now have evidence in writing that our minds and the state of our short and long-term mental health, affects the activity of our internal organs, which proves that stress and other daily life conditions may actually be able to make us ill.
The study also proves that patients can even “think” their way into certain illnesses or simply deal with general overall bad health due to stressful and mentally painfully conditions in life. This explains why those in deep grief often become ill and some even end up with chronic illnesses due to the death or diagnosis of a loved one.
Some will say, why does it require scientific proof when many healers have been aware of this mind-body connection for ages. However, we live in a world where medical concerns and questions most often are required to be validated by proof in numbers and measurements. Other alternative healers will say that they don’t really care how they get the masses on board, it is only important that people do understand that our minds and bodies have a strong relationship with one another and that there are far more reasons for the illnesses from which we suffer than we previously thought.