Unzipping Chronic and Autoimmune Conditions
Hans Selye began to understand stress when he noted that a number of symptoms were common to most illnesses:
Aches and pains
Looking or feeling unwell
Digestive upsets
Rashes
Fever
Careful observation led him eventually to synthesize these symptoms into a syndrome called stress.1 Stress is now universally acknowledged to be a factor in virtually all disease, and the cause of many. It’s a foundational concept of modern medicine and psychology. Yet before Selye, no-one had forged this durable concept of stress out of this easily observed catalog of symptoms.
Medicine is today confronted by a similar collection of symptoms in need of a common understanding. They include:
Depression
Lethargy
Anxiety
Irritability
Psychological or Emotional Exhaustion
Impaired concentration
Insomnia
Headaches
Aches and pains
These symptoms are common to many of the diseases that have been showing up with increasing frequency in the modern age, such as chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, lupus, and thyroid imbalances. These conditions, and others, all have in common an imbalance in the body’s electromagnetic field. This may be referred to as Electromagnetic Dysthymia (EMD). EMD is as much a spiritual or existential illness as a physical one. Dr. Herb Benson, who raised the curtain on the mind-body medicine era in the 1970s with his book The Relaxation Response, recently observed that: “60 percent to 90 percent of today’s medical problems are in the mind-body stress-related realm where the drugs and surgery don’t work.”2 Eminent Duke University scientist Ralph Snyderman says, “Most of our nation’s investment in health is wasted on an irrational, uncoordinated, and inefficient system that spends more than two-thirds of each dollar treating largely irreversible chronic diseases.”3 Conventional medicine has little to offer EMD suffers; as a group they are particularly motivated to look at the benefits of soul medicine.
Every illness will eventually overload and weaken the adrenal glands, which ordinarily balance the body’s stress level. Thus, adrenal burnout, a prominent cause of EMD, is also involved in every major disease. As long as the body can restore homeostasis or natural balance, major disease does not occur and DHEA levels remain reasonably adequate. As adrenal capability fails, DHEA progressively declines, weakening the immune system and reducing one’s total life energy.
How does EMD relate to the great diseases of modern society, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes? Stress is the cumulative pressure that we encounter in going about our daily lives. It is caused by:
Illness is the body’s reaction to total life stress. EMD is the stress-induced burnout or overload of the body’s electromagnetic framework. Illnesses manifest in the organs or systems most strongly associated with that particular stress.
For instance, in the case of coronary artery disease, the dominant influencing factor can be unresolved anger that blocks forgiveness, compassion, love and ultimately the very life force (in this case blood) to the heart itself. A stroke is often associated with the failure to use reason or wisdom. In diabetes, the body’s conflict is sometimes related to resentment over having too much or too little responsibility. Cancer is virtually always the end result of intense depression, secondarily focused on the organ or body part involved. For instance, breast cancer can represent depression over a perception of inadequate nurturing. Prostate or uterine cancer likely involves problems of security or sexuality.
And so it goes. The electromagnetic deprivation of energy affects the organ or body region with the greatest unresolved emotional distress. Yet it’s less important to link every illness with a particular spiritual or emotional malaise, than it is to notice and release emotional and spiritual contractions as soon as possible after they appear. Fear, anxiety, resentment, anger, guilt and depression block life energy.
Diagnosing EMD
The Cornell Medical Index (CMI) was touted a generation ago as adequate for making a clinical diagnosis with 80 percent accuracy, without any need for a person to undergo physical examination or lab tests. The CMI includes family history and past history.
The manifestation of thirty or more symptoms in one person in one year indicates the beginning of the body’s failure to cope adequately with stress. Of course, thirty-plus symptoms might be present in a serious illness such as cancer or psychosis, so careful diagnostic testing is required to rule out other treatable illnesses. The list of EMD symptoms includes the following:
These are symptoms of many chronic illnesses. Ultimately EMD is diagnosed when every usual physical illness is ruled out.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is simply one extreme of EMD. The illness typifies EMD, as it relates to stress overload of the adrenal glands. One of the more controversial illnesses of the last decade, the syndrome appears to have existed in the 1800s and was referred to as “neurasthenia.” Florence Nightingale probably suffered from it. Other diagnoses have also been used to describe this confusing array of symptoms, including Wilson’s disease, chronic Epstein-Barr, candidiasis, environmental sensitivity and myeloencephalopathy.
The prominent symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome are lack of energy, poor quality sleep, a need for more sleep or rest than normal, anxiety, irritability and weakness. No specific diagnostic test exists for these symptoms. Many treatments produce only transient improvement, if any.
Most of the individuals suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome have probably experienced a major life crisis such as divorce, the death of a loved one, a job or career dislocation, or some other emotionally and spiritually traumatic event that initiated a situational depressive reaction. However, some individuals with this condition have never felt happy. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome may be the physical expression of a disease of the spirit. “Many people in our technological society are disconnected from the matrix of the universe,” writes shaman and psychologist Alberto Villoldo. “I often find that people who come to see me with the symptoms of chronic fatigue have become totally disassociated from the natural world. They do not go for walks in the woods, plant tomatoes in their gardens, or even stop to smell the flowers. This is not to say that walking in the forest will cure chronic fatigue syndrome, which is a complex medical condition. Yet people who suffer from this condition require vital reconnection to the natural grid as part of their healing.”4
Social Contributions to EMD
At some level we all suffer the consequences of negative emotions and behavior. All illness and ultimately death result from cumulative total stress: physical, chemical, emotional, mental, electromagnetic and spiritual. Spiritual distress results, in part, from disregarding The Golden Rule. Perhaps the most important human lesson is to learn to live that rule consciously, subconsciously, unconsciously and superconsciously, individually and collectively, at all levels of our being. Environmentalists emphasize the negative health effects of pollution. Yet moral, spiritual and psychological pollution may have equally devastating effects. We are affected by the dysfunctions of the society we live in; this generates a constant level of moral tension and background stress. The collective unconscious—the overall energetic field of our society—contains negative influences that all of our immune systems must grapple with. Ervin Lazlo tells us that: “Our body is part of the biosphere and it resonates with the web of life on this planet. And our mind is part of our body, in touch with other minds as well as the biosphere.”5 Researcher William Collinge, in his book Subtle Energy, reminds us that “our physical bodies can be influenced by distant attention from others. Researchers have concluded that we are capable of participating with others in a field of events that is transpersonal (beyond the limitations of space or distance), transtemporal (beyond the limitations of time), and transpersonal (beyond what we ordinarily think of as the boundaries between people).”6 Even when we aim to be healthy, we live in a sea of influences of every time, from the most sublime, to the most destructive ideas and practices of society.
Mahatma Gandhi popularized an awareness of seven types of social sins:
To Gandhi’s list could be added an eighth: intolerance of normal, healthy, nonharmful behavior! In Springfield, Missouri, “tolerance” was removed from the list of community values, because some religious fundamentalists found the word offensive. They are unwilling to tolerate homosexuality and many other variations of individuality.
At the individual level, evidence of the adverse effects of negative thinking and feeling are convincing to anyone willing to examine the facts. Fear, anxiety, guilt, anger and depression are the major negative emotions. Each of them evokes a stress reaction, more difficult to evaluate than the effects of nicotine, caffeine or alcohol—yet ultimately more insidiously pervasive. These gross emotional reactions are easier to study than the effects of prejudices such as racial or gender discrimination. What are the individual and collective effects of bigotry? What are the physiological effects in a person who is subjected to bigotry? When people such as Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King are struggling for improvement of human behavior, for righting wrongs, is their physiology compensated positively? What are the effects of constant exposure to the suffering of others? Is there a negative drain from being exposed to the anger or depression of others? Did a saint such as Mother Theresa receive physiological benefits as well as spiritual ones from her work with suffering?
We have to live in the society in which we find ourselves. Yet we can still choose our attitudes and actions. The ultimate regulator of brain and mind and, thus, the electromagnetic framework of life is the human spirit. Our knowledge of the effects of anger and depression tells us that you cannot afford the luxury of fear, anxiety, anger, guilt or depression, no matter what the “cause!” And society can’t afford prejudice, dislike, hatred, resentment, greed or ignorance (the failure to accept truth or facts). At some level there is a negative physiological effect on the people living in that society. Societies and communities that emphasize caring, connection, cooperation, equality, equanimity, spirituality, joy, tolerance, and love are contributing to the health of their members.
Hormonal and Nutritional Deficiencies and EMD
Much of the medical literature uses the standard that DHEA deficiency is a diagnosis (for men) of less than 180 mg/dL and (for women) less than 130 mg/dL. These standards may be much too low. The mean for each gender is much higher: 715 mg/dL in men and 510 mg/dL in women. DHEA levels below each gender’s mean imply progressively diminished adrenal reserve. Most patients with EMD have levels less than 50 percent of the mean, and none have levels at the mean or above. Therefore, DHEA deficiency is common and present in virtually every major illness, as well as in EMD, suggesting relative adrenal exhaustion or adrenal maladaptation.
Magnesium regulates membrane potential, the resting electrical charge on cells. A deficiency of magnesium contributes considerably to the increased sensitivity of patients with EMD. Eighty percent of women and 70 percent of men do not consume the recommended daily intake of magnesium, which should be obtained from eating appropriate amounts of fruits and veggies. Unfortunately our soil is deficient in magnesium so that our food supply is deficient! Rampant magnesium deficiency is associated with most chronic illnesses. Though low intracellular magnesium is not diagnostic of any disease, EMD is inevitably associated with such deficiency.
Malnutrition is also common in many chronic illnesses, particularly in chronically depressed patients. The body’s essential aminoacidsproducemostofourneurochemicals.Thus,norepinephrine, serotonin, melatonin and beta-endorphin—all crucial neurochemicals essential for feeling energetic—cannot be properly balanced when there is a deficiency in the amino acid building blocks.
Taurine is now considered an essential amino acid by many scientists. It is deficient in 86 percent of patients with depression. The deficiency of both magnesium and taurine evokes hypersensitivity of cells in patients with EMD. Thus, they have a lower tolerance for many stressors.
The EMD malady is much more common than any other disease and indeed is concomitant in many diseases. In its simplest form, EMD results in significant depression. As an individual’s ability to cope with increasing stress—including noise, poor nutrition, psychosocial pressures and pollution—is lost, homeostasis becomes erratic and DHEA begins to decrease.
Electromagnetic pollution increasingly contributes to stress. Fluorescent lights, electrical appliances, computers, automobiles, airplanes, radio, television, and microwave emissions bombard the human energy system daily. This may provide major electromagnetic stress.
Sir William Osler believed that there was one common cause of illness. Stress illnesses indicate an electromagnetic overload, leading to a psychoneuroimmunological breakdown. EMD is a factor in virtually all illness. EMD affects the limbic system and hypothalamus, leading to a loss of electrical homeostasis of the brain-mind. EMD illness manifests as depression, with or without a multiple system disease.
The major stress-reduction techniques listed below provide the foundation for therapy. Eighty-five percent of patients respond initially to two weeks of intensive multimodal treatment, and 70 percent improve long-term.
Recovery may be assisted by magnesium replacement and amino acid supplementation, DHEA restoration, and use of the Liss CES, Shealy series, transcranially, or the SheLi TENS on the Ring of Fire circuit.
Fear, anger, guilt, anxiety, depression, pessimism, prejudice, hatred, resentment and greed sap or zap our health. What are the antidotes? Joy, laughter, happiness, serenity, peacefulness, optimism, forgiveness, patience, tolerance, compassion and love. These attributes of the spirit enhance health and well-being. They build beta endorphins, the feel-good, natural narcotics, DHEA and immune competency. Cultivating these positive attitudes, emotions and behaviors is a form of soul medicine that anyone can practice. Poets, artists, musicians, novelists and theologians are the doctors reminding us to celebrate the spiritual virtues.
A number of letters from patients with chronic fatigue or depression attest that they consider themselves healed after being treated by sacred healers. Because EMD is a disease primarily of low vital energy, it is a prime example of a spiritual disease. Sufferers can benefit proportionally from soul medicine. Just as allopathic medicine offered many benefits for the medical conditions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, soul medicine is well-suited to treating the emerging widespread conditions of the twenty-first century.