When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection

Summary

Can a person literally die of loneliness? Is there a connection between inhibited emotion and Alzheimer’s disease? Is there a “cancer personality”? Questions such as these are emerging as scientific findings shine new light on the controversy that surrounds the mind-body connection in illness and health. Modern research is confirming the age-old wisdom that emotions profoundly affect our physiology. Repressed emotions frequently bring on stress—which, in turn, can lead to disease. 

Provocative and beautifully written, When the Body Says No provides fresh information regarding these and other important issues concerning the effects of stress on health. In lucid, easy-to-follow language, Dr. Gabor Maté summarizes the latest scientific findings about the role that stress and individual emotional makeup play in an array of diseases, including: heart disease, diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, cancer, and ALS, among others. Emotions like anger share with our immune system the role of defending our boundaries. When we repress emotions, we may also suppress our immune defenses. In some people, these defenses may go awry, destroying the body rather than protecting it. 

Dr. Maté explores the reason why, despite a rapidly accumulating body of evidence about the mind-body unity, most physicians continue to treat physical symptoms rather than persons—and why we must understand the mind-body link in order to take an active role in our overall health. When the Body Says No promotes learning and healing. It offers the kind of transformative insight that promotes physical and emotional self-awareness—the lack of which, Dr. Maté asserts, is at the root of much of the stress that chronically debilitates health and prepares the ground for disease.