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The state of hopefulness and the will to live, however, may produce positive biological changes that may help to influence a more positive outcome. Studies also have indicated that self-blame and reproach may play a negative role in immune function. One study found that HIV- infected men who significantly blamed themselves had greater declines in immune function and decreased survival times than HIV men who were more self- accepting. One experimental study of college students found that students experiencing a higher degree of shame had higher levels of cytokines in their saliva.
While most of the research into emotions and the immune system has focused on negative emotions and conditions, a small number of studies indicate that when happiness is induced, the immune system functions better. There also is growing evidence that the relaxation response has positive effects. In a group of geriatric patients who were taught the relaxation response through progressive muscle relaxation, their immune systems showed an increase in the natural killer cells that are involved in destroying viruses and tumors.
This improvement, however, was not permanent or long-term; the level of natural killer cells returned to baseline when the patients stopped using the relaxation response. A few research studies are investigating the deeper positive states that many people develop as they confront a life-threatening illness such as cancer or AIDS.
A recent study found that among a group of men who had lost a partner to AIDS, those who had dealt with the loss and had found new meaning to life in the process had higher immune function and lived longer than those who had not. Other studies looked at college students dealing with trauma and patients with rheumatoid arthritis and found that those who worked through the difficulties in their lives showed improvement in immune function.
David Spiegel conducted a study of women with metastatic breast cancer and found that those who participated in supportive expressive group therapy tended to live longer and had better quality of life than those who did not participate. What is the relationship between emotions and cancer?
The following statements summarize what currently is known and not known:. Fawzy Fawzy studied the effects of being in a problem-solving group among people with malignant melanoma. What practical advice for women with cancer and their family members can be drawn from studies of the emotions and the immune system?
The following suggestions are valid for anyone whether a cancer patient or not:.
The emotional-immune response continuum: the case for research in field of psychoneuroimmunology and to specifically connect the immune response to . both systems are subjected to a great deal of changes during childhood and until . AIDS: Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) focuses on the connection between the mind and The brain and immune system communicate in two principle ways: by means of Some experimental interventions which increase the ability to deal with How a person understands his own emotions can affect the immune system.
Please call the Resource Center if you want to pursue any of the suggestions mentioned above. We believe that each person has unique needs, so we offer a variety of ways to help women adapt to and manage the changes brought about by cancer and its treatments. The listing of our groups and classes begins on page For people who do not want a group experience, our Insights Into Cancer lecture series offers another way to access information. You also may talk to one of our staff of licensed clinical social workers who can help you determine which resources best meet your needs.
We are here to help. April 4, Healing and the Mind: Emotions and the Immune System. The human immune system The human immune system is highly complex and understood only in part, although considerable advances in understanding have been made in recent years. The immune system allows the body to fight infection and disease in the following ways: Through the proliferative response, the immune system reacts to the presence of foreign agents in the body by rapidly producing an army of white blood cells that attack the foreign body.
A well-functioning immune system responds quickly to the earliest indication that something is threatening the body. When a virus enters the body, it multiplies rapidly until the host cell explodes, which releases more viruses into the body. These cells have been found to kill tumor cells in test tubes, leading some immunologists to believe that they represent an important defense against human tumors.
The T-helper cells are another important component of the immune system. Scientists believe that the T-helper cells secrete substances into the blood system that tell other cells to begin fighting infection. The impact of stress Most of the psychoneuroimmunology research that has been conducted to date has studied the impact of stress.
Stress typically is categorized by its intensity including stresses that can be induced in a laboratory, as follows: Acute stress — major life events: Death of a spouse Marital separation Job loss Non-acute stress — minor life events: Taking care of a person with chronic illness Living with natural disasters Acute stress in the laboratory: Mental arithmetic Public speaking Electric shock Loud noises Studies have found that people exposed to these various kinds of stresses have changes in their immune system. Emotions and immune function Studies of people with severe depression have found that they show a slightly decreased proliferative response.
Optimism and immune function A growing body of research, conducted mainly on HIV-positive men, indicates that positive and negative outlooks on life may have an impact on immune function. Deeper positive states and immune function A few research studies are investigating the deeper positive states that many people develop as they confront a life-threatening illness such as cancer or AIDS.
Cancer and emotions What is the relationship between emotions and cancer? The following statements summarize what currently is known and not known: There is no good scientific evidence to support the theory that stress makes a person more vulnerable to the development of cancer. In animal models, there is no evidence that stress causes tumors.
Scientists do not know if depression make a person more vulnerable to cancer: There is no good evidence to support the theory that people who repress their emotions are more vulnerable to developing cancer. A few studies indicate that once a person has a tumor, emotional states may influence its spread. They allowed their members to confront their mortality in a safe and supportive environment, allowing them to feel and express normal reactions to the presence of metastatic disease including anger and fear.
The group members then came to some new meaning related to breast cancer progression. Practical suggestions What practical advice for women with cancer and their family members can be drawn from studies of the emotions and the immune system? The following suggestions are valid for anyone whether a cancer patient or not: It is important to recognize and acknowledge your feelings.
Participation in a support group, such as those offered by the Resource Center, will allow you to confront stress and other negative feelings in a safe environment and may help you to move forward. Many techniques taught in groups, such as the relaxation response, meditation, and expressing feelings through writing and art may help you come to terms with your illness and may facilitate the development of deeper emotional states. Staying engaged and involved in life is important even though it often is painful and difficult to do. Staying engaged often leads to greater fulfillment and a better quality of life, which in turn may have a positive effect on outcome.
Feelings of sadness and anger are normal and can coexist with hopefulness and being involved in life. Try to accept yourself, and try to develop and promote trusting relationships. Contrary to what many books and people will have you believe, there is no scientific data to support the notion that a negative attitude causes cancer or that a positive one prevents it.
Be wary of people who tell you that you must have a positive attitude at all times. If we just focus on cardiovascular diseases, for instance, there is now clear evidence that pathologies like atherosclerosis and even stroke have an immunological and emotional basis. Putting all this together, it is clear that from an experimental and therapeutic point of view, understanding how chronic dysfunctions of the immune or emotional system influence another system is far from being simple. Is it that chronic stress causes depression, which then causes inflammation, which is in turn responsible for the increased risk of cardiovascular disorders or is it that constant inflammation causes depression and ultimately an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease?
Where is the beginning and where the end of this vicious circle? A possible solution to this dilemma might come from a slight change of approach. Most of the studies currently in the literature focus on the effects of chronic negative emotions on the immune system. These can range from divorce and marital problems 85 , 86 to bereavement 87 - 89 and loneliness. Knowing the gene signature of positive emotional states could be beneficial from several points of view.
Firstly, it would provide new therapeutic avenues to explore, aiming to improve the immunological state of patients suffering from chronic mental disorders. Secondly, it would allow us to assess whether a dysfunction in these pathways could be a leading cause behind the cascade of complications that occur later, for example, immune defects and associated comorbidities, such as cardiovascular disorders and neurodegenerative diseases. Mice were either subjected to a daily session of 1 hour of massage-like stroking 92 or housed in an enriched environment.
Our results have shown that both treatments have a significant impact on the immune system. First, stroking caused a marked reduction in the noradrenergic tone of lymphoid organs. Noradrenaline acts as an immunosuppressant to the immune system, and the reduction in its levels in the thymus caused a significant increase in the number of T cells in circulation. Consequently, stroked mice showed an improved response to the immunosuppressive effects of exogenously administered hydrocortisone, providing experimental evidence for an improved immune resilience.
A similar finding was observed with mice housed in the enriched environment. Microarray analysis of CD4 T cells showed a discrete and unique pattern of genes that were specifically modulated in enriched cells. Most interestingly, these genes included the following: Trib1 acts upon Foxp3 forkhead box P3; also known as scurfin cobinding with the transcription factor to enhance its Treg-promoting function.
Most strikingly, enriched T cells acquired a unique phenotype during differentiation in effector cells and produced higher levels of IL and IL than did CD4 T cells of mice housed in standard conditions. Very little is known about the effects of transient or acute dysfunction of the immune system and the effect on emotional well-being. Most of the data available in this respect concern the effects of the acute administration of immunosuppressant drugs.
Studies have indeed shown that the therapeutic immunosuppression brought about by calcineurin inhibitors is often limited by the side effects that these drugs have on the emotional response. Unlike acute immune suppression, several studies in experimental animals have shown that chronic defects in the immune system have a dramatic impact on the emotional response.
Most of the genes correlated with neurodegeneration or emotional disorders. Indeed, these authors also suggested that the depressive states associated with several diseases might be mediated, at least in part, by an impaired lymphocyte response. The mechanisms behind these effects are fascinating.
Seminal work by Jonathan Kipnis and colleagues has revealed functional lymphatic vessels lining the dural sinuses that express all of the molecular hallmarks of lymphatic endothelial cells.
These vessels are able to provide brain access both to fluid and immune cells from the cerebrospinal fluid. Several human studies have confirmed the link between a state of immunosuppression and the development of mental disorders. The most common condition that can be taken as an example is acquired immunodeficiency syndrome AIDS. As I have discussed the effects of positive emotions on the immune response, one might wonder what would be the effect of an improved immune system on the emotional response. Surprisingly, little is known in the clinic about the potential of boosting the immune system to improve the emotional well-being of patients suffering from immune diseases.
This is probably linked to the fact that we do not really know what the best approaches are for improving the fitness and resilience of the immune system, let alone their postulated effects on the emotional response. Yet, there is some indirect evidence that supports this idea. This is an interesting idea considering that recent studies have shown a correlation between major depressive disorder and lower levels of IL Where do we go from here? The translational value of research in the field of affective immunology is solid enough to justify new clinical trials for combined therapies targeting the emotional and immunological systems.
These will undoubtedly be a great opportunity to find new therapeutic weapons for psychiatrists, rheumatologists, and clinicians dealing with immune and emotional disorders. However, this would also be a unique opportunity for basic scientists, as understanding the mechanisms by which this combined approach works would significantly shift the way we currently look at immune and emotional disorders. And yet, whereas an enormous number of studies has tried to establish areas of the brain that correlate to specific emotions or mental disorders, evidence is emerging that the gut is an essential organ in the control of emotional behavior.
However, there are other examples of cells or therapies that can act as emotional modulators by changing, for instance, the composition of blood. One such example is erythropoietin—the hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells; erythropoietin is a novel treatment for a wide range of mental disorders from depression to cognitive dysfunctions.
Besides all these considerations for the future, I think that establishing the field of affective immunology might be useful for reevaluating a large number of failed clinical trials for new therapies for immune and emotional disorders. Despite the scientific literature that has been cited in this and other articles, there are no trials for immunomodulatory drugs that take into consideration the emotional state of the enrolled patients. Similarly, there are no trials for mental disorders that assess the immune repertoire of recruited patients. Therefore, one might wonder if those trials that have failed could have had an entirely different outcome if the participants were stratified according to their social and economical conditions, their personality, emotional well-being, or even blood type.
There is indeed recent evidence suggesting a correlation between the ABO blood group and personality traits. Regardless of the validity of the hypothesis and ideas presented in this article, I hope that the readers of Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience will be convinced that there is a need to look at immune and emotional diseases in a different way. Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. They had no idea what an elephant was. They began to argue about the elephant and every one of them insisted that he was right.
It looked as if they were getting agitated. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched a different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all the features that each of you mentioned. The author declares no conflict of interest. I would like to thank Dr Dianne Cooper for her suggestions and for carefully reading the manuscript.
National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Journal List Dialogues Clin Neurosci v.
Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http: This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. The emotional-immune response continuum: Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud were immunologists, but they did not know it The beginning of the 19th century saw a great many changes in society worldwide, with some aspects being catastrophic and others revolutionary and life changing. Acute and chronic emotional disturbances and their impact on the immune system In the previous paragraphs, some evidence has been provided for a high degree of similarity between the emotional and immune systems, both in healthy and diseased conditions.
Open in a separate window. Schematic representation of the link between the emotional and immunological systems in healthy and diseased conditions. In a normal basal state top left panel , the emotional and immunological responses are linked with each other in equilibrium. In healthy conditions top right panel , pathogens of different nature, changes in environmental conditions, and significant life events prompt an adaptive response that helps the host deal with these challenges. In patients suffering from emotional bottom left panel or immunological bottom right panel disorders, the same challenges cause an exacerbated or dysfunctional compensatory immune or emotional response, respectively.
Acute and chronic immunological disturbances and their impact on the emotional response Very little is known about the effects of transient or acute dysfunction of the immune system and the effect on emotional well-being. Perspectives Where do we go from here? Every one of them touched the elephant. Acknowledgments The author declares no conflict of interest. Psychosocial stress, emotions and cytokine-related disorders. Emotions, morbidity, and mortality: Why are behavioral and immune traits linked?
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