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Your Perception is Your Reality and Your Health
Dr. Christiane Northrup, MD

Your thoughts and perceptions affect every single hormone and cell in your body. How many times have you heard someone say, "I don't understand how she got sick. She always ate right and exercised." On the other end of the spectrum, there is the person who smokes and drinks, and lives without any apparent illness well into old age. The answer to the mystery can be found in their attitudes and emotions. I can confidently say that - after having spent a lifetime as a student and teacher of medicine - understanding the power of your emotions is the key to health because, regardless of what vitamin you take or what kind of exercise you do, it is your attitudes, perceptions, and your daily thought patterns that set the stage for health or illness. When you learn the importance of the mind-body connection and apply it to your life, you tap into the most powerful health-creating secret on Earth!

The Biochemical Process of Your Emotions
Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) is simply the medical term for the connection between the mind and the body and how the mind and brain communicate with the immune system. (I will discuss the immune system in a minute.) The brain and immune system communicate in two ways: By means of hormones that the brain regulates; and through protein molecules, called neuropeptides (or neurotransmitters) and receptors, which send messages back and forth. These same molecules are not only in your brain, but also in your stomach, your muscles, your glands, your bone marrow, your skin, and all of your other organs and tissues. Since the network expands to every organ in the body, it means that every thought you think and emotion you feel is communicated to every cell in your body. And all of your organs can store emotional information, too. It is through this neuropeptide network that we access memories and mood.

The Dance of the Parasympathetic-Sympathetic Systems
The autonomic nervous system is divided into two parts: Parasympathetic (PNS) and sympathetic (SNS), which govern the day-to-day activity of all our internal organs. The PNS and SNS are pivotal to understanding the mind-body connection.

In general, the PNS promotes functions associated with growth and restoration. It helps you conserve bodily energy through rest and relaxation of vital organs like your heart. It also allows you to digest your food and put it to good use in your body. Any activity or thought pattern that engages the PNS puts deposits in your health bank. It's your internal brake.

In contrast, the SNS is activated in response to your environment, including temperature, noise, pain, or if someone holds a gun to your head. The SNS has been hard-wired in our bodies since the days when humans had to protect ourselves from constant physical threats. It increases metabolic output and prepares you for intense muscular action. Clearly, you need both the PNS and SNS - just like you need a brake and a gas pedal when you drive a car. But because our culture has become so outer-directed, most of us emphasize the SNS over the PNS so we are not used to dealing with emotions and perceptions, which are inner-directed.

How Thoughts and Perceptions Become Biology
I want to show you an example of how your immune system responds to your perceptions. Let's say you get a great new job offer and your initial response is excitement. Your nervous system sends the signals so you experience your thought that "this is a good thing." Then, your excitatory neurotransmitters (such as betaendorphine) send the message to all the nerve cells in your body telling them the good news, which causes a PNS response. Your metabolic brake is on, your parasympathetic tone increases and you start making deposits in your health bank. But if your reaction is one of fear, perhaps of not living up to company expectations, your perception will instead cause an SNS reaction and subsequent secretion of norepinephrine, which sends the bad news to all of the immune cells in your body, including your adrenal glands. The adrenals pump out cortisol because they think it's an emergency! This is called the Fight-or-Flight Response.

The Fight-or-Flight Response is your body's way of handling acute stress by using stored glucose and fat so your muscles have the energy they need to get you out of harm's way. But you cannot function in this mode forever. Unfortunately, most people today feel constant anxiety stemming from our cultural overload that requires us to dance faster and faster. As your anxiety builds, all of your immune cells start running around in circles, preparing your body to fight, and you get all of the inhibitor neurotransmitters telling your adrenal glands to produce cortisol. But, because there is nothing to actually fight against, the cortisol stays in your system. This is when your emotions become "toxic." If this Fight-or-Flight Response continues for a long time, you will deplete your adrenal glands, your hormones will become imbalanced and you can set yourself up for a number of illnesses, like diabetes, hypertension, even an auto-immune disease - depending on what your genetic structure predisposes you to. Every thought you think is simultaneously accompanied by either a boost in your PNS activity or your SNS activity.

You Are What You Believe
Let me share two stories with you to really bring the point home: One of my patients would always feel nervous whenever she achieved something. Her nervousness resulted from her history of leaving behind old relationships when good things would happen. So, the more successful she became in her work, the more miserable she felt because whenever she moved forward in her work, she felt that her friends didn't accept her anymore. Her interpretation of loss made the emotion associated with success - one that would ordinarily seem like something good - into a painful emotion. On the other hand, Bernie Siegel, M.D., tells a story about a patient who overheard his doctors say that he had a gallop rhythm in his heart. Now a gallop rhythm is actually a deadly rhythm, but this man didn't know that. He thought it meant that he had a heart that was as strong as a horse's. And he subsequently, because of that perception, changed his physical apparatus dramatically and got out of the coronary intensive care unit in record time. So, you can see how dramatically perception - something you have a lot of control over - can impact your physical health.

I do not want to get too simplistic here and say that happiness is a good chemical and sadness is a bad chemical. That's like saying HDL is the good cholesterol and LDL is the bad cholesterol without pointing out that both types of cholesterol are absolutely necessary for proper functioning in the body. What's necessary is to have a balance of emotions in your body that support health, and have them wash in and out like the tides in the sea. Our emotions are a significant force in cleansing our bodies, in the same way the tides are very significant in cleansing the ocean, and that's the balance I'm referring to.

I also don't want to suggest that there is a gold standard of emotions that is "ideal." There's not. One of the worst things you can do is beat yourself up for your inherent, natural temperament. Interestingly, it's your temperament that can predispose you to certain types of genius, and if you don't embrace your full temperament, you won't be embracing your full gifts. It's well known, for instance, that many comedians are predisposed to depression. And they develop humor (a change in perception) to lighten their native temperament. In addition, people with joy have other gifts.

Are You Causing Your Illnesses With Your Thoughts?
Critics of the mind-body connection say that emphasizing the emotional dimension of illness makes people feel worse when they are already vulnerable. I certainly agree with that, up to a point, and that's why it's important to have compassion for yourself. The well-known therapist Gay Hendricks has noted that any area of pain, blame, or shame in our lives is there because we have not loved that part of ourselves enough. The way to get a difficult feeling, like blame, to go away is simply to love yourself for it. This may sound simplistic but what it means is this: When you view yourself as a victim or a survivor, then that's all you will be, and you are literally leaking life energy. But if you free yourself from those thoughts and feelings by accepting them without judging them, and move on, you literally free yourself to be creative - and the energy flows back to you.

People who heal fastest and remain healthy, or who feel that their lives are fulfilling even when they're sick, are the ones who feel that their lives have meaning and that they have some locus of control. The thoughts that ultimately disempower and contribute to ill health are the thoughts and perceptions we develop in order to cope with daily struggles. It's counterintuitive, I know. You may think you're coping, but when you think, "the world is out to get me," you set yourself up for many illnesses.

The Difference Between Illness & Health May Be in How You Breathe
It is easy to take the steps you need to change your perception and create health. You can start with everyday thoughts. So here's my one-size-fits-all prescription: When you have a thought that does not enhance your life, take a deep breath and keep breathing. Then, appreciate the situation for what it is. By this I mean take responsibility for your thoughts and feelings, and be truthful, but do not blame others - or yourself - for an adversity you suffer. Try to feel your thoughts without judging them. Take these steps every time you have thoughts that disempower you and soon your body will begin to shift in response.

Now, I don't mean for you to change your native temperament. It is not the same thing. But, you have within you the ability, through your perceptions, to create your own health - remember the comedian? You should also pay attention to those things that bring you gratitude, joy, fun, and a feeling of well-being. Similarly, avoid people, places, and things that cause you distress. If you know that watching the news on TV is a stressor for you, turn it off. You may not have control over what happens in the world, or how events are portrayed on the evening news. Where you do have control is in your perception of those events.

My point is that the choice of how you're going to live through each day is completely up to you. I know it sounds corny, but each day is a new beginning. And the biochemical consequences of those perceptions are also completely up to you. Herein lies the big secret of the Health Wisdom for Women path: You are the only one who can create the balance necessary to put the maximum number of wisdom chips into your health bank account. In 20 years of medical practice, I can honestly say that emotions are the primary energy that tips the balance toward either illness or health in every situation. And, by the law of attraction - the law of the Universe that states that "like is attracted to like" - you will be able to create a life in which you're surrounded by those things that truly support you. I've seen this repeatedly and experience it on a daily basis myself. You can too!

Let me sum it all up for you: Your emotions are your inner guidance system and they alone will let you know when you are creating the biochemistry of health or the biochemistry of disease. Data and studies are helpful, but they generally do not change people's behavior, On the other hand, attitudes and beliefs influence everything from what and whom you attract to you, to how well you digest your food, to how effective your exercise will be. You have within you the power to create a life of joy, abundance, and health, or one filled with stress, fatigue, and disease. The choice is largely up to you. Someone once said, "Dreams become real at the point of action." It's true! Your health improves at the point where you put this information into action with behavioral changes in your life.