Can your emotions kill you 2

my own interest in the sudden death syndrome gained impetus from the unexpected death of my identical twin brother from a heart attack in 1963. exactly 11 months later less one day the last day of mourning according to the jewish faith I, too, sufferward a heart attack. this occurred during the emotional strain of anticipating thr first anniversary of my twin’s death.

Soon afterward, I began collecting newspaper clippings on sudden death. With the aid of colleagues and medical examiners around the world, I compiled 275 cases in which death generally occurred within or hours of a major event in the person’s life. For the most part, the victims were not considered ill at the time; or, if they were ill, not in imminent danger of dying.

Can your emotions kill you 1

Can your emotions kill you?

by george engle, M.D.

A newly appointed president of cbs inc. died suddenly at the age of 51 the night after his father’s death.

A prominent british tycoon, prematurely forced into retirement after a bitter dispute with his company, died at the airport as he was leaving the country honoring the late Louis satchmo Armstrong, his second wife stricken with a fatal heart attack as she played st. Louis blues .

   coincidences? perhaps. still, one can’t help wondering whether these deaths might have been brought on by emotional strain.

When in Doubt Do! part 2

Lots of driftwood out there, he said, gesturing toward the windswept beach. think I’ll get a load for my fireplace.

I stared at him. “you’re going to chop wood? on this sort of afternoon?”      

He gave me a quizzical look. “why not?’’ he said as he set off across the dunes. “It’s better than practicing  the deadly  art  of non-living, isn’t it?”

I watched him with the sudden odd feeling that something was curiously inverted in the proper order of things: two youngsters were content to sit by the fire; an old man was striding off jauntily into an icy wind. “Wait!” I heard myself calling.

When in Doubt Do! part 1

When in Doubt Do!

One  winter day several years ago I found myself having lunch at the seaside cottage of some friends, a couple in their 20s. the other guest was a retired college  professor, a marvelous old gentleman, still straight as a lance after seven decades of living . the four of us had planned a walk on the beach after lunch. but as gusts of wind shook the house and occasional pellets of sleet hissed against the windows, our hosts’ enthusiasm dwindled.

      

sorry said the wife but nobody’s going to get me out in this weather.

   that’s right, her husband agreed comfortably. why catch a cold when you can sit by a fire and watch the world go by on TV ?”

  We left them preparing to do just that. but when we came to our cars, I was astonished to see the professor open the trunk of his ancient sedan and take out an ax. 

Think Thin! Behavior Control of Dieting part 3

    The use of thoughts as reward or punishment is enormously convenient if you can make it work, because thoughts are always available. however, each person must find the tech nique that fits his own life and convenience. and he must use it in a formal and systematic way that is, set it up as if it were an operating manual for driving a car.

  let’s analyze how it worked with me.

 it depended on the fact that eating is automatic, my eating behavior and yours being governed by signals to start eating. hunger may also be triggered by a glance at the clock, a TV commercial, a feeling of anxiety. on the day back in 1956:

Think Thin! Behavior Control of Dieting part 2

Hink Thin! Behavior Control of Dieting

  I recount that sad, terrifying moment because of a curious phenomenon that occurred when I began to try to lose weight eight years later: lunchtime. a cafeteria. like an addict, I am drawn to hot table with its corned beef and French fried potatoes. at the sight of corned beef, I actually feel my jaw working. and then, an image of my father’s face as i last saw it flashes before me. i am appalled .I try to turn off the picture by moving away from the hot table. i take a salad. the picture something pleasant: my forthcoming trip to Europe anything to get that hospital scene off the screen of my mind. but note: i ended up with the salad rather than the corned beef. and it happened day after day.

Think Thin! Behavior Control of Dieting part 1

Think Thin! Behavior Control of Dieting

By earl ubell

Don’t look in this article for menus, calorie counters or weight tables. here instead, is a scientific technique that can change your eating habits for the rest of your life and become the key to making that life last longer.

   the technique is called behavior control, and is based on the reward and punishment ideas of B.F. skinner and the many psychologists who followed him. I came upon it quite by accident. the year was 1956 . I weighed 190 pounds. for a five foot, ten inch man at the age of 30 i was 35 pounds when he died of a coronary heart attack in 1948, at the age of 44. his diet had been rich in high calorie, high fat foods, as mine was. as a science reporter, I understood well the real township between overweight and his misfortune.

   on the day my father died, I arrived a few minutes after his last heartbeat . the picture of his final agony was burned into my mind: jaw drawn back, mouth slightly open, skin gray . I shall never forget it.

Emotions and health part 5

some medical schools now are offering short courses in office psychiatry to their graduates .  most physicians cannot devote an hour to talk with a patients as psychiatrists do. but so long a time has been found unnecessary in treating most patients with psychogenic illness. they need, primarily, re assurance that their  ills can be dealt with.

as doctor learn to incorporate the new knowledge of psy-chogenic illness into their work, some of the responsibility, as

Emotions and health part 4

   ever since a year ago, when my father died, she said mother died when i was small, and dad brought me up alone. although my husband and children give me plenty of family, without dad all the joy seems to have gone out of things.

     the doctor gave her anti depressant pills and told her to come in for a chat every few days. within a week jean’s back pain had disappeared. moreover , the talks revealed that she felt that her children had little need of her and that her husband and children, and they quickly gave her the assurance of love she needs, and the pills could  be stopped . had the back pain persisted once jean’s depression was gone, the doctor would have felt it more likely that the cause was purely physical.

        one test devised by doctors at duke university, durham, N.C., sought out unexplained fatigue, lack of sex interest, loss of weight, constipation, hopelessness, feelings of uselessness, difficulty in marketing decisions, and restlessness. all of us some time. sleep disturbance is one of the prime clues: the person with a psychogenic disorder is likely  to wake early in the morning or during the night and have a chronic feeling of fatigue.

     sudden changes in life are often found to precede illness. in one study of patients with a wide range of ailments, three out of four of were found to have recently suffered some major loss loved ones jobs homes. even apparently pleasant changes, such as a trip abroad, can cause trouble . the tourist who complains about foreign food or water would probably be wiser to blame the tension of being in a strange place, may be caused by small emotional stresses.

   are doctor other than psychiatrists really able to handle such emotional problems? numerous experience show that they are. and 

Emotions and health part 3

How can thought work such changes? There is pathway between the hypothalamus, the brain segment that controls primitive reaction to anger, fear, hunger and sex, and the pituitary gland. This mysterious gland, a lump the size of a sugar cube, located at the base of the brain, had long been known to secrete a growth hormone. But recent research has uncovered a number of other hormones it produces. The front lobe alone was found to create chemical that trigger the making of sex hormones and govern the thyroid, which in turn controls the body’s metabolism. It yields yet another chemical that reg-ulates adrenal secretion.

            

             The middle and back lobes of the pituitary affect the kidneys, contractions of the uterus, and blood pressure. We have just opened the door, says one researcher, and have had only a superficial look at this gland. But we now know one way in which emotion can be translated into bodily changes.

          With such clues to very real mechanisms, many doctors have begun to look for signs of emotional stress in patients as a matter of routine. Written tests have been designed to seek out the factors most commonly found among people whose ailments have been proved to be caused by emotion. 

      one such patient was jean becker , whose low back pain had grown steadily wores for a year , with no apparent cause. the symptoms cannot be seen on x ray. when he had scored it , he asked , have you been depressed iately?.