The Last Best Cure: How Simple Tools Can Improve Health and Well-being

My research scientist grandmother used to respond to my complaints of being “stressed out” by asking, “What’s stress? Just a force that holds up a bridge.”
On that one count, I’m afraid she was wrong. Contemporary research points increasingly to the significant negative effects of stress on our physical health, and its role in fueling chronic health problems and autoimmune disorders. Increasingly, science points to the healing powers of our own minds in countering the physical damage stress can cause and improving our health and well-being.
In her book, The Last Best Cure: My Quest to Awaken the Healing Parts of My Brain and Get Back My Body, My Joy, and My Life, Donna Jackson Nakazawa details developments in neurobiology that point to the benefits of mindfulness and alternative practices in healing pain, discomfort, and illness. An award-winning science writer, Nakazawa provides easy-to-understand explanations of complex biological processes, and a new field of study called psychoneuroimmunology (PNI).
PIN, she writes, “is the study of how our mental and emotional state, the way we think and act, can maximize our ability to heal—and enhance our overall health.”
She explains, “When we are stressed, worried, or in pain, this complex network of biological messengers—what scientists sometimes refer to as the ‘floating brain’—increases the cascade of chemical messengers that break down our cells and corrupt our immune systems. When we move to a state o...

Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - September 27, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs