Dr. Hanscom's Blog Stress, Illness, and Photovoltaic Cells

Photovoltaic cells
The photovoltaic cell is a solar technology that converts sunlight directly into electrical current.
Your nervous system “on the prowl”
Your nervous system is designed to process external stimuli and direct various organ systems to respond in specific ways to maximize your ability to survive and thrive. This sequence is also a direct conversion of outside energy to a physical response. The obvious difference is the complexity. Sunlight to electricity is a passive fixed process depending just on the amount of sunlight stimulating one fixed reaction whereas the brain is conducting an orchestra of billions of cells.
Your body in balance
All organ systems are in delicate balance. There is always a feedback loop that inhibits or shuts down a process when the job is done. For example when you reach your arm out there are essentially as many nerves stimulating the opposing muscle groups as there are driving the movement. When this balance is disrupted, such as in head trauma, spasticity is the result. All of the hormone systems have chemicals that give feedback to the gland to stop when a certain level is reached. It takes very little to disrupt this delicate balance. The pain system is indescribably complicated regarding the feedback loops in the spinal cord and brain as well as the multiple varieties of pain receptors.
Your body out of balance
Acute disruption of this balance is clear, for example, if you were driving down a narrow road and an oncoming car narrowly missed hitting you head-on while passing. What would happen to your heart rate, stomach, skin, and muscles? But you were not hit or injured. Why did that intense response occur? It was the thought of being in a major accident that caused the bodily reaction. What about waking up from a nightmare with your heart wildly racing? Really, nothing physically happened to you.
Thoughts = sunlight
Your body gathers data from your surroundings in the forms of vision, sound, feel, pain, smell, taste, etc. and converts that data into thoughts that direct your body to respond appropriately. Your thoughts are similar to the sunlight aspect of the photovoltaic cell. The more sunlight – the more electrical current. The more intense and frequent your thoughts – the more intense your body’s response.
What is neutral?
Even in a seeming “neutral” state you brain and body are engaged in an endless dance to maintain balance in all of your systems.
What about chronic stress with its attendant racing, catastrophizing thoughts? Whether your thoughts arise from real or “perceived” stress your body will respond in exactly the same way. That means your “neutral” state is really an agitated state with your body constantly being overworked.
On a white sand beach
For example, imagine that you are sunbathing on a white sand beach and having a great time. The reason you feel relaxed is that your body is secreting chemicals that are similar to Valium. Or rather Valium was designed to work on the same receptors that cause you feel calm. But what if you are lying on the beach and are thinking about the promotion you just missed or your boss yelling at you? Your environment is the same but your body’s chemistry is completely different. Any time you are anxious or frustrated, your thoughts will stimulate the secretion of chemicals that will cause muscle tension, decreased blood flow to your intestines, dilate the airways in your lungs, cause sweating, mobilize stored energy from your liver, increases your heart rate, etcetera to prepare you to defend yourself.
Stuck in third gear
What if you don’t know how to relax or can’t? This is a common scenario and maybe the rule. Do you think it is your body causing that? No! It is your irrational uncontrollable thoughts. It is similar to driving your car 75 mph stuck in third gear. The engine will be racing at 7000 rpm’s instead of 2500 rpm’s. How long do you think your engine is going to last before it needs major repairs or blows up? That is why cars have transmissions. They are intended to match the power required from the engine to the terrain.
Brain = car transmission
How do you think your body is responding to your constantly racing thought? “I am not good enough. What will people think? How am I going to pay my bills? Why is my stomach upset? Every person has these racing thoughts and for the vast majority of us they don’t ever stop? Do you think your body is producing the Valium type substances? Your brain cannot physiologically differentiate a perceived stress from a real threat. Remember in the examples above it was the thoughts that kicked off the body’s response – not physical harm. If you are in a state of constant worry your brain (transmission) is going to be stuck in third gear resulting in a heavy toll on every organ system in your body.
Do you know relaxed?
Why is it so hard for people (including physicians) to understand that EVERY thought you have is connected to a specific change in your body’s chemistry? Of course most variations are imperceptible but many are not. Under chronic stress your body is going respond by being in a non-relaxed state. You might be so chronically stressed that you do not even know that your body is in the wrong gear for relaxation. You need to regenerate every aspect of you and constant worrying (or frustration) does not accomplish that basic need.
Mind Body Syndrome
Your body can and will produce a physical response to both acute and chronic stress. There have been several names given to this phenomenon as it applies to chronic stress: Mind Body Syndrome, Tension Myositis Syndrome, Central Sensitization Syndrome, and Stress Illness Syndrome. It is NOT a psychological problem. It is simply your body’s response to stress.
Are thoughts “imaginary”?
You do not have to have an identifiable source of pain to have pain. Pain can be generated spontaneously by the chemical imbalance generated by your thoughts. Just your thoughts can be a source of pain. There are also at least 30 additional symptoms that are caused by this chronic imbalance. The racing thoughts are not imaginary, nor are the physical responses. What is delusional is the world’s obsession to find a physical “source” for every bodily symptom.
What is wrong with the medical profession?
I understand the patient’s problem understanding how all of this might work. But what is perplexing to me is why the medical profession does not comprehend and embrace it. All of us learned about every aspect of the human anatomy and function in more detail than you can imagine. We know how connected every part of the body is. Yet we also continue to be so fixated on finding a structural source for every symptom that we will perform endless procedures for vague indications. Many are high risk.
Will someone please wake up?
I don’t know who is going to wake up first – the medical profession or the consumers. The first step of treating a patient is to make the correct diagnosis. We continue to miss the diagnosis of the Mind Body Syndrome resulting in tremendous cost both financially and the resultant human misery. Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent treating just symptoms. The irony is that addressing the root cause is incredibly effective and costs almost nothing.