The Balance Within

A thrilling scientific detective story, The Balance Within tells how researchers finally uncovered the elusive mind-body connection and what it means for our health. Since ancient times humans have felt intuitively that emotions and health are linked, and recently there has been much popular speculation about this notion. But until now, without compelling evidence, it has been impossible to say for sure that such a connection really exists and especially how it works. Now, that evidence has been discovered.In this beautifully written book, Dr. Esther Sternberg, whose discoveries were pivotal in helping to solve this mystery, provides first hand accounts of the breakthrough experiments that revealed the physical mechanisms - the nerves, cells, and hormones - used by the brain and immune system to communicate with each other. She describes just how stress can make us more susceptible to all types of illnesses, and how the immune system can alter our moods. Finally, she explains how our understanding of these connections in scientific terms is helping to answer such crucial questions as "Does stress make you sick?" "Is a positive outlook the key to better health?" and "How do our personal relationships, work, and other aspects of our lives affect our health?"A fascinating, elegantly written portrait of this rapidly emerging field with enormous potential for finding new ways to treat disease and cope with stress, The Balance Within is essential reading for anyone interested in making their body and mind whole again.

Emotions and Disease: Molecules and Ancient Myths - Where Do Emotions Come From? - The Dirty Soup Beyond Our Skin: How the Immune System Defends Against the Outside World - Putting the Mind and the Body Back Together Again - It's a Two-way Street: The Immune System Talks to the Brain and the Brain Talks Back - When the Brain-Immune Communication Breaks Down - Can Stress Make You Sick? - Connecting to Others: Relationships and the Course of Disease - Can Believing Make you Well? - How the Immune System Changes our Moods - Prometheus Unbound: What Does the Future Hold?