Stop Worrying or You'll Make Yourself Ill

Whilst I’ve been posting links regarding PNI (Psychoneuroimmunology) lots of people have been asking about it, mainly asking me what is, whilst some are wondering where it came from.

The name was thought up by Dr. Robert Ader, an experimental psychologist who conducted some of the original experiments in the field he named himself, psychoneuroimmunology.

His research begun in the 1970s and became the foundation for studies that have since mapped out the communications network among immune cells, hormones and neurotransmitters. He introduced a field of study that proved the science behind a notion that was once considered balmy:

 that meditation helps reduce arterial plaque;
 social bonds improve cancer survival;
 people under stress catch more colds; and
 that placebos work not only on the human mind but also human cells.

At the core of Dr. Ader’s research was an insight that was already obvious to any grandmother who had ever said, “Stop worrying or you’ll make yourself ill.” He managed to demonstrate scientifically that stress worsens illness and can trigger it; and that reducing stress is essential to good health.

That idea, now widely accepted among the medical profession, contradicted the previous principle of biochemistry, which said that the immune system was autonomous. In fact in 1985, the idea of a connection between the brain and the immune system was dismissed in an editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine as “folklore.”

And today there is not a physician in the country who does not accept the science Bob Ader set in motion, PNI - the study of how the nervous system affects the endocrine system which in turn affects the body.

PNI Two Day Course at Kingston upon Thames, London
www.aventesi.com for details