Paul Martin - The Sickening Mind - Brain, Behaviour, Immunity and Disease

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This edition published by Harper Press 2005

First published in the UK by HarperCollins Publishers , 1997

Copyright © Paul Martin, 1997

Paul Martin has asserted the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

The author and publishers are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce material: International Music Publications Limited, for ‘Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll’ by Ian Drury and Chas Jankel, © 1977 Temple Mill Music Ltd, Warner/Chappell Music Ltd; Hall, J.G., ‘Emotion and immunity’ Lancet , 2, 326–327, © The Lancet Ltd., (1985); extracts from Riceyman Steps by Arnold Bennett by permission A. P. Watt Ltd., on behalf of Mme V. Eldin; extracts from The Man with the Golden Gun by Ian Fleming by permission Glidrose Publications Ltd, © Glidrose Productions Ltd 1965; extract from Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome by permission A. P. Watt Ltd., on behalf of The Society of Authors Ltd.; extracts from Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell by permission A. M. Heath & Co. Ltd, copyright © The Estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell and Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd; extract from Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller by permission Reed Publishers, © Arthur Miller 1949; extract from ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ from The Poems by Dylan Thomas by permission David Higham Associates: originally published by J. M. Dent; Thanks also to Harriet Wasserman Literary Agency Inc., for permission to quote from Seize the Day by Saul Bellow; Macmillan General Books, for Jude the Obscure and The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy. Every reasonable effort has been made to contact copyright holders for all the extracts reproduced in this volume. However, it has not been possible to make contact with all copyright holders. The author and publishers would ask, therefore, that any copyright holder who feels a quotation contained herein may contravene their copyright contact HarperCollins Publishers at the address above.

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Source ISBN: 9780006550228

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780007383658

Version: 2016-02-25

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

1 The Body of Knowledge

Opening shots

Iraqi SCUDs and Chinese grandmothers

Roundheads and Cavaliers

Some completely fictitious case histories

Invisible worms

Chronic fatigue syndrome

2 Shadows on the Sun

Death, disaster and voodoo

Trouble, strife and sickness

Life events

The mind and the common cold

3 Psyche’s Machine: The Inside Story

The perception of sickness

Bad behaviour

Mind over immune matter

Understanding immunity

Autoimmunity

Measuring immunity

The mind – immunity connections

4 Mind and Immunity

What can the mind do to the immune system?

Bereavement and nuclear disasters

Spaceflight, exams and other nastiness

Does it matter?

What can the immune system do to the mind?

Depression

Immune conditioning

Immune conditioning and disease

Some allergic history revisited

The strange story of the left-handed brain

The wonderful world of herpes

5 The Demon Stress

What is stress?

The biology of stress

Stress, immunity and health

The quality of stress

Control, control and control

The joy of stress

The stress-seekers

6 Other People

Hell is other people? – relationships as stressors

Hell is alone? – the harmful effects of isolation

Michael Henchard’s will

How does it work?

Social relationships and immunity

The lonely future

7 The Wages of Work

The toad work

Who suffers and why?

The scourge of unemployment

8 Sick at Heart

Hearts and minds

The mind in sudden cardiac death and heart disease

Coronary-prone personalities and heart disease

The Type A behaviour pattern

Type A – the evidence

Anger and hostility

How does it work?

Biological reactivity and the Type A person

9 The Mind of the Crab

The mind in cancer

Is there a cancer-prone personality?

Some fictional Type Cs

Psychological influences on survival

How does it work?

10 Encumbered with Remedies

Relax!

Exercise!

Those little pink pills

Psychoneuroimmunology and AIDS

Imagery, miracle cures and other exotica

Kill or cure?

11 Exorcising the Ghost in the Machine

That old mind – body problem

The grip of dualism

Some ancient history

René Descartes and the separation of mind from body

Descartes’ demise

12 A Fresh Pair of Lenses

Development

Mothers and offspring

Evolution

Sick by design

Genes for disease

Diseases of modern life

Evolutionary arms races

The functions of unpleasantness

Why does stress make us ill?

Darwin’s illness

Parting shots

KEEP READING

REFERENCES

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NOTES

PRAISE

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

Most of the time we think we’re sick, it’s all in the mind.

Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel (1929)

It is time to acknowledge that our belief in disease as a direct reflection of mental state is largely folklore.

Editorial, New England Journal of Medicine (1985)

You, dear reader, are going to die. Not for a long time, I hope, and painlessly. But die you undoubtedly will. And unless you die in the near future, and from unnatural causes, you will be ill before you die – probably several times. Some remarkable scientific discoveries have shown that your mind will affect your susceptibility to those illnesses and may have a substantial bearing on the nature and timing of your eventual death.