I thought I had lost this article. I posted about Maté last year, but I had forgotten his name and could not find it again. It is wroth revisiting especially as I want to link Maté’s thesis with Howard Bloom’s very similar comments in the Global Brain.
Dr. Gabor Maté has lived several lives in one. He’s most decidedly a risk-taker: the bestselling author of a controversial book on attention-deficit disorder called Scattered Minds [Amazon.co.uk .com], Maté is a political activist known for his (even more controversial) views on the Middle East, and a physician/psychotherapist who gave up his family practice several years ago to work with HIV-positive heroin addicts on the Vancouver’s downtown east side. Unflinching in the face of criticism, this is a man who will not keep silent about his multiple passions.
In his latest book, When the Body Says No [Amazon.co.uk / .com ], he goes out on a medical limb with his passionately-argued thesis that certain types of chronic disease can be triggered by stress. And not the garden variety stress we usually think of (the job, the kids, the mortgage), but internal stress generated by the repression of powerful emotions, particularly anger.
In his many years as a palliative care physician, Maté observed in his dying patients certain eerie similarities in personality. Many of them were cheerful and agreeable to a fault, never seemed angry, placed everyone else’s needs above their own, and were harshly critical with themselves. Their personal boundaries seemed fragile and uncertain, as if they did not know where they left off and others began. In many cases, it was nearly impossible for them to say “no,” to the point that their bodies had to say it for them.
Contrast this Howard Bloom’s comments in “The Global Brain”
Robert Sapolsky discovered how wild baboons who couldn’t gain status in their tribe were flooded with hormonal poisons which killed offtheir brain cells, made their hair fall out, invited illness to come in and stay a while, and threatened their very lives.
Humans are apparently the same. Investigations have revealed that the hospital patients who need help the most - Those submerged in depression - are the least likely to receive their doctors’ and nurses’ tender, loving attention. Careful scrutiny indicates that the sufferers are unwittingly triggering their own rejection. Depressed patients whine, snarl, or turn their faces to the wall in ways that alienate their doctors and nurses. They upset their caregivers through every means from facial expression and verbal intonation to body language.
…The patients with the greatest number of relatives and friends are the least likely to be depressed. Instead, they tend to be the cheerful souls who even in the face of death remain charming and bring doctors and nurses flocking sympathetically to their beds.
…Both animal and human studies demonstrate that the depressed souls who flirt unwittingly with the grim reaper [have] family ties [that] are either frayed or nonexistent. Friends? They often have none. In fact, they tend to feel there’s no place in this world where they belong. These unfortunates are apparently seized by something akin to the suicide mechanism called apoptosis. Apoptosis is a firecracker string of self-destruct routines preprogrammed into nearly every living cell. Its fuse is lit when the cell receives signals that it is no longer useful to the larger community. Between self-crippling immune systems and self-defeating conduct, isolated individuals vastly increase their odds of death. MORE
I am glad this fascinating area of psycho-immunology and the role of social conformity, status and psychological health in physical health.
Also see: Status Syndrome by Michael Marmot . This is a new book by Sir Michael Marmot on the astonishing effect that status has on health and longevity. Oddly enough it is not absolute status that applies, but relative status. If you are the lowliest member in a troop of alpha males, you are worse off than the most dominant of the beta males. Very good.
http://www.januarymagazine.com/profiles/gmate.html
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