Stress and Genetics: Factors Influencing Illness

Our immune system is not only affected by our thoughts, words, and external threats, but by our habits: not getting enough sleep, not eating enough, consuming tobacco, alcohol, caffeine, tranquillizers and other drugs. There seems to me to be little doubt that we are built into a pattern of life by the way we live.

In spite of the mounting evidence of the mind–body connection, many doctors still believe that your genes are solely to blame for causing cancer, and that psychosomatic medicine should be limited to treating hypochondriacs. The view that "it’s all in your mind" ignores the mounting evidence that what’s in your mind and in your body are intimately linked by neurotransmitters. Admittedly, some diseases are inherited, such as retinoblastoma, familial polyposis, and multiple endocrine neoplasia; others occur in people who are more at risk, such as daughters of women with breast cancer and first-degree relatives of individuals with lung cancer, especially if they smoke cigarettes. Add to this other afflictions such as coronary artery disease, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy and Huntington’s Chorea to name but a few others, the truth is there is nothing you can do about your parents–or your grandparents!

We know that some cancers are caused by genes that mutate after birth as a result of damage by radiation, smoking, alcohol and stressful factors, and some are caused by events that occurred before you were born. Evidence provided by the growing field of epigenetics shows that e.g. that if your grandparents smoked or suffered stress as in the case of famine, the damage to their genes can carry through and affect yours.

Over and above your genetic predisposition, your lifestyle, the environment, and chance, the effect of mind–body interactions cannot be discounted. We need to keep reminding ourselves of some basic truths, perhaps best expressed in the words of Sai Baba, who said, "One’s anger is one’s greatest enemy, and one’s calmness is one’s protection. One’s joy is one’s heaven, and one’s sorrow is one’s hell."

In his book, On Being Human, anthropologist Ashley Montagu reminds us that "each cell depends for its proper functioning upon the interaction with it of every other cell of the organism." In the same way as the survival of a species depends on the mutual cooperation of its members in warding off attack, so a threat to one cell represents a threat to all cells, and ultimately to the survival of the entire body-mind.

Maintaining mutual cooperation so the body can survive means all cells need to be in uninterrupted communication with each other, reproduce only when signaled to do so by other cells, and maintain their rightful place in the scheme of things. When everything is in order, and the immune system and the central nervous system are in harmony, the body is said to be in steady state called homeostasis. But this delicate balance is continually under threat from germs, viruses, the environment in which we live, and the way we respond to stressful situations, some present, others long gone but still unresolved. There is a popular view that cancer originates from a stressful event that occurred in the previous eighteen months, but generalizing in this way is wrong. For example, there are over 100 different forms of cancer, and for one to grow to the size of a pea can take from six months to twenty years or more; it all depends on the type of cancer–some cancers grow slowly, some grow rapidly. The length of time between onset and diagnosis is often so long that the primary cause can’t always be identified. This is especially so, as I said, because of the distant stressful situations and traumatic events that occurred in your grandparents’ lives. And to no lesser extent, do I believe that the causes can also be traced back to traumatic events in your childhood.

If you have any health or illness related questions you would like me to answer, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below. My answers to your questions will be posted on our blog and it is my sincere hope these will be helpful to you.

In light and peace
Joel