Jog on Journal: A Practical Guide to Getting Up and Running. Bella Mackie

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       PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS

      Our minds and bodies are closely linked. Yes, that sounds mega obvious, but honestly, how often do you really take time to think about what your body might be telling your brain when it aches and feels tired? Or connect your low mood to the fact that you’re getting over a bout of the flu? Yes, we all know that we’re one connected being, but I think mostly we tend to view our brains as one thing and our bodies as another. I suspect many of us put our brains on a pedestal – prizing intellect – while seeing our bodies as cart horses, pulling us along. And that’s not even touching on how many of us hate our bodies, see them as inferior, lacking. Too big, too short, too hairy …

      The philosopher René Descartes proclaimed that the mind and body were two separate entities – with the mind a thinking but immaterial thing, and the body an unthinking but physical presence.[fn1] Prior to this, the mind and body were closely linked according to Christianity – and many illnesses were attributed to the victim’s conduct, explained away with the notion that the person must have ‘sinned’.[11] This meant that for the soul to ascend to heaven, the human body had to be intact. So theories like that of Descartes helped pave the way for medical innovation, but dismissed the bearing that the mind and body have on each other.

      Nowadays, medical professionals increasingly approach treatment in a more integrated way.[12] GPs offer advice on exercise for a range of health problems and in some cases cancer patients are offered yoga and meditation to help cope with their treatment. Some surgeons even compile playlists for operating theatres, based on research that suggests that music can help reduce pain before, during and after a procedure.[13]

      And yet Descartes’ philosophy still holds a grip on some of us. In extreme cases, people take pills for their mind, go to the gym to hone their body – or worse, sit inert – and never connect the dots. I didn’t, not for thirty years of my life. Many people with anxiety become huge hypochondriacs (ME!) and STILL don’t link up their aches and pains with their mental health. Online forums are full of scared people talking about twitchy feet and pins and needles and back ache and nausea and stomach upsets. But OF COURSE our bodies are influenced by our minds. The mind is a powerful thing. It can make you feel cripplingly ill without anything being actually wrong. Except that’s bunkum – because OF COURSE something is wrong there – something is very wrong, it’s just not in your body.

      The book It’s All in Your Head by Suzanne O’Sullivan explores this in the most sensitive and empathetic way I’ve ever read.[14] O’Sullivan is a consultant neurologist, and treated many patients – some of whom were not actually physically ill.[15] She had patients who went blind, lost the use of their limbs, had seizures and who were convinced they had terrible illnesses that were going to be fatal. As O’Sullivan says, ‘In 2011, three GP practices in London identified 227 patients with the severest form of psychosomatic symptom disorder. These 227 constituted just 1 per cent of those practice populations – but estimates suggest up to 30 per cent of GP encounters every day are with patients who have a less severe form of the illness. If psychosomatic symptoms are so ubiquitous, why are we so ill equipped to deal with them?’

      O’Sullivan treated these patients as seriously as she did those with more tangible illnesses. But many people, upon being told that they had a psychosomatic illness, were affronted, dismayed, in denial, and unwilling to believe it. They felt as though they were being accused of faking a problem, which is not the case at all. Their problems were СКАЧАТЬ