Psychoimmunology

I wonder if anyone will read this blog with a boring, seemingly made up title like, "psychoimmunology." Alas, for the three of you that do, it's a real thing. It's pretty awesome and something we've probably known about on an intuitive level for forever but the field didn't get going until the mid 80's and now it's an actual branch of science. So, what is it? In a nutshell, it's how psychological states influence the function of the immune system. Anyway, I'm not going to get all nitty-gritty about the subject because it's almost ten, my child could wake any moment and honestly, I try to avoid talking about human biology as much as possible.

What I will say is that psychoimmunology studies have found something out, something that has changed my outlook on pretty much everything so I figured I better share this little tid bit. Before I do though, it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out that stress is bad for your body right? No, we've known that for awhile now and anyone who has been texting while driving and then looks up right before they're about to hit the car in front of them knows that stress creates an avalanche of chemical reactions in your body. Heart rate goes up, breath shortens, the stress hormone cortisol is released, etc. Now if we experience stress on a chronic basis it's even more obvious that it's taking a toll on our bodies. Right? We know this so what is our knee-jerk reaction? Cut out the stress. Which, hello? Is STRESSFUL. We live in 2013, we have jobs and kids and relationships and friends and family and bills and bad hair days and 15 pounds of pregnancy weight to lose still and dogs who don't come when you call them and people who still bug you after all these years and cars that break down and nails that break when you don't have access to a nail file for like 7 more hours. So, we tell ourselves that stress is bad and we should have less of it which in turns increases our stress but guess what I learned the other day...ready: When it comes to our bodies and how we experience stress, i.e., whether it takes a toll on us or not, STRESS IS NOT THE PROBLEM. Nope. OUR PERCEPTION OF THE STRESS IS THE PROBLEM.

I don't know about you but I find this very exciting and liberating because I was doing a piss poor job of eliminating stress from my life. I can however shift my thoughts about my stress. For example: Ellis has to get tubes in her ears. Perception 1: FUUUUUUUCK! This is the worst thing EVER. Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Or Perception 2: What a fantastic opportunity for my sweet girl to not feel like her inner ears are being drawn and quartered. Thank God we live in 2013 where this procedure is safe and possible. Thank God her doctor didn't walk in stinking of Gin (I don't know, it could happen.). Thank God we found this out now, she's going to rock this!

Um, yea, this is totally working for me. I hope it totally works for you. Remember, perception is everything.