Modern people are increasingly experiencing difficulties maintaining a relative state of health. They often encounter, sometimes brutally, rapidly changing social, political, cultural, moral and economic conditions.
Prolonged states of emotional tension, particularly those with a negative character, are not indifferent to the human body. They lead to overloading of the autonomic nervous system, especially the sympathetic system. This can cause functional disorders in the operation of individual bodily organs, such as headaches and dizziness, difficulty concentrating and problems with memory, heart palpitations, abdominal pain, diarrhoea or constipation, frequent urination, excessive sweating, increased irritability and explosiveness, fluctuations in blood pressure, sleep disorders, and so on.
For clarification, we should explain that the human body is equipped with a nervous self-regulatory system known as the autonomic or vegetative system. It consists of two parts: the stimulating sympathetic part and the part that inhibits vital processes—the parasympathetic part. The state of dynamic balance between these systems, meaning stimulation and inhibition appropriate to needs, is an expression of health and harmonious functioning. For example, while performing strenuous exercise, such as running or lifting weights, there is a greater demand for energy in the muscular system. The heart and breathing automatically speed up, and a greater amount of blood—that is, oxygen and nutrients—is delivered to the appropriate organs, namely the muscles. This is an expression of increased sympathetic activity.
The opposite occurs during rest and sleep. The demand for energy is lower. Heart action and breathing slow down, intestinal peristalsis also becomes slower, and the functioning of other organs decreases. This state is caused by the predominance of the parasympathetic system.
Every system that lacks the opportunity to rest and regenerate becomes fatigued, which usually manifests itself as impaired functioning or specific ailments. The nervous system can also become overloaded.
The effect of external factors on the human psyche is widely known. To a considerable extent, it depends on personality predispositions. The greater the sensitivity, the stronger the emotional reaction to stimuli. From an objective point of view, this has both good and bad aspects. On the one hand, it enables deeper emotional experiences; on the other, it causes a feeling of intense fear, which is not beneficial to the psyche, as it indicates suffering that is often more severe than the pain caused by a specific physical illness. A prolonged state of anxiety can lead to various types of neurotic disorders and even reactive psychoses. Untreated neuroses, or those treated improperly, consequently cause a number of psychosomatic illnesses, such as peptic ulcers of the stomach and duodenum, spastic intestinal conditions, ulcerative colitis, ischaemic heart disease, bronchial asthma, labile hypertension, alopecia, and so on.
Pharmacological treatment of neuroses is essentially a necessary evil, because sedatives act only on the symptoms, not the causes, and formally may be used only exceptionally, for a specified period and under the supervision of a specialist physician. There have been periods when sedatives were abused as so-called “happiness pills”. It was more convenient to reach for a tablet than to make the effort to learn how to endure stress. The consequences of such conduct most often led to dependence on the pharmacological preparations used—that is, polytoxicomania, only slightly less dangerous than drug addiction.
Apart from the risk of dependence, medicines can very often have a harmful effect on the gastrointestinal tract, liver, heart and kidneys. Today, throughout the civilised world, there has been a significant move away from using medicines to eliminate stress, in favour mainly of psychotherapy and known, tried-and-tested natural treatments that have often been successfully used for many centuries. These were displaced by the dynamically developing pharmaceutical industry because such practices brought—and continue to bring—large profits to manufacturers, while offering potential patients apparent convenience. (To be continued in the next issue)