"...The culprit that interests me the most doesn't get much attention in the research labs: trauma and major stress. When I was a kid, the conventional wisdom was that traumatic events -- loss of a loved one, accidents -- played an important role in diabetes onset. This appeared to be substantiated by a number of population studies in the ensuing decades, but the evidence hasn't impressed major players in diabetes research. In a long summary of biochemical and environmental risk factors for T1D, the NIH barely touches upon the matter, gives it a few throwaway lines:
Although investigations of stress and IDDM [insulin dependent diabetes] have, in general, reported positive associations, most studies have been retrospective and suffered from methodological difficulties in assessing stress and measuring its frequency, intensity, and duration. Thus, prospective evaluations of the interaction among stress, the immune system, and the occurrence of autoimmune diseases are warranted.
Sorry, NIH, but I am convinced that a specific traumatic event played a major, albeit partial, role in triggering my diabetes....
"...You cannot possibly come up with a credible argument against psychologist David Felten, who tells us:
We can no longer pretend that the patient's perceptions don't matter ... Your mind is in every cell of your body. And your emotions are the bridge between the mental and the physical, or the physical and the mental. It's either way. Now there is overwhelming evidence that hormones and neurotransmitters can influence the activities of the immune system, and that products of the immune system can influence the brain...."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-fleshler/diabetes-causes_b_4197014.html
Short on time? Use our Category Search page.
Comments (0)