Are we really sad when we feel sad?

Ok,..this is not a story, this is an article that I wrote 2 years ago. I need your opinions more here, specially about grammatical errors. enjoy reading!

Are we really sad when we feel sad?

 

By: Arash Y

 

Imagine one day " a very typical day of your life " you wake up in the morning full of energy and with a very good feeling. You go to the balcony and do some light exercises. Then   you come back inside and start eating your delicious breakfast. While eating, you coincidentally notice the bills of gas, water and electricity. You say, "Okkay, I should pay them". Suddenly someone buzzes the doorbell. You open the door; it's your landlady. She reminds you that today is the 5^th day of new month and you haven't paid your house rent yet. You smile and confess that you have completely forgotten that, apologize her and promise that you'll pay in two days. She smiles back and leaves you. Everything is shiny, beautiful and promising. You go to the elevator while  singing the song you were listening before leaving home, meet your pretty next door girl and give her a "how's it goin' babe?" in responding her cute smile. Then you go to your office, do plenty of works in the best way ever while joking with your co-workers…

 

Let's name what is described above, "condition A". Now the "condition B":

 

Imagine another day " again a typical day of life " you wake up in the morning, you don't feel good even at the beginning. You get up and drink a cup of tea; it makes you feel better, but only temporarily. You feel deeply sad and blue, that you light a cigarette to ease your bad mood. Everything is surprisingly quiet, cold and gloomy. You don't feel like eating anything and decide to go to work hungrily.  After half an hour staring at the ticking hands of your clock, floating in your saddest memories, which are marching in front of your eyes, you can barely convince yourself to go to work.  Before you leave the house, you coincidentally notice the bills of gas, water and electricity on the dining table. You take a look at them " especially at the "payable amount" section " and think to yourself, "Ah, s**t! How can I pay these? This is so much!" Suddenly someone buzzes your doorbell. You open the door; it's your landlady. She reminds you that today is the 5^th day of the new month and you haven't paid the house rent yet. You angrily explain to her that she shouldn't come to your door and bother you at this time of the morning just for a "bagatelle".  At the elevator you see the pretty neighbor girl, smiling at you and you think "what a trashy make up she's wearing today!", you look at her lipsticked lips and feel you're gonna throw up on her face. At the office, you have some wrangle with your co-workers, and your boss; can't do your job well and…

 

As you have probably noticed most of the circumstances in both days are the same " though the conditions are different " and I want to add that all unmentioned environmental circumstances are equal either; the house in condition B is the same as in condition A, you wake up at the same time, etc. I want to show that what is different is you, emotions you feel and the way you interact with your environment. But why? Why do you behave that much different in two described conditions?

 

Most of the people could hardly get convinced that in the most of such situations, all the circumstances are equal. Since we feel different in the condition B, we supposedly will seek to find a specific reason for it; the only problem is we search a wrong place: our thoughts, and our spirit. Sometimes we also search for finding the reason of our bad feelings among external and environmental causes, like "bothering by the landlady in early morning", "seeing the bills", "stupid co-workers", and so on. We look everywhere for that, except the place we must: our body. When I say "body", I'm referring to whatever happens inside our body " including our brain " physically, such as our digestion system, our blood streaming system, our metabolism (in general), etc. Perhaps you know " or have heard " that there are some connections between our bodily circumstances and our behavioral reactions, but I guess you don't know how important these connections are, and more precisely, you don't know that most of the times, they could be the ONLY cause of our behaviors!

 

 

 

Your mind and your body  

 

Most of ancient physicians believed that the most general reason for all diseases is the malfunction of our bodily systems. Hippocrates, Avicenna[I] and the others in most of their books indicate, "If the body functions rightly, no disease will occur or even if it does, body can cure it spontaneously". As far as we know, there was not any special separation between bodily diseases and mental disorders in the ancient medical science. The person, whom named leech, would be consulted for all medical issues, including mental and bodily ones, and the above-mentioned common belief about the relation between functional state of the body and the occurrence of disease, consisted both types of diseases. For instance, in one of his most famous books Canon Of Medicine[II] Avicenna repeatedly describes conditions that a patient with a mental problem " like depression " comes to consult him and the first thing that Avicenna does, is to ask him questions about his/her dietary and evacuation condition as indicators of the functional state of the body. Even now in the present time, most of herbal doctors do the same for their patients. Ancient physicians also believed in being a relationship between people's temperament and the way that their body works, and some of them have even classified people on the mentioned basis[1]. Studying their writings in this issue shows that they thought there must be a kind of correlation between the way a person behave and the way his/her body functions.

This topic is in some manner noteworthy for modern physicians, too. If you go visit a doctor to, for example, talk about your stomachache, he/she would most likely ask you about your neural condition and will mention the link between the amounts of stress that you have with your problem. Modern medical science has shown the importance of having a healthy mind in having a healthy body. There are plenty of doctoral thesis, medical books, researches and TV programs that talk about the way you can save and improve your mental health in order to keep your body healthy. Moreover, many sporting methods are invented to take that well-being state back to your mind. However, it seems that not many people pay attention to the other side of the issue.     

 

What makes us feel sad?

Have you ever experienced that when you are, for example, hungry, sleepy or wounded, you feel the chill and the heat deeper? Have you ever noticed that after eating your meal, the bad mood and sad thoughts that you've had before, disappear suddenly?

Some of us could remember what we have learnt back in school about how our body works. Unlike old days, today knowing about the vitality of eating, breathing and sleeping for our biological life, is a part of public knowledge. However, as far as I can remember there was nothing written in school books about how seriously not doing the above-mentioned activities, can affect our emotions, moods, and the way we interact with our environment through our five senses. If we think of our brains as machines that manage our body systems, we can imagine what would happen if we do not feed them and answer their needs. If the brain malfunctions, the body malfunctions.

Hunger, thirst, muscular tiredness, spasm or pain; and bad evacuation or lack of it are the very simple causes that can create bad feelings and emotions inside our brains, or in the cases that the bad feelings exist " supposedly for specific reasons " they can make them stronger and deepened. Every bodily diseases, like Influenza, Ulcer, Constipation, etc. that somehow affect the processes of reception and digestion of the food, evacuation of waste leftover, resting, breathing and such processes, could do the same thing. Because of the wideness of this topic, it is almost impossible to fit it in this article, therefore explaining one the most common issues in this case, would probably show the way such bodily problems can smash down our thoughts.

 

Depression[2] via Constipation

In the on-line encyclopedia of Wikipedia about the definition of Constipation we read:

 

“The definition of constipation includes the following:

• infrequent bowel movements (typically three times or fewer per week)
• difficulty during defecation (straining during more than 25% of bowel movements or a subjective sensation of hard stools), or
• the sensation of incomplete bowel evacuation "

As you can see, it is a very simple symptom, actually, so deceptively simple. As it is described as something that evolves evacuation system, most of the people don't even count it an illness " not a serious one at least " and do not think it's even requires visiting a doctor. Nevertheless, Dr. Jenifer Daniels M.D., M.B.A., from Harvard University shows in her research "Depression via Constipation", that this sickness is not as simple as most of us think it is. Dr. Daniels says:

 

"Decades ago, negative thinking was referred to as "stinkin thinkin", the reason for this being depression's link to constipation…there are several types of neurotransmitters which are made by the brain that facilitate and induce various feelings…in order for the body to make neurotransmitters, it needs enough B-vitamins and minerals (only a few of the many key nutrients). If the human body goes without the necessary supply of B-vitamins and minerals, it cannot utilize glucose, often resulting in wide mood swings and depression, and if the brain has no access to any glucose or minerals, plain old depression will more than likely develop.

 

When someone is constipated, much of the residue from yesterday's meals remains in the intestines, hampering the absorption of nutrients ingested in today's meal as well as leading to toxicity. Regardless of how nutritious the meal is or how expensive the vitamins are, the nutrients needed for the brain to function optimally are not fully absorbed when the body is constipated. In addition, long standing constipation can result in an impermeable layer of toxins that line the small intestine, preventing nutrients from getting to the rest of the body.

 

If we delve deeper, looking to our brains and the interactions that lead to certain feelings and moods, we begin to realize how influential constipation can be in our everyday lives and that it isn't irrational to believe that the lack of frequent bowel movements can lead to negative emotions. When an emotion is experienced, neurotransmitters are released, and seconds later, the cell reabsorbs it and another chemical comes along to destroy what was not reabsorbed. The emotional system of the body naturally "resets" after each emotion as enzymes in the cell replenish the neurotransmitters to pre-emotion levels, readying the brain for the next emotion. This activity or mechanism of spontaneously resetting consumes a lot of B-vitamins and energy, and thus when B-vitamins are in short supply; it can lead to people having "mixed" emotions, due to the neurotransmitter from the last emotion still hanging around."

 

The functional state of our bodies and the way we answer to its needs, could affect our emotions in a huge variety. Another example is the way that unsatisfying of our sexual need; affect the balanced state of our sexual hormones " such as Testosterone " and causes intensifying some of our emotions, like anger, joy, etc.

 

Is this issue important at all?

 

How many psychiatrists do you know that ask about bodily conditions from someone who's come to them for a mental (spiritual) problem? Trust me, there are not many. Most of the questions a psychiatrist usually asks are about your mood, your behaviors, and the way you communicate with your friends and family, etc. so he/she could diagnoses your illness and prescript proper medicines for you. The seriousness of this issue becomes more apparent when it comes to some mental disorders that have symptoms similar to the ones that simple bodily problems - like sleeplessness, and hunger " could create. What happens in such conditions is that if in such a case, the diagnosis preformed only based on reports that the patient gives about his/her mental and behavioral conditions, the prescription would be totally misled. For instance, there are many reports of the people who have been using medication for depression and their problems haven't been mentally at all[III].

We humans have the most complex bodily and mental systems among other mammals and all other creatures in the world and whereupon the interactions between those two are the most complicated ones, comparing to other species. However, despite these complexities, as I tried to show in this article, some of very popular malfunctions in these systems " that could result in some serious diseases " can be normalized and cured using some very simple methods. Moreover, one of the most important things that worth re-mentioning is the vital importance of having a healthy body in having a healthy mind. In the latter regard, Iranian people have a famous proverb that says, “Healthy mind is in healthy body”.         

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[1] - In this issue, Avicenna uses a type of classification on the mentioned basis that does not seem to be invented by him. Some evidences show that such a classification was partly prevalent in the ancient Egypt.

[2] - Depression is a name that psychologists give to a disorder, consisting a large variety of symptoms, from low mood, to even a type of Paranoia. Constipation can cause some of these symptoms.   

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[I]. Abu Ali al-Ḥussein ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn Sina (980, Afshana near City of Bukhara" 1037, Hamadan, Iran), commonly known as Ibn Sina or by his Latinized name Avicenna, was a Persian polymath, who wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived. In particular, 150 of his surviving treatises concentrate on philosophy and 40 of them concentrate on medicine.

 

[II]. Avicenna’s Canon Of Medicine - Kazi Publications (September 1, 1999) 

[III]. Undoubtedly, part of the diagnosis and prescription processes in the case of diseases with similar symptoms in all branches of the medicine is empirical, but the problem here is that psychiatrists most rarely try bodily treatments.  

 

Author's Note

This is the second formal article that I've ever written in English, the first one still needs some improvements. I know it has so many mistakes, please help me to improve it. And, I don't know how to categorize it