Human happiness has much to do with human
emotions and feelings. Emotions and feelings are
two sides of the same coin; they are closely related, but they are two very
different things in that the former create biochemical reactions in the human
body, affecting the physical state, while the latter are mental associations
and reactions to the former.
The Seven Emotions
According to the Traditional Chinese Medicine
(TCM), we all have qi (氣),
which is the internal life-giving energy circulating within each and every one
of us, giving us internal balance and harmony. Human emotions are also energy
states, which either give or deplete our own internal life-giving energy,
causing harmony or disharmony, and leading to wellness or disease.
In Chinese medicine, there are seven emotions
that not only trigger feelings of unhappiness but also cause many internal
diseases because they may adversely affect the different body organs associated
with these emotions. For example, anger or
rage affects the liver; fear
and fright (the difference between fear and fright is that the former is due to things that may happen in the
future, while the latter is due to things that are in the now) damage the
kidney; sadness impairs the lungs; anxiety and worry weaken the spleen; joy, especially excessive joy, may
dysfunction the heart.
Because Chinese medicine is all about internal
balance and harmony, any excess in these emotions may be harmful. To
illustrate, even excessive joy may
dysfunction the heart, leading to mania and even mental disorders; it is not uncommon that many people experience
winter blues right after the joyful celebration of Christmas and the New Year.
According
to Western medicine, as much as 50 percent of human diseases may be
psychosomatic. Dr. Caroline B. Thomas,
M.D., of John Hopkins School of Medicine, discovered that cancer patients often
had a prior poor relationship with their parents, attesting to the pivotal role
of emotions in the development of cancer. In another study by Dr. Richard B. Shekelle of the
University of Texas School of Medicine, it was found that depression patients
were not only more cancer prone but also more likely to die of cancer than the
other patients. If emotions play a pivotal role in cancer, by the same token,
negative emotions may also adversely affect the symptoms or the prognosis of
any other human diseases. Indeed, thoughts of anger, despair, discontent,
frustration, guilt, or resentment are instrumental in depressing the
physiological processes, including the human body’s immune response—a formula
for promoting the development of an autoimmune disease.
To conclude, it is not an overstatement that the
mind and diseases are inter-connected, especially when it comes to human
emotions.
Stephen Lau
Copyright© 2018 by Stephen Lau
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