Health: a way through

Jefferson Breland

(12/2021) Health is a funny thing and serious as a heart attack.

As we know, health is not ‘Ha Ha" funny; it is, though, perhaps one of the most curious and misunderstood aspects of being alive. What exactly is health? A dictionary definition says health is "the state of being free from illness or injury." Illness is defined as a disease or period of sickness affecting the body or mind. Another definition of health is "a person’s mental or physical condition." This second definition says nothing about feeling good or bad.

Generally speaking, many of us take "health" for granted until we notice something different in our bodies that causes us to say, "Hey! Something is wrong." Health is invisible until it isn’t. It is curious that our bodies work constantly to create a balanced and harmonious life within us and we generally have no clue what is happening. We can’t feel most of the millions and millions of processes that are happening every moment of every day of our life.

The action of health can be equated with the action of standing on one leg. You don’t really lift one leg up, find the balance point and you are done balancing. You keep balancing yourself until you put your foot down. Come to think of it, we need to balance when we use two feet, too.

Balancing anything is on ongoing activity. It is dynamic, not static. Health is the same way. You don’t one day reach "health" and then you are healthy forever. Health is a blend of you consciously and your body unconsciously balancing the necessary processes of your body’s systems to have some level or degree of health.

Often, a patient will say, "I was fine, then out of nowhere, I got this pain…" or some other symptom. Chances are that the journey of this "sudden" symptom started years before and according to Traditional Chinese Medicine, (TCM), more often than not, the root cause is an emotion that created an imbalance in the body.

Every moment of every day our body, mind, and spirit interact with the world around us, even while we sleep. These interactions produce emotions that produce neuropeptides that course through our body and have an effect on the functions of our body down to our cellular level. Sometimes these effects are noticeable and mostly they are not. Over time, if certain interactions with the "outside world" and their accompanying negative emotions are repeated, there will be a cumulative effect in our body until it has a profound effect on our well-being.

Most emotions, in and of themselves, are not harmful. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), they become harmful when they are not expressed in a healthy way and our Qi (pronounced "Chee"), our body’s vital energy, gets stuck or creates an energetic imbalance in us.

There are parallels to this idea in Western medicine. The field of Epigenetics is the study of lifestyle on health. It is the study of the effect of diet, stress, aging, drugs, environmental factors such as pollution, etc. on genetic expression- how certain genes are turned-on or turned-off.

This is why epigentics can be a powerful tool in understanding that our genetics are not "written in stone." Just because our family members got a disease doesn’t mean we are going to get it too. Our DNA contains both the potential for health as well as disease. When we focus our intention on healthier choices in our life, we can begin to tip the balance toward healthier genetic expression.

This is why I have been beating a drum about the ideas of "necessary suffering" and "unnecessary suffering." In particular I have been writing about the effect of "unnecessary suffering" on our health. Our lives and its accompanying "lifestyle" are all based on our beliefs of what life is.

Generally speaking, unnecessary suffering is caused by a belief that something/someone should be different than it is/they are. This can be an expectation that isn’t met. It can be letting someone’s words get under our skin. It can be the weather. It can be the person in the car in front of you driving slower than you think they should. Basically, it can be any experience that triggers an emotional response.

Over time, these emotional responses, big or small, can effect our genetic expression and manifest as disease or reduce our immunity if they are not allowed to express themselves in a natural way. Many times it is societal beliefs that interrupt this natural expression. "Boys don’t cry," "girls don’t yell," "wives shouldn’t question their husbands," "children are meant to be seen, not heard" are examples of beliefs that limit emotional expression.

My mother’s life and health are clear examples of the effects of necessary as well as unnecessary suffering. As I mentioned in August’s column, she had some profound challenges in her life. She was grief stricken by the death of her daughter, my sister Kathleen. My mother did not know how to express or process or acknowledge this grief. According to TCM, grief affects the function of the Lung. So it makes sense to me that she developed asthma, had chronic bronchitis, and episodes of pneumonia.

Kathleen’s death is an example of "necessary suffering. " My mother did not have the means, the tools or beliefs, to help her navigate such an extreme example like a daughter’s death. Do these means end the grief? I hope not, because grief, in my understanding, exists because of the love we have and I will never stop loving Kathleen. And yes, I had respiratory issues for years until I didn’t. I still weep about her death and miss her deeply. I believe I helped myself by focusing on living my life fully, the love we had for each other, and honoring her life.

An example of unnecessary suffering created by my mother was her frustration about society’s beliefs on the role of women. She was frustrated by certain aspects of her marriage. According to TCM, anger and frustration affect the Liver and Gall Bladder. So it makes sense to me that in her late 80s, she experienced digestive issues and had surgery to remove 200 gall stones.

While she couldn’t change a long-held societal belief during her lifetime, she might have changed her relationship to the frustration in order to decrease its effects on her. As for her husband, my father, she might have communicated more effectively, asked him to communicate more effectively, designed her relationship with him differently, or focused more on her dreams and aspirations. She might have shifted her expectations.

I am not blaming her for her own suffering. Who knows what might have helped. What I do know is that she didn’t know she had a choice about changing her relationship to her beliefs about her marriage, hence, the gallstones. The energy or Qi of unexpressed emotions can become denser and denser and take physical form. This can be seen in other conditions such as cancer.

When we realize we have a choice about how to relate to any person or situation, we can make decisions to reduce that suffering by making changes in our ways of doing, being, and speaking. When we make these changes we can begin to change our neurochemistry and reverse the genetic expressions that lead to disease.

It may seem like semantics or a "Jedi mind-trick" to say that if we change way we look at the world, the world will change. It is well-known in the scientific community that intention and conscious or unconscious bias shape studies and therefore influence results. Intention also effects the world on the level of quantum physics. Our thoughts do not exist in a vacuum. Thoughts have a direct effect on our body’s energy which effects our biology down to the genetic level.

So why not reduce your "unnecessary suffering" in order to have more balanced emotional life. Why not choose to participate in your health? Why not choose to consciously help your body, mind, spirit be more peaceful? These are ways to help you through this life with more health and happiness. There is no downside, only upside.

 Jefferson Breland is a board-certified acupuncturist, he can be reached at 410-336-5876. Their office in Gettysburg is located at 249B York Street.