What can be said about the amazing human body and its superpower to promote healing? One assessment of the medical advances over the last 20-30 years could be that we have yet to fully understand the healing potential that we all possess. Particularly in the western world, we tend to rely more on science, technology and external cures than we do on our own capacity to heal. How often do we hear it said when someone overcomes a life-threatening illness that it was a medical ‘miracle.’ In other words, doctors don’t know what happened and therefore it must be unexplainable. I have run into situations where a child’s neurological improvement has been called a psychiatric miracle. However, just because we don’t know how the body did it, does not mean the miracle did not come from within, rather than from without.
It can be an empowering experience to trust our own ability to heal. This does not mean that we ignore the oncologist’s recommendations for treating our cancer. But it does mean that we will come out ahead if we engage our internal healing power along with external treatments. Regardless of our medical or scientific knowledge, we need to be humble enough to realize that humans have been on the planet for many millennia without Prilosec and Prozac. Perhaps we have lived with more heartburn and more down days, but we have nonetheless made it through often due to our internal ability to heal and to manage.
Rather than reject science or ‘better living through chemistry,’ the optimum strategy would seem to take advantage of the help that is increasingly available to live healthy productive lives, while seeing external means of promoting health as assistance to our internal ability. I am often asked if I have a position on the use of psychotropic medications, particularly for children. My answer is that I take no philosophical position for or against the concept of medication. The pertinent issue to me is does it help both in the short and long-term? For example, research continues to say that stimulant medication is the most efficacious treatment of diagnosable hyperactivity in adults, teens and children, even very young children below school age. Unlike anti-medication groups, and a few movie stars, I am very interested in what actually works. However, I think we are missing the point if we rely on a pill to get the job done without utilizing our internal ability to aid in the solution. What this can mean using the example of hyperactivity is to give a child the stimulant medication in addition to developing skills at self-regulation and telling the child, “This pill will help you do all the things you need to do to be in charge of your body.” Such an approach, it seems to me, helps in the short and long-term.
The Body’s Own Pharmacy
Speaking of medications and how they can help in healing, it appears that we are beginning to notice that our bodies have had the ability to medicate from within all along. As the master control center of the body, the human brain controls a built-in pharmacy that can facilitate homeostasis (maintaining equilibrium), as well as allostasis (enabling arousal and returning to baseline). The body’s pharmacy involves chemical alterations in cells as well as altering body systems. When the body is functioning well, the chemical structures influenced by the brain are designed to keep a complex organism working smoothly. The body’s drug store is the prototype for the pharmacy we visit in our local neighborhood. It is only when the body’s pharmacy is misfiring in some way that we need to supplement our naturally produced drugs from an external source.
The types of drugs naturally produced by a healthy body will sound familiar. There are steroids, opioids, antidepressants, stimulants, analgesics, anesthesias, antihistamines, and hundreds of others. If you watch prime time television and see all the ads to, “ask your doctor about our prescription medication,” the odds are that the body can internally produce something very similar. But drug companies do not make money on promoting activation of our internal medications.
Without providing a lesson in biochemistry or endocrinology, the body’s pharmacy impacts every region and system of the body from the neurological system of the brain and nervous system, to the digestive, respiratory, reproductive and even the skeletal system. The neurological system relies on the chemical transfer of neuron activity through 52 known neurotransmitters. Many of these are familiar, such as dopamine and serotonin. Others are much less known such as tyrosine, L-dopa, and epinephrine. However, all have specific functions that influence the activity of the cells and bodily systems. Neurotransmitters such as endorphins are the body’s analgesics or pain relievers, dopamine helps produce emotional experiences such as pleasure. The modern psychotropic medications are modeled after what the body has the ability to produce on its own.
Another aspect of the body’s pharmacy are hormones. These include the steroids, amino acids and eicosanoids. Hormones are produced in glands throughout the body such as the pituitary, adrenal, thyroid, pancreas and others. Hormones have many functions in the body, but all are designed to aid in healthy functioning.
I have included this short treatment of the body’s pharmacy because many people are surprised to learn that the body produces a wide range of drugs such as opioids that are similar in chemical composition and function to botanical and laboratory produced opium. The main point is that the body has an amazing ability to heal itself, to medicate itself, and to find equilibrium to promote survival. When our internal drug store senses medications coming from the outside, it can shut down production, sometimes forever. Our culture has come to rely too much on external drugs and not enough on the body’s ability to heal itself. A better understanding of our body’s amazing ability to heal itself can help in living a more healthy and vibrant life.
[Excerpt from Beyond Healing, The path to personal contentment after trauma. (2009). D. L. Ziegler]