Column Chronicles: Worry can cause illness, part 1

Worry can cause illness, part 1

Frank Cotolo
October 6, 2016

For as long as doctors have treated humans, there has been a tedious hunt to find the connection between a person's brain and their body health. It was first thought that there was no connection, since the brain is a part of the body and to think there was a disconnect would be using the brain to do so and that would, as historic but relatively unknown physician Dr. Erlich Urganthall (1703-1789) said, "A thought is not a corpusle," which explains how dumb it is to use the brain thinking it is not a part of the body to explain something inside the body.

It has been a long time since Urganthall died and many inventions have changed mankind. Those inventions have led to a technology that allows doctors to explore theories once thought a waste of time.

"In the new millennium," says heart surgeon Dr. Herpes McFlemington, "science has come so far as to admit that lightning bolts striking a body constructed of dead body parts could possibly launch life into the body. As well, we know that if we do admit that there is a possibility to such a situation, the scientist in charge must not be wearing a pith helmit."

This is why today's research on the human brain condones the notion that if the brain is making a person worry about anything, the more intense the worry, the greater the physical body will react.

"We see how blood pressure rises when the brain invokes fear," says McFlemington, "so we know that an ongoing emotion like worry can possibly make a kidney function choke or a lung reduce its capacity to ingest oxygen and even more radically, make a person empty the contents of a water tower."

"My patient was worrying," says German physician Henrik Von Stellarviken, "and thus he refused to drive his automobile in reverse when he should. Then, once he stopped worrying, he could parallel park perfectly."

Psychiatrists feel that the behavior of worrying may be a person's protection against greater fears that the person cannot seem to face. Some other psychiatrists feel that the behavior of worrying may be a person's replacement for over-earing. Some other psychiatrists feel that the behavior of worrying may be a person's way of masking the urge to harm bunnies. Even other psychiatrists feel that the behavior of worrying may be a person's need to protect his or her uncontrollable urge to jaywalk.

Doctors are meeting all over the world to come up with a medicine to reduce worry but are worried that such a medicine could be dangerous. More on that issue in part 2.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.