our modern understanding constitutes that the body consists of multiple distinct 'systems'. the medical care is partitioned to reflect these distinctions.
whether we decide to think in terms of these systems or not, this reductionist perspective falls short when trying to deal with a chronic issue and actually 'debug' the body.
certain features of the body affect each other and respond to each others activity. as i observed, oftentimes, these relationships / bindings are bidirectional. and while i have no proof of this, in default conditions (whatever that means), both sides of the relationship should bear the same weight – meaning we can influence one feature by controlling the other and vice versa. this was a pretty groundbreaking observation that i have not seen mentioned anywhere.
some examples are trivial:
- breathing rate <-> nervous system excitation (manifested as anxiety, tachycardia, increased BP, ...)
- stress levels (cortisol) <-> immune system functionality and excitability
some may be a little more controversial, although easily supported by literature (interesting reads on nutritional psychiatry):
- gut inflammation <-> mental stability / mental health / mental disorders
there seems to be no debate, even in the mainstream medical discourse, that the 'body' can affect 'the mind' (even though these may be complete false dichotomies). you're depressed? go for a run or start lifting weights. lack energy? take a walk in the morning. these advice are considered status-quo and no one doubts them. but they fundamentally stem from this very bidirectional abiliity of systems to influence each other.
but we reject the idea that the mind can influence the body through measurable physical means. many would disagree with me on this, but if you accept the (1) and (2) premises, this must naturally follow, whether we like it or not. or it could be the ONLY system where this bidirectional relationship does not hold? that seems very unlikely.
[insert studies about increased inflammation after memory recollection]
# the problem with caching & polyvagal theory
there are only 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors.