“This new science is forcing the medical community to take more seriously the popular notions of the mind-body connection,” says Esther M. Sternberg, M.D., director of the Integrative Neural Immune Program at the National Institute of Mental Health. In response to stressful events, our bodies pump out hormones. These hormones aren’t necessarily harmful and can be very useful, says Dr. Sternberg, author of The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions. “The problem is when the stress response goes on for too long,” she says. “That’s when you get sick. Hormones weaken the immune system’s ability to fight disease.”
read more at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/magazine/issues/winter08/articles/winter08pg5-6.html
