A Psychosomatic Illness and Arthritis

The Diet Must Meet the Needs of Prolonged Stress

All nutrients that increase cortisone production must be particularly emphasized in the diet of any individual with arthritis. Because stress has caused a continuous destruction of protein, necessary before ACTH can be produced, the protein intake must be extremely high and obtained in small frequent meals. Volunteers lacking essential fatty acids quickly showed a decrease in adrenal hormones. Pantothenic acid can scarcely be overemphasized, and persons subject to arthritis may have an unusually high requirement for this vitamin. Men deficient in pantothrnic acid for only 25 days developed impaired adrenal function., days developed impaired adrenal function. Prolonged stress increases the nutritional requirements so much that deficiencies of pantothenic acid and/or vitamins B2 or C can be produced and cause the adrenals to become severely damaged; hence several weeks may be necessary for repair before improvement can be expected.

Animals under stress sometimes need 70 times the normal requirement of vitamin C to protect the adrenals; and older animals-and presumably older humans of the arthritis susceptible age-require twice as much of this vitamin as do young ones. Vitamin C not only increases the production and utilization of cortisone, but also appears to prolong its effectiveness. People with arthritis frequently make the mistake of avoiding calcium-rich foods, yet calcium is withdrawn from the bones continuously both when under stress and when the diet is inadequate in calcium itself, in magnesium, or perhaps in vitamin E; hence the intake of calcium should be particularly generous. Furthermore, calcium is said to decrease the sensitivity to pain. The woman whose spurs disappeared, for example, obtained 2 grams of calcium daily from fresh and powdered milk and another gram from a mixed-mineral supplement, making a total of 3 grams daily.

The anti stress factors supplied by liver, yeast, full-fat soy: flour, and cooked green leafy vegetables should be obtained daily in as large amounts as can be well tolerated. Because stress increases the need for nutrients, probably all body requirements except calories should be supplied in considerably greater than normal amounts.

A Psychosomatic Illness

Any variety of severe stress can exhaust the adrenals. Few stresses, however, are long-lasting infections clear up; weather changes; quarrels are forgotten; hard work is followed by rest, ad infinitum. Arthritis, however, may appear in early adulthood and become steadily worse through each decade of life; hence the stress causing it is prolonged and unrelenting. Such stress usually comes from the bottled-up negative emotions experienced during early childhood. It is now generally accepted that severe crippling arthritis is a psychosomatic illness resulting largely from unconscious, accumulated anger.

To understand emotionally induced illness, one must realize that the nerves in the brain retain a detailed permanent record of every instant of our lives; and that this record includes all of our feelings, both our positive and negative emotions, our convictions, and our original decisions as to how we could safely react to a given situation.

The early experiences are spoken of as unconscious because they have long been forgotten. Without our awareness, however, present feelings or experiences similar to early ones cause electricity in the brain to pass instantaneously over the nerves on which the original emotions are registered. As with a tape recorder, a playback occurs, and we unconsciously relive the feeling of the earlier experience.

Young children quickly learn that negative emotions, if expressed, bring disapproval, punishment, and the temporary withdrawal of love. Unless the child is allowed some harmless way to express negative emotions, he must bottle them up and hold them in at all costs. In any form of psychosomatic illness, the "child" (who is very much alive in each of us) is doing the "thinking" rather than the logical adult mind. The unconscious mind-the mind of the child within us-purposely induces many psychosomatic illnesses to prevent the expression of negative emotions which would keep us from being loved. To the small child's way of thinking, it is better to become immobile, or to produce arthritis in one's self, than to allow bottled-up anger to explode.

Unconscious anger, which psychologists speak of as hostilities, is the accumulation or sum total of all forgotten annoyances experienced during a lifetime. It is important to realize that we need not be ashamed of anger or of expressing it harmlessly. Our race survived because we have the ability to become angry and to fight when necessary. Regardless of how kind and loving the parents, every child not a hopeless milk toast experiences many situations that stimulate anger; and "Don't you dare speak to me in that tone of voice" is all too familiar. It is not necessary to know the specific origin of anger, but only to recognize that it exists in all of us. Adults unconsciously express stored anger in barbed humor, malicious gossip, and a thousand petty ways, but when expressed, love, which is held back with the negative emotions, comes through to help us have warmer, closer relationships with others.

Although none of us asked for them, emotional problems stemming from early traumas and deprivations are universal and take many different forms. The person with arthritis may have had more to be angry about than other individuals, or stricter parents may have given him less freedom or means to express his emotions harmlessly. Because of such a background, the arthritic person usually has great difficulty in expressing anger; and since his unconscious mind prevents him from feeling it, he often denies that it could even exist. The unconscious mind also has vivid records of punishments and feelings of being unloved, and the ghosts of disapproving parents are always with us.

The patient whose arthritis is emotional in origin has three choices: to accept and express his hostilities as best he can; to find hobbies which can, with his own and social approval, drain off pent-up emotions, such as gardening, painting, sculpturing, playing a musical instrument, or working with clay; or to accept the possibility of becoming increasingly more crippled for a lifetime. Even the most crippled arthritic may secretly indulge in fantasies of destroying imaginary enemies. In the past, anger was unconsciously vented at the woodpile and while gardening, wringing out clothes, and puffing up featherbeds; heads were symbolically chopped off, necks wrung, and imaginary justice meted out. The Mexican women who wash clothes by beating them against rocks probably get their husbands' pants unusually clean when they are furious with them. But alas, these outlets are not available to most of us.