Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
An immune system that stays switched on with nothing to fight can begin turning on healthy tissue. It is doing its job with the wrong target.
That is a kinder account than the ones people are usually handed, which tend to imply they brought it on themselves by not coping. None of this is anybody's fault, and the model is still being worked out. Where it helps is in taking regulation seriously as part of looking after your health, alongside medical treatment rather than in place of it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'Do not be afraid, I am with you both' (Quran 20:46). Part of recovery is a system finally receiving the message that the danger has passed.
قَالَ لَا تَخَافَآۖ إِنَّنِي مَعَكُمَآ أَسۡمَعُ وَأَرَىٰ
He said, ‘Do not be afraid, I am with you both, hearing and seeing everything
Qur’an 20:46read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A systematic review and meta analysis of cortisol stress reactivity across psychiatric disorders found real differences between groups, and also that variation in how studies measure it is large enough that no single stress hormone signature can be claimed. That is the caution to carry into any neat story about stress and illness. This account of immune activity is a plausible model rather than settled fact.
Zorn JV, Schür RR, Boks MP, Kahn RS, Joëls M, Vinkers CH. (2017). Cortisol stress reactivity across psychiatric disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis.. Psychoneuroendocrinology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A defence that never receives the all clear keeps working, and work with no proper target causes damage.
When not to
Autoimmune conditions need medical care, and nothing here is a reason to change or delay treatment.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Your heart speeds up slightly on every breath in and slows on every breath out. Sit quietly with a hand on your chest and you can feel it.
Being strong, trained or brave does not decide which way your body goes. People who could easily have fought have frozen instead.
Three minutes of slow breathing between one person and the next is not a break. It is part of the work.