Bruce chaired my PhD committee- he was a gentle and thoughtful person.
An observation about his approach to science, which I thought was distinctive: he was interested in a big, fuzzy relationship- health and stress. Over the course of his career, his lab wrote hundreds of small, credible papers to fill out and explore this relationship. Few were in the big journals, but over time, a sort of broadly understood relationship emerged and many other labs also participated in developing this concept. Now it’s just sort of something we understand- it’s a robust concept.
His approach always struck as significantly different from the one or two big nature/science papers that claims to discover or demonstrate a fundamental relationship. These tour de force papers can be vital, and they can also mislead an entire field.
I appreciated Bruce’s approach, especially because the incentive structure that permeated my graduate experience was “go big or go home”. There are entire classes of Scientific insight that won’t be revealed if this is this approach dominates.
Reminds me of Norman Borlaug. While rightfully somewhat famous for his dwarf wheat and preventing famine he operated through a lot of "boring" experimental iterations. Although he did challenge ideas about seeds needing rest periods.
Stress is a rather generic term. Emotional stress and biological stress are two ways of distinguishing different kinds of stress.
Biological stress is not getting enough nutrients, having to deal with bacterial exotoxin/endotoxin [1] (as pneumonia, a hostile microbiome, etc), lack of sunlight (UV light -> Vitamin D; red light refreshes Cytochrome C Oxidase, an enzyme in the mitochondria [0]), consuming artificial sugar and other fake foods, etc...
Emotional stress is related to how a person responds to situations -- to quote the article, "why crappy childhoods make for adult brains that don’t work well". Different people can respond to the same situation in completely different ways... Some people are able to use their "crappy childhood" as motivation to make something of themselves, while others are disabled by their own similar childhood.
The tragedy of our situation is how the medical profession considers Dr. McEwen's work as interesting but doesn't do anything with it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytochrome_c_oxidase --- this page doesn't talk about the use of certain wavelengths of red/infrared light to refresh the enzyme. search for 'red light therapy', then buy heat lamps if you're interested. My current setup cost around $20.
I agree with you and I’d guess your parent commenter would too.
Yet, many people who consider themselves to be rational and scientifically-minded, and who reject dualism, scoff at the notion that physiological illness can be caused/exacerbated by emotional stress.
Try this out some time: suggest that an illness like chronic fatigue syndrome or general autoimmune illness is at least somewhat linked to emotional stress and/or trauma, and see what kinds of reactions you get (or go and look at the discussions about this topic in CFS communities).
A wide gulf exists between consciousness and neurons. There are many easy abstractions to make between the two and putting the stress from starvation and the stress from grieving a parent's death in the same bucket is pointlessly pedantic.
>Emotional stress is biological stress unless you believe in an extreme form of cartesian dualism incompatible with modern understanding of physiology.
Not necessarily.
You can believe in the "modern understanding of physiology" and still think that "Emotional stress" is a "thinking" process that does not affect biological physiology.
It's not necessary that every emotion or brain process manifests in any other way aside from brain synapses firing and so on (e.g. that it affects the bodily operations in some other way).
So, it's not an either-or, but 3 options:
1) cartesian dualism (emotion and biology are two different spheres, soul independent of the body etc)
2) emotional stress triggers biological stress
3) emotional stress remains a brain process and doesn't trigger biological stress
And the case is probably sometimes (2) and sometimes (3).
Sure, it's atoms all the way down; however, it is still important to make a distinction. Biological stress can be beneficial for our well being, while emotional stress (fight or flight response) has mostly deleterious effects.
I agree with you, but there is an entire field ( psychology ) predicated on the mind and brain duality. So perhaps they might view some or all emotional stress as "mental/psychological" stress not entirely tied to biological stress.
Do we have some form of map between emotions and soma ? I read a few things about hormone cascade and neurological noise when traumatized. But that's not very precise.
When you workout, your stress level increase. And your body somehow deteriorate, but with some rest adapt as the result of the training. And you improve.
Then you can have other stresses coming from life events, work, kids, travel, partner,... issues.
If you monitor your stress with Heart Rate Variability, you can see them all having a bad effect.
It could be interesting to check if the red light could help recover faster.
It can be dangerous to look at it this way, just like looking at environmental / physical aspects of someone and his mental state, both affect each other. And it is the same with "emotional stress" and biological stress" one can cause another and vise versa.
What gives you the impression medical profession doesn't do anything with it?
Sapolsky (h-index 109) was McEwen's student, probably one of his most prominent students, and has continued to work on stress, as did his other students.
Sapolsky alone made enormous contributions to our understanding and treatment of stress and stress-related disorders.
How often do you hear of a case where a doctor, upon establishing that a patient has a debilitating illness that doesn’t respond to conventional medical treatment, recommend that they undertake deep emotional development or trauma healing work?
I can tell you from personal experience, it doesn’t happen. Patients are left to figure this out for themselves, and usually don’t as the idea is considered so wacky.
i worked for dr. mcewen at 15yo. this article barely does justice to how much he believed in teaching and supporting young scientists. i owe much of who i am to the culture of his lab.
What an impressive contribution. We are lucky to benefit from the work of individuals like Dr. McEwen. Rest in peace.
(The note about his online pastor's qualification, used for officiating a wedding, was pretty amusing though)
Wikipedia notes that he was serving in an advisory capacity for AntiAgingGames.com, which seems to be defunct at present. I'd be interested to hear his thoughts on gaming.
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An observation about his approach to science, which I thought was distinctive: he was interested in a big, fuzzy relationship- health and stress. Over the course of his career, his lab wrote hundreds of small, credible papers to fill out and explore this relationship. Few were in the big journals, but over time, a sort of broadly understood relationship emerged and many other labs also participated in developing this concept. Now it’s just sort of something we understand- it’s a robust concept.
His approach always struck as significantly different from the one or two big nature/science papers that claims to discover or demonstrate a fundamental relationship. These tour de force papers can be vital, and they can also mislead an entire field.
I appreciated Bruce’s approach, especially because the incentive structure that permeated my graduate experience was “go big or go home”. There are entire classes of Scientific insight that won’t be revealed if this is this approach dominates.
Biological stress is not getting enough nutrients, having to deal with bacterial exotoxin/endotoxin [1] (as pneumonia, a hostile microbiome, etc), lack of sunlight (UV light -> Vitamin D; red light refreshes Cytochrome C Oxidase, an enzyme in the mitochondria [0]), consuming artificial sugar and other fake foods, etc...
Emotional stress is related to how a person responds to situations -- to quote the article, "why crappy childhoods make for adult brains that don’t work well". Different people can respond to the same situation in completely different ways... Some people are able to use their "crappy childhood" as motivation to make something of themselves, while others are disabled by their own similar childhood.
The tragedy of our situation is how the medical profession considers Dr. McEwen's work as interesting but doesn't do anything with it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytochrome_c_oxidase --- this page doesn't talk about the use of certain wavelengths of red/infrared light to refresh the enzyme. search for 'red light therapy', then buy heat lamps if you're interested. My current setup cost around $20.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotoxin
Yet, many people who consider themselves to be rational and scientifically-minded, and who reject dualism, scoff at the notion that physiological illness can be caused/exacerbated by emotional stress.
Try this out some time: suggest that an illness like chronic fatigue syndrome or general autoimmune illness is at least somewhat linked to emotional stress and/or trauma, and see what kinds of reactions you get (or go and look at the discussions about this topic in CFS communities).
Not necessarily.
You can believe in the "modern understanding of physiology" and still think that "Emotional stress" is a "thinking" process that does not affect biological physiology.
It's not necessary that every emotion or brain process manifests in any other way aside from brain synapses firing and so on (e.g. that it affects the bodily operations in some other way).
So, it's not an either-or, but 3 options:
1) cartesian dualism (emotion and biology are two different spheres, soul independent of the body etc)
2) emotional stress triggers biological stress
3) emotional stress remains a brain process and doesn't trigger biological stress
And the case is probably sometimes (2) and sometimes (3).
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Then you can have other stresses coming from life events, work, kids, travel, partner,... issues.
If you monitor your stress with Heart Rate Variability, you can see them all having a bad effect.
It could be interesting to check if the red light could help recover faster.
Sapolsky (h-index 109) was McEwen's student, probably one of his most prominent students, and has continued to work on stress, as did his other students.
Sapolsky alone made enormous contributions to our understanding and treatment of stress and stress-related disorders.
I can tell you from personal experience, it doesn’t happen. Patients are left to figure this out for themselves, and usually don’t as the idea is considered so wacky.
(The note about his online pastor's qualification, used for officiating a wedding, was pretty amusing though)
Wikipedia notes that he was serving in an advisory capacity for AntiAgingGames.com, which seems to be defunct at present. I'd be interested to hear his thoughts on gaming.
Dead Comment