When systems go wrong

Moderate challenges to the mind–body generally lead to recovery and even to improved resilience. Challenges that are successfully met result in better immunity, improved fitness and more appropriate coping styles. However, the information system can go wrong and develop less efficient modes of working. These states of “dys-regulation” prepare the ground for disease to take hold. They may arise because the challenge to the body is too great or too persistent, or the person is vulnerable psychologically (various styles of thinking and feeling can undermine recovery), biochemically (due to genetic, nutritional and ecological factors), or structurally (because of deep patterns of tension, a lack of fitness or flexibility).

The system may be overwhelmed because a person fails to notice the body’s messages of distress and change habits that prevent recovery. It is the seamless mind–body network – not just brain-based intelligence – that adapts to changing internal and external conditions. The new medicine will recognise this. Faced with an illness, an injury or a social crisis, the new medicine, which aims to unite the best of complementary therapies and conventional medicine, will aim to re-establish balance. Michael Hyland’s theory that disease begins as an information error suggests a new and important way of thinking about health. There are two kinds of “error” in the mind–body. One is the type that conventional Western medicine deals with when it looks at the body as a biological machine, identifying a biological disease such as diabetes, cancer, heart disease or arthritis.

Conventional treatment involves fixing the “broken part” or removing it. This might involve replacing a missing hormone, killing bacteria with antibiotics, reducing blood pressure with a drug, suppressing inflammation with steroids, replacing a blocked artery with an artificial graft, or cutting away a cancerous tumour. There is another type of error affects the information in the whole network. In this case, no single organ or biochemical system can be targeted and repaired, because the information that produces health and healing processes is spread over the entire network.

In the case of the latter error, approaches that aim to create health or to trigger healing responses by acting on the mind–body as a whole are most likely to be effective. And, just as networks can take in many different kinds of information, so the mind–body can respond to diverse kinds of input – diet, botanical medicines, movement and touch. So too can it pick up more refined information – from art, communication with a therapist, and perhaps even the subtle information conveyed by a homeopathic medicine or the effect of an acupuncture needle.

The entire mind–body could be influenced by lifestyle choices that have an impact on the biochemical, structural and mental information systems. We can imagine the whole system of information flow – the body’s intelligence – as a choir of myriad voices. But it is a choir without a score or a conductor. The parts sing themselves and each voice hears the entire chorale and responds more or less harmoniously. The voices are biochemical and electrical messages, structural impulses, communications from the conscious and unconscious mind.

This is an example of complexity in action: the information flow emerges from the interweaving of biochemical, the structural and mental information systems, but it simultaneously forms and shapes them all. Perhaps the information flow that makes complexity possible is what the traditional healers refer to as “life force”. If this is the case, then the body’s intelligence may correspond to complementary medicine’s “energy body”, but it would probably be more accurate to call it the “information body”.

The Intelligent Body

We tend to think of the brain as being intelligent, and that the brain controls the body, while the body is just dumb flesh. Indeed, the brain is a network of almost infinitely interconnected neurons; it has been called the most complex object in the known universe. But the whole body is a network too, which is why the psychologist Michael Hyland has put forward his “intelligent body” hypothesis. Dr Hyland takes further the idea that there is no strict division between brain and the rest of the body. He proposes that intelligence is not confined to the brain, but rather it is distributed throughout the body in an extended network.

Medicine, if it is to get to grips with health rather than just confront disease, must comprehend the living body’s extraordinary ability to maintain conditions stable enough for life to happen at all. Too hot or too cold, too acid or too alkaline, too many waste products or not enough nutrients, and we die. The same goes for the body’s internal architecture and outer form, for they are not fixed, but are constantly broken down and rebuilt.

The sense of self, too, although it seems stable, is formed out of a whirl of sense impressions and memories. At a biochemical level, the properties that emerge from the network provide its ability to self-organise, control the myriad chemical reactions that provide energy and produce the living tissues. At the structural level, these so-called “emergent” properties allow the body to move through space and constantly reconstruct itself; at the level of awareness they give us the ability to sense, respond to, and reflect on our experiences.

Complexity and Medicine

Complexity is the name for the universal tendency of parts to organise themselves into more complex wholes.We humans are so much a part of our world that we often take many of its properties and qualities for granted.We fail to remember that weight, water, light and warmth, although totally familiar to us, are also rather mysterious. Complexity can be seen at the most basic level: who could predict, for instance, that bringing the gases hydrogen and oxygen together would give you something to drink! Complexity operates too on the biggest scale of all. After the Big Bang, when time and space first began, our pattern-forming universe produced stars and galaxies; planets formed. Life – miraculously it seems, but also quite naturally – emerged out of this universal process.

Organisms are alive precisely because the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. Medical scientists until now have tried to understand life by isolating its biochemical properties in a test tube, or by examining dead tissues.While this approach has certainly proved very useful in understanding how the human body works, it can only reveal our chemical nature. Modern technology now lets us see into the intricate design and workings of the living body. As science discovers how the parts communicate, form wholes and self-organise, medicine will change quite profoundly. It is too soon to know what medicine would look like if it were based on mind–body connectedness and the flow of information that keeps us well, but there are similarities between such an approach and the traditions that gave birth to complementary medicine.

These traditions all include notions of mind–body wholeness, energy flow, harmonious living and therapeutic relationships, along with knowledge of how to encourage self-healing. Science is becoming increasingly interested in this territory and the possibility that complementary therapies might provide us with further clues about human health. Complex processes are not like sequential ones, where A causes B, which causes C.Whole-system processes are networked; they happen all at once, and communication is across the whole system in all directions, so C influences A even as B influences Z – and back! This realisation has enormous practical implications: scientists developing artificial intelligence, or predicting weather patterns or ecological consequences, need to know how to predict whole-system behaviour. It is of even greater relevance for medicine to understand how the processes of life interweave, and how the whole and the part continually reshape one another.

Three Mind–Body Levels

We can think of the human mind–body as comprising three interdependent levels: biochemical, structural and psycho-social . These levels provide a framework for thinking about aspects of our health. They are interrelated, so an impact on one level affects the others. The holistic nature of complementary medicines aims to encompass all three levels, although clearly some types of therapy are directed at a particular level: herbal medicines and nutritional supplements are more biochemical in their effect than structural therapies, such as chiropractic and massage, while cognitive behavioural therapy and other talking therapies act mainly on the psycho-social level.

In regulating itself, the body draws on all three levels: the biochemical level that fuels body processes; the structural level that supports the organs and body systems; and the psycho-social level that governs thoughts, desires, actions and emotions. For example, after an exhausting and stressful day, a good night’s sleep allows the biochemical furnace to cool down, the body’s structures to rest and relax, and the mind to assimilate the day’s events. If challenges become intense, unrelenting or too frequent, the body and mind’s extraordinary capacity to adapt can be overwhelmed. Coping relies on energy and order, but if a person’s resources are depleted then the ability to maintain balance is undermined. Defence and repair systems may begin to fail if the integrity of cell chemistry, body structures and mind are threatened.

The underlying factors upsetting self-regulation can be obvious or subtle, intense or diffuse, short-lived or prolonged. They can include a short-term, severe injury, for example from a car accident, a bereavement triggering depression, a spell of rushed working lunches resulting in bouts of indigestion, or flu caught from exposure to an infected person. In their own important ways, the resulting ill-effects tell us something vital about how well we are adapting to the demands placed on us; they are a message about things we need to attend to, and changes that we might have to make.

Challenges affect all three levels – psycho-social, structural and biochemical – and, since they are entwined, when there is a problem in one, it can affect how the other two work. For example, a biochemical disorder such as a nutritional deficiency or food sensitivity may have psychological consequences, such as depression. Loneliness, depression, bereavement and inner conflicts can undermine immune system defences, while a structural injury might cause pain that then undermines well-being and relationships.

The implications are obvious: give your body what it needs to work well and avoid the things that harm it. This may include taking up yoga, meditation or dance, giving up smoking, seeing friends or making dietary changes. Do whatever you need to do to nourish yourself intellectually, emotionally and spiritually.

The Body in Flux

The new medicine requires a new way of thinking about the body. The body is alive and constantly on the move, constantly changing. The body is also constantly healing and renewing itself – cells die and are replaced, food is processed and oxygen pours in to fuel the biochemical furnaces that give us energy. Physical and mental demands are met by continual adjustments in our internal systems. On the one hand, these demands may be as straightforward as those involved in taking this book off the shelf, sitting down with a cup of coffee and reading; or they may be demands that the body finds hard to deal with.

These difficult challenges could involve something as tiny as abnormal genes, chemical toxins or disease-causing germs, or something much larger, such as the constant strain of an uncomfortable working position, the effects of an injury, or widespread hardening of the arteries. More subtle kinds of distress, such as the emotional strain of a difficult relationship, financial pressures or the death of a loved one, can also present the body with challenges. Common sense tells us that how well we feel must influence our approach to life, and that when negative influences outweigh the natural resilience of our body and mind, we become ill.

Science bears these ideas out. The latest research shows that the connection between mind and body is complete; one influences the other. It is also clear that the mind–body has built-in healing responses of its own that we can tap into. Many scientists and doctors suspect that natural healing techniques can mobilize this self-healing response to prevent illness and promote better health and well-being, even in someone who has a chronic disease. Some people are convinced that the future of medicine depends on our learning how to make use of the response. Modern medicine, although skilled in waging war on disease, has lost its knowledge of self-healing. Various people have compared medical science to war: weapons can backfire and wars tend to increase the enemy’s aggressiveness.

Looking at medicine today, we can see how the “arms race” between science and disease has led to over-reliance on technology, high costs and side effects, and more resistant infections. What is missing is a way of building up the mind–body’s natural defenses. This is something the world’s traditional medical systems know about.

These systems have had to rely not on scientific research but on their traditional knowledge and skills to trigger self-healing through touch, words, movement, art, the products of nature, food, exercise and harmonious living.