One major gap in knowledge that I think is hurting us and is hurting population health is that we've taken the mind out of medicine.
And in an effort to really capture the biology of disease,
We've taken the mind outside of the picture because we can't sequence this.
We can't look at it under the microscope.
It's not a thing.
And then the model says,
If it's not a thing that you can see that has molecules and a structure,
Then it's not real.
And it's not worth thinking about because you can't drug it.
You can't kind of design a drug against it or you can't excise it with a scalpel.
Or the things we can see with our eyes and we can touch with our hands,
From that perspective,
Is not relevant.
And I think that is not true.
And we have many examples of this.
And there are so many disease conditions,
So many So much of human suffering is not rooted in biology,
But is rooted in trauma and in difficult things that people have experienced.
And we've all experienced trauma.
We've all been through some very difficult things that has heard us.
And in many ways,
This is what has shaped us.
So those things are really meaningful,
But when they're not properly metabolized,
Right,
When you experience something and then you don't fully digest it,
Right,
Energetically perhaps,
You haven't fully metabolized a traumatic experience,
It's still in you.
Right.
And we know this because we keep thinking about this and we ruminate.
And now we're like 40,
50,
60 year old adults.
And we're still thinking about this terrible thing that happened to us when we were a kid.
And that shapes your biology.
That changes molecules in your body and that changes hormones in your blood and that changes activity patterns in your brain and that ends up shaping your behavior.
And ends up determining what you believe you can do and what you can't do.
And it changed your whole life trajectory.
These things are things of the mind.
Those experiences,
Those traumatic experiences or those beautiful experiences,
These are of the domains of the mind.
And in many cases,
People who end up in a really dark place as adults with severe mental illness,
What takes them out of this dark place where they can find meaning in life again and when they can Heal.
Is not,
You know,
Medications or other things.
It's something in their life that happens,
Right?
They meet someone that really brings them new life,
New energy,
Or they have some spiritual awakening or they have some,
You know,
They move,
Place,
And then this new environment,
Now they're a new part of themselves can be expressed or they can process or metabolize some older experience.
I think it's deeply true that the mind matters to human health.
The mind moves our energy.
The mind moves our bodies.
And pulling the mind out of medicine,
I think,
Was a big mistake.
It's allowed some great things because medicine,
Without the complexity of the mind,
You look at the body,
It's like,
Oh,
Molecular machine,
What can I do with this?
And then we've perfected amazing surgeries,
Right?
So if you're in a car accident and you have an artery that's busted and you have blood going all over,
It's very useful to see the body as a machine.
So in that case,
A model is very accurate and very useful.
If you're a neurosurgeon,
And you need to do brain surgery,
It's very good that you see the body as a machine.
You're excising cancer or something like this.
If you're treating an external invader,
Like a pathogen,
Bacteria,
Then you use molecules like antibiotics and you kill that,
And that's great.
So medicine has been able to develop these amazing tools because it uses an approximation of this model that the body is a machine.
And we've benefited as you know,
Society.
But I think the mistake and where we lost touch of the truth is that there are a lot of other parts of what health and being human is,
Which is about the mind and the human experience,
That actually shapes biology every second of your life.
Every second of your life.
Your mind is controlling your body.
And the mind can clearly make you sick.
You know,
There's a lot of good evidence about this now.
And you can even use a mind to treat some symptoms of illness.
That's called the placebo effect,
Right?
And the power of suggestion.
And under hypnosis,
People can change the temperature of different parts of their bodies,
Can change the activity of different parts of the brain.
This is all real.
And it's real because the mind is actually an expression of what the body is,
Right?
The mind and the body are two expressions of the same thing,
Which is an energetic movement.
So by pulling the mind out,
We've kind of made ourselves blind to this beautiful complexity of what life is and what health is and how health develops and evolves over time.
And the movement of health,
Which is healing,
This process of regaining health,
Is one that deeply involves this beautiful combination of body and mind,
This body-mind unit.
It's the unit that heals.
It's not just the body.
It's not just the mind.
And this way,
Then,
Part of what I feel moved to do is to help bring the mind back into medicine,
Which is moving us towards the truth.
This is really important.
Bring discipline in those fields of neuroimmunology,
Really important.
Psychoneuroimmunology is another field.
Psychoneuroendocrinology,
Bringing the endocrine system,
Realizing the mind can change hormones.
The mind can change the immune system and the brain can regulate immunity.
These fields emerged.
In a search for truth,
Trying to understand how a disease process or kind of a living process.
Was influenced by both the immune system and the nervous system.
So a lot of those fields have emerged in the last 20 years,
Recognizing that a single perspective is not sufficient.
So what we've done with mitochondrial psychobiology and the reason why,
You know,
That term came up in 2019 and I changed the name of our lab from mitochondrial signaling lab,
Which was a very kind of cellular molecular grounded perspective into mitochondrial psychobiology lab,
Was in search for that truth by trying to understand how the system works and how energy and how mitochondria contribute to the movement of health and the movement of life that is in,
You know,
In us.
So we started to focus on mitochondria as a focus,
As a scientific entry point for a cure.
Integrating the mind and the body.
So the psyche is the Latin for the mind,
And then the soma,
The body,
Psycho,
Biology,
Bring this together into a more complete truth.
