The Sickening Mind: Brain, Behaviour, Immunity and Disease电子书

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

1: The Body of Knowledge

Opening shots

Iraqi SCUDs and Chinese grandmothers

Roundheads and Cavaliers

Some completely fictitious case histories

Invisible worms

Chronic fatigue syndrome

2: Shadows on the Sun

Death, disaster and voodoo

Trouble, strife and sickness

Life events

The mind and the common cold

3: Psyche’s Machine: The Inside Story

The perception of sickness

Bad behaviour

Mind over immune matter

Understanding immunity

Autoimmunity

Measuring immunity

The mind – immunity connections

4: Mind and Immunity

What can the mind do to the immune system?

Bereavement and nuclear disasters

Spaceflight, exams and other nastiness

Does it matter?

What can the immune system do to the mind?

Depression

Immune conditioning

Immune conditioning and disease

Some allergic history revisited

The strange story of the left-handed brain

The wonderful world of herpes

5: The Demon Stress

What is Stress?

The biology of stress

Stress, immunity and health

The quality of stress

Control, control and control

The joy of stress

The stress-seekers

6: Other People

Hell is other people? – relationships as stressors

Hell is alone? – the harmful effects of isolation

Michael Henchard’s will

How does it work?

Social relationships and immunity

The lonely future

7: The Wages of Work

The toad work

Who suffers and why?

The scourge of unemployment

8: Sick at Heart

Hearts and minds

The mind in sudden cardiac death and heart disease

Coronary-prone personalities and heart disease

The Type A behaviour pattern

Type A – the evidence

Anger and hostility

How does it work?

Biological reactivity and the Type A person

9: The Mind of the Crab

The mind in cancer

Is there a cancer-prone personality?

Some fictional type Cs

Psychological influences on survival

How does it work?

10: Encumbered with Remedies

Relax!

Exercise!

Those little pink pills

Psychoneuroimmunology and AIDS

Imagery, miracle cures and other exotica

Kill or Cure?

11: Exorcising the Ghost in the Machine

That old mind – body problem

The grip of dualism

Some ancient history

René Descartes and the separation of mind from body

Descartes’ demise

12: A Fresh Pair of Lenses

Development

Mothers and Offspring

Evolution

Sick by design

Genes for disease

Diseases of modern life

Evolutionary arms races

The functions of unpleasantness

Why does stress make us ill?

Darwin’s illness

Parting shots

Keep Reading

References

Index

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Notes

Praise

About the Publisher