I have headaches, how do you cure me?
Paying attention not only to what hurts but where and how he lives, what he eats, what relationships he has, how suffering affects him; that is medical anthropology.
A global vision of the patient.
It was described in Germany in the middle of the last century. Integrative medicine and holistic medicine are born from it.
What have you found out about pain?
When we talk about stress we talk about suffering, it is the cause of 80% or 90% of the pathologies that are seen in consultations.
The psychological suffering?
Human suffering in the sense of destruction of the essence of oneself or of one's immediate environment, which sometimes triggers pain, other times irritable bowel, tinnitus, itching, cystitis...
How does medical anthropology remedy it?
With treatments that are not only pharmacological, and for that it is essential to know neuroscience.
Give me an example.
We know that exercise increases the production of endorphins, lowering the level of stress and anxiety. In the last international pain congress it became clear that kinesitherapy, exercise therapy, is basic to recover a patient with chronic pain.
What else do we know?
That red meat is stressful, and pasta and rice, relaxing. You have to sleep well, and for this, it is better not to watch violent series or movies before going to bed.
Do they affect sleep?
We stay with the last thing we have seen or read, and that can disturb sleep.
Can the level of suffering be measured?
Yes, I have spent years studying and publishing about the markers of suffering in saliva and blood, such as cortisol, testosterone or alpha-amylase, and what their levels tell us.
Why did he go beyond the organ?
Because he saw that most of the rheumatic patients he treated had a component of emotional suffering behind them.
Is there a common condition?
Loneliness, heartbreak and catastrophizing are the cause of many diseases. Quoting Baselga, most cancers are behind a person who suffers.
What can we do in a time when discouragement reigns?
change that trend. It seems that we like to live in everything goes wrong, when the reality is quite different. Now they take the negative records. We need good news, that there is, and optimistic thoughts to be healthy.
I understand.
Patients call me to ask if something new has come out, “a happiness pill”. That pill is exercise, relaxation, good nutrition, good sleep.
Sometimes, not even with those.
Health is influenced by the entire biosphere. We have already seen that the health of animals affects ours, we must aspire to universal health.
Do we continue to alleviate suffering?
I will give you two exciting concepts to overcome suffering: one is illusion, which is the first thing that disappears in people who suffer, to have illusion again for simple things. For that today there are techniques and devices.
gadgets?
Transcranial stimulators that are becoming more sophisticated every day and that act on more specific points in the brain where we know the ability to think about the future lies, activate illusion.
And the other concept?
The gratitude for what you have done, for what you have and for how you are; Although self-esteem is not always at the level, it is something to train that alleviates suffering.
What other methods do you use?
Hypnosis, which is a type of psychotherapy, is helpful with especially traumatic biographies. The patient is awake but very relaxed and sensitive to the phrasing that the professional says trying to modify the suffering that is recorded in his brain.
It works?
Yes, in fact a new type of pain has been described called nociplastic and it is linked to emotion. The WHO recognizes that fibromyalgia, for example, is a nociplastic pain, linked to a strong emotion: a conflictive child, a divorce, a difficult employment relationship, a death...
What other diseases does this type of pain include?
Chronic fatigue, irritable bowel, anorexia. They are diseases linked to culture, they do not exist in Africa.
What is the best thing we can do for ourselves?
What Voltaire said: “I have decided to be happy because it is good for my health”, and that implies trying to have a positive ideation and putting a filter on the prevailing catastrophism.
