He quickly focused instead on a trip he and his pediatrician wife took a couple of months earlier to an impoverished village in Laos. Bringing their own medical supplies, they set up a clinic in a barren cement room and worked from seven A.M. to seven P.M., treating the hundreds of people who lined up to see them every day. Parents carried babies for miles or even overnight to get care. Remembering the scenes now, Dr. Liponis shook his head and gave a wry smile. “The people in Laos we met had no clothes, no food, and they were drinking river water, and yet they found ways to make themselves happy. And here I am so lucky and have so much!”
His body probably suffered from less inflammation when he felt grateful and valuable in poorest Laos than when he traveled with the rich in Singapore, feeling stressed and (slightly) envious. “When I’m giving, helping, and not expecting anything, I get a level of contentment and satisfaction that’s unmatched. There’s something magical that happens when you’re helping someone,” he said.
I told Dr. Liponis how much I appreciated his help right now, even if we weren’t in Laos. He had patients waiting, so he gave me a big hug as I left and promised to be available for anything else I needed. Outside again, I wandered through the grounds of Canyon Ranch, thinking about the connections between gratitude and the immune system and how my whole view of health had just been turned upside down. I had always considered illness as something palpably explained—a pathogen or bacteria attacks and makes you sick and that’s that. But understanding that the white blood cells can respond to our emotions changed everything. A cold isn’t just a cold if your immune system knows (or at least has been affected by) whether your current emotional state veers toward grateful and loving or angry and scared.
I wanted to know more about Candace Pert, so when I got home, I downloaded her book and watched some of the talks she had given on the molecules of emotions. I came across a PBS special in which she had appeared called Healing and the Mind, hosted by the respected and very serious journalist Bill Moyers. Animated and warm, Pert explained to Moyers that receptors of various types encrusted every cell in the body. Peptides were strings of amino acids, like pearls on a necklace, that tickled the receptors on the surface of the cells. Neuropeptides had first been discovered in the brain, but scientists had now mapped them on every cell in the body. “Everything in your body is run by messenger molecules,” she explained.
Moyers carefully asked if it was correct that the mind talked to the body through the neuropeptides. She hesitated. As a way of simply explaining the science, he had it right, but she wouldn’t let him get away with the wording. “Why are you making the mind outside of the body?” she asked. He finally gave a little smile and admitted that he’d always been taught to see the mind and body as separate. Pert suggested the time had come to end the turf war (started by Descartes and the Catholic Church, she said) between science in one realm and soul, mind, consciousness, and emotions in the other. They discussed it, and when Moyers asked another question, she responded, “The ‘me’ that you say is ‘me,’ you’re still thinking it’s your brain. The ‘me’ that’s you is your whole body. It’s the wisdom of the body. Intelligence is in every cell of your body. The mind is not confined to the space above the neck. The mind is throughout the brain and body.”
Pert’s elimination of any distinction between mind and body required a new kind of thinking. The words to consider them as one don’t yet exist! She had spent years trying to prove from a neurochemical perspective what we could all intuitively see—that our bodies respond very quickly to our emotional states. When worried or tired or stressed, we all have our own vulnerabilities—some people get colds and others get backaches and many struggle with stomach problems as likely to be tied to anxiety as to gluten. I succumbed now and then to migraine headaches. I’d always tried to connect them to classic triggers like red wine, cheese, and chocolate, but none ever panned out for me. I’d tried adding caffeine (since I don’t drink coffee) and cutting it out entirely (I still liked Diet Coke), but neither made a difference. Since my first full-blown migraine hit me ten years ago, on the very night that I had to speak at a big bookstore to promote a new novel, I always secretly suspected the headaches flared under stress. But even that theory didn’t hold up. Big events came and went without the need for so much as an Advil. But I might be having a perfectly nice and unexceptional day when suddenly—whomp. My head ached and my eyes blurred and I could barely stand up.
Could gratitude cure a migraine? It sounded kind of woo-woo, but then, Mark Liponis was not the woo-woo type, nor (as far as I could tell) was Candace Pert, and both of them believed that positive emotions infiltrated every cell. I decided that the next time I had a blasting headache, I would close my eyes and summon feelings of gratitude—for my family, my health, and all that was good in my life. I was eager to try it out, but then I realized that my new generalized state of gratitude already seemed to be keeping the headaches at bay. It had been months since I’d gone to my medicine chest for one of the powerful prescription pills I kept there. Could it be that the gratitude hormones had taken the immune system off high alert generally and lowered the inflammation in my body? My personal experience didn’t count as a rigorous medical study, but I was amazed to realize how much better I had been feeling. My most vulnerable stress point hadn’t been activated in a while.
Excited by my new insights on mind and body, I got in touch with Linda Stone, a tech visionary I had met a couple of months earlier at the World Science Festival gala. The festival turns science into play on the streets of New York and was started by the acclaimed physicist Brian Greene and his wife Tracy Day, an award-winning TV producer. Between them, they brought power, glitz, and celebrity cachet to science. I had read Greene’s bestselling book The Elegant Universe when my son Zach was a college physics major and then got his next book, too. I kept them both on my nightstand. But one night I picked up one when I had really been in the middle of the other and never noticed. Still, while you’re reading, Greene makes you believe you can understand these complex theories. I was ever grateful to him for giving me enough insights into string theory (which apparently is not little violins floating in the universe) that I could talk to Zach at dinner.*
At the gala, Linda and I happened to be seated at the same table. (Dr. Marty Seligman, the professor of positive psychology from UPenn, joined us too. A good table.) The honoree that evening was geneticist Dr. Mary-Claire King, a rock star in the world of research scientists, the Bono of biologists. She discovered the BRCA1 gene that is connected to breast cancer and was responsible for the finding that humans and apes are 99 percent genetically identical. She led a project in Argentina to find children stolen under the military dictatorship and, using genomic sequencing, reunite them with their biological families.
Dr. King watched in delight as Broadway performers came onstage to celebrate her triumphs in song and dance. She admitted that a scientist rarely felt so appreciated, and in an interview, she explained why you had to grab the gratitude when you could. “I usually tell scientists that when a discovery turns out right, you can be happy for about twenty minutes. For a long time, everyone had been saying ‘you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong’ and by tomorrow they’ll all be saying ‘we knew it all along, we knew it all along.’ So you have to enjoy the moment.”
Being in a room with Brian Greene and Mary-Claire King felt like watching the finals at Wimbledon—you knew you could never be as good but you might get some ideas on how to up your own game. Both had used their scientific genius (no other word for it) for a bigger cause. With her strong humanitarian instincts, Dr. King had extended her genetic identification in Argentina to other countries and needs. Dr. Greene was bringing his love of science to everyone in earshot. Theirs were the ultimate expressions of gratitude—using their rare brilliance to give back, give more, and make the world better.
At the end of the evening, I shared my view with Linda, noting that I seemed to be se
eing everything through the lens of gratitude these days.
“Gratitude? We have to talk,” she said, grabbing my arm as we walked out of the stunning room in the Jazz at Lincoln Center building, where dinner had been served, into an equally stunning lobby for dessert.
We sat down together on an upholstered bench, and as we started talking about gratitude, something clicked. And clicked and clicked and clicked. When we finally left, ours were the last two coats in the checkroom.
Now when I called her, Linda told me that she was coming in from her home in Seattle to New York the following week, and we agreed to meet for lunch. I suggested a rooftop patio, but when we got there, Linda vetoed it as too hot. Sitting down at a cooler table inside, she calmly told the waiter about her very extensive food allergies. “Can you help me?” she asked pleasantly. She didn’t get frazzled, so neither did he, and the lunch went smoothly.
In the relatively early years of high tech, Linda had been an executive at both Apple Computer and Microsoft, and became known for her pioneering work in multimedia and social media. She coined the phrase “continuous partial attention” to describe the always-on mode that occurs when we try to stay constantly connected. Afraid of missing something, we remain in the ever-alert state once reserved for crisis. (With our minds in overdrive, maybe the white blood cells are too?) Linda eventually began researching what happens to our bodies when we deal with technology. She talked about “e-mail apnea” to explain how we stop breathing when we sit hunched over a computer. (The solution—be aware of your posture and breathing and get up at least once an hour.)
Linda told me that after she left Microsoft, she suffered a series of setbacks. Her house in Seattle burned down and many of her possessions were destroyed. The apartment she moved into flooded when the sprinkler system short-circuited. Worst of all, she was struck by serious medical problems, including an extensive jaw infection that led to several painful surgeries.
“I reached a serious state of overwhelm,” she said.
Wanting to turn the misfortune around, she started to keep a gratitude journal. But she described it as “gratitude through gritted teeth.” Every night she’d write something down, but she didn’t really feel it.
“Instead of gratitude from the mind, I needed it from the body, heart, and spirit,” she said.
Dr. Liponis would have liked her approach, which involved staying in the present and noticing the good things around her. By being centered and calm, she tried to let her body feel appreciation and express it to others (as she did with our hardworking waiter at lunch). She referred to it as “embodied gratitude”—a phrase I immediately liked.
Given her medical issues, Linda began focusing on how to use technology to improve health and well-being. Giving a presentation to some high-level tech executives one day, she had an experimental device with her that measured heart-rate variability. It turned red when you were at a high stress level and flashed green when you calmed down. She started showing the breathing techniques that could lower stress. It should have been a simple demonstration, but even as she did one breathing exercise after another, the device stayed stubbornly red, red, and red.
Trying to figure out her next move, Linda looked around the audience and realized how many of the people sitting there were friends who had been helpful to her. She decided to take a moment from her talk to express her appreciation. She noticed one person in particular and, feeling a wave of gratitude, began to thank him profusely.
“I’d barely started when suddenly people in the audience started calling out ‘It’s green! It’s green’” Linda told me, still slightly awed by the experience. “Expressing gratitude had changed my bodily responses more profoundly and rapidly than any breathing technique!”
Fascinated by what she’d found, Linda began trying it out on others. When a Microsoft executive complained about her stress levels and insisted breathing techniques didn’t work for her, Linda explained that thinking about someone you loved or appreciated could also help lower stress. The woman’s husband happened to be standing nearby, so Linda gave her the device and told her to try. The exec took it and focused. Nothing happened. But after a minute or so, it suddenly flashed green.
According to Linda, the woman turned to her husband with a big smile and said, “Sorry, honey. Thinking about you didn’t work—but thinking about our cats did it!’”
Whether we take the time to appreciate cats, husbands, waiters, or the tech guy, our body responds with lowered stress and (potentially) improved health. The key is taking the time to fully experience the embodied gratitude. Even as she struggled with her pain and health issues, Linda particularly appreciated one doctor who regularly asked her, “What part of you is feeling good?” Looking for the positive kept her from feeling hopeless and despairing. She started noticing what worked in her body instead of what didn’t. It made all the difference.
“The whole happiness movement drives me crazy because it’s so binary. Are you happy or not?” Linda complained as we nibbled berries for dessert. “The real question should be—how can I appreciate this moment more? What feels good right now? There is always some positive in the moment that we can notice and appreciate.”
When I left our lunch, I walked quickly down the street, feeling grateful for my own healthy body. I thought of Dr. Liponis’s positive mantra: I have two arms, two legs, I’m breathing. Life is good. I repeated it to myself a few times and started to smile.
I turned up Madison Avenue and noticed a woman walking just ahead of me who was long legged, long haired, and model thin. I thought of a game I used to play when I was younger and spotted women like that (New York is full of them). If by some magic, I could trade bodies with her, would I do it? I’d still be me, but when I looked in the mirror, I’d be lanky and slim hipped instead of (slightly) pear-shaped. I could wear tight jeans with over-the-knee boots and have a voluptuous chest instead of my (slightly) flat one.
Kind of an obvious trade, right?
But this time, I hesitated to call my magic genie. According to the rules of my game, I got my doppelgänger’s whole form, inside and out. My own body worked just fine. Would I risk the health I had for something unknown? I walked by the woman on Madison Avenue now and took a closer look. She sure looked darned healthy. She had glowing skin and a tiny butt and was standing in front of a designer store where she wouldn’t have any trouble finding clothes that fit.
I smiled at her and she smiled back. Yes, she had been genetically blessed to be beautiful. It probably would have made my life easier, but I was grateful for what I had. My genie could stay in the bottle.
Two arms, two legs, I’m breathing.
As Dr. Liponis had pointed out, life was already good.
—
When I got home—still in my own body—I thought about how we know both so much about health and so little. It’s wrongheaded to suggest that all illness is caused by a mind-set or that you can will yourself to be well. There are many positive people taken too young by serious disease. We can’t control everything. But we can give ourselves the best advantage possible.
Back in the mid-nineteenth century, Louis Pasteur introduced the world to bacteria as a cause of sickness. More recently, the Human Genome Project allowed us to map every individual’s genetic blueprint and identify the specific genes that cause many diseases. But illness or health isn’t a mathematical equation. You can have a gene for a disease and not get the disease. You can be exposed to bacteria and viruses and stay well. The exact mechanisms are still unclear, but we can’t overlook those molecules of emotion.
In one study begun back in the 1990s, Dr. Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University did extensive interviews with volunteers to determine their levels of stress. He then injected them with a common cold virus.* The higher their stress, the more susceptible they were to developing the cold. That sounds like voodoo—but other scientists have praised it as one of t
he most elegant proofs yet done of the connection between emotion (in this case stress) and health.
Proving the connection was a great start. But figuring out why it happened was trickier. Dr. Cohen kept at it and not long ago came up with the actual physiological mechanism that he believed linked stress and disease. I got bleary-eyed reading a bunch of medical abstracts outlining his position, but the short explanation is that stress affects the body’s ability to regulate inflammation—and that can lead to the development or progression of disease. (The longer story involves how stress alters the effectiveness of the hormone cortisol to regulate the inflammatory response. Immune cells become resistant to cortisol’s regulation. But trust me, you don’t need to know.)
I was back to what Dr. Liponis had told me—that gratitude keeps us well because it is an antidote to stress. When you are grateful, all the signposts of stress, like anger, anxiety, and worry, diminish. So the simple medical line goes this way: Gratitude lowers stress. Less stress means less inflammation. Less inflammation means you are not as susceptible to disease.
I thought again about my migraine headaches. My initial idea had been that when the next one struck, I would try writing in my gratitude journal or thinking grateful thoughts to make it disappear. But so far the migraines had (happily) refused to make a comeback. And maybe that was even more significant. Anecdotes aren’t science and I wasn’t going to report this to a medical journal. But I was convinced that being grateful these many months had changed my stress levels, hormones, physiology, and inflammation level sufficiently to scare off the headaches altogether. Maybe it wouldn’t be forever. But I’d take it for now.
CHAPTER 10
Wonder Woman on the Appalachian Trail
Happy to discover the power of nature in increasing gratitude
The Gratitude Diaries Page 16