A Body Divided: Toward Reunification of the Paradigm

Abstract

Symptoms without obvious physical cause are commonly reported in medical practice; when chronic, they can have a significant influence on patients' well-being. When traditional medicine is unable to provide relief, sufferers of such conditions often turn to alternative therapies. Western medicine has historically viewed the body through a silo model, i.e, a whole consisting of disparate body systems with well-defined boundaries and little relevant interaction. This model ignores the myriad of interactive functions that each system must require and hinders understanding of syndromes for which etiology is not confined to one organ system, particularly those with a strong psychosocial component. In addition, this model is increasingly shown to be antiquated: recent evidence of Pavlovian conditioning of physiological processes (i.e., placebo and nocebo affects, immune system conditioning), physiological distinctions between multiple personalities, and the pervasive effects of psychosocial stress on every body system (down to the level of the genome) demand a new paradigm. As our appreciation expands of the innumerable interactions between body systems as well as those between all body systems and the mind, the human body is revealed to be a complex web of neurological, immunologic and endocrine interactions that in turn modulate a fluid epigenetic base. Firmly planted in the rationalistic viewpoint that is the foundation of Western medicine, but inclusive of the more wholistic (mind and body) view of Eastern medicine, a nexus model which views the body as the series of multi-connected, interacting physiological webs is essential to continued progress in medicine.