Immune Diseases and Psychosomatics: What are the psychosomatic causes of autoimmune diseases? Exploring the consequences of chronic stress.

The Psychosomatic Causes: Stress, Habits, and Autoimmune Diseases

Having a beer, a glass of wine, or a bar of chocolate in the evening— who doesn’t know that? It’s for “relaxation,” as it’s often said. Of course, we all understand that this is not healthy in the long run, and these cherished rituals can lead to weight gain due to consuming too many calories late at night. But why can’t we stop? Why do we feel that it’s good for us, helping us relax? In this article, I want to examine these habits from a biochemical perspective because there are scientifically researched metabolic connections.

Instead of tormenting our bodies with diets, it would often be much easier to observe lifestyle habits, stress factors, and metabolic processes and then make corresponding changes in our lifestyle.

Metabolism, Stress, and Autoimmune Diseases

Not all stress is bad, as we all know. Stress is also good and healthy within certain limits. Stress motivates us to achieve our best, can be inspiring and very stimulating. Stress makes us creative. And as long as we can solve and cope with challenges, stress boosts our self-confidence and makes us feel successful—explaining why we love and need stress.

However, the health problems of autoimmune diseases are related to chronic stress. To be more specific, stress that accumulates in the body, cannot be processed anymore, and stress that arises when we feel unable to cope with our challenges in the long run.

Besides mentally taxing us, chronic stress can make us sick—by raising heart rate and blood pressure, creating tension in all parts of the muscles, causing digestive problems, and gradually leading to chronic changes in hormonal metabolism and autonomic inner control.

Stress: Self-Medication through Alcohol and Chocolate

There are indeed metabolic reasons why we reach for chocolate or alcohol after a stressful day. They contain various substances capable of lowering our stress levels or cortisol levels and releasing endorphins. So, it’s essentially a form of “self-medication” when we unconsciously develop an intense appetite for them.

The Two Regulation Mechanisms for Stress

The body has two regulation mechanisms for stress. The more well-known one is the Autonomic Nervous System: the famous fight-or-flight response, where the body reacts musculally and nervously. Hair stands on end, which can lead to hair loss with chronic stress, digestion is slowed down, leading to digestive problems or stomach ulcers with chronic stress, and the pulse and heart rate increase, potentially causing hypertension.

The second is hormonal control. During stress, hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol are released, produced in the adrenal glands. The increase in cortisol also raises blood sugar levels, as energy is provided for the “fight or flight” response.

The Psychosomatics of Chronic Stress

Normally, these two stress reactions regulate themselves when the stressful moment, conflict, shock, or challenge is overcome. Then, the hormones subside, and everything normalizes. But what happens if the stress doesn’t stop? If it begins anew every day? If we can’t let go even at night, experiencing sleeplessness or mental unrest?

What if we face a permanently unsolvable situation and are exposed to psychosocial stress? If this stress reaction becomes autonomous inside us?

Physical Consequences of Chronic Stress

Persistent stress leads to the stress reaction not subsiding internally. We feel it, for example, through rapid heartbeats coupled with insomnia or difficulty falling asleep due to a racing mind. Muscles remain tense, and we experience back, neck, or headaches. Digestion no longer functions properly, and we develop an insatiable craving for sugar, fat, or alcohol. Sugar and especially chocolate release neurotransmitters that stimulate insulin production and thus lower blood sugar. Then, we feel like settling down in the evening.

Chronic Stress and Belly Fat

The Metabolic Syndrome develops—belly fat grows!

However, chronic stress increasingly inhibits the sensitivity of cells to insulin. This not only increases the risk of diabetes because the pancreas becomes exhausted in the long run due to this compensatory mechanism but also the risk of hypertension and arterial calcification. Additionally, dangerous belly fat accumulates.

In belly fat, excess cortisol is stored in water. As a result, the abdomen becomes thicker, and the waist disappears—pants fit more tightly, while arms and legs remain unchanged. In this sense, this belly fat is initially an important compensatory and protective mechanism but also a crucial indication that the person has been or is exposed to chronic stress.

Stress Hormones Increase Appetite

Leptin is another hormone responsible for internal control. It is formed in fat cells and inhibits hunger feelings. The stress hormones, massively released, weaken the receptors’ sensitivity to leptin, so, in combination with other unconscious regulatory mechanisms, the appetite is perceived even more heightened.

This can be seen as a cause for mostly nocturnal binge eating attacks, relentlessly pressing for fulfillment.

But how does all of this relate to autoimmune diseases?

Stress Exhausts Organ Systems—Autoimmune Diseases Arise.

I describe these metabolic processes in such detail to make the mostly unconscious compensatory mechanisms more understandable. Many societal prejudices and feelings of guilt still accompany the topic of overweight. But when we engage with these broader connections and understand where these mechanisms come from, we can be a little less hard on ourselves and provide more loving care for what we truly need.

Stress as a Psychosomatic Cause of Autoimmune Diseases

These mentioned compensatory mechanisms are not suitable for the “continuous operation” of the body. The biggest problem—becoming apparent after years—is that the organ systems exhaust themselves, leading to chronic diseases and malfunctions, especially autoimmune diseases.

The relatively young science of Functional Medicine, which deals with the internal function and interaction of organ systems, hormones, and metabolism, repeatedly points this out. However, it is still not understood or ignored by conventional medicine.

In addition to exhaustion depressions originating from an exhausted liver, diabetes, exhaustion of the pancreas, thyroid over- or underfunctioning due to thyroid exhaustion, psoriasis (scaling skin), lupus erythematosus, colitis (intestinal inflammation), and notably rheumatoid arthritis are included in this series of autoimmune diseases.

Autoimmune diseases affect almost every organ system. Due to organ exhaustion, various metabolic derangements occur, leading not only to water retention but also severe rheumatoid pain in bones, joints, and connective tissue.

The afflicted experience intense pain and, at times, suffer from muscle atrophy and uncontrollable weight gain or loss—depending on the metabolic type and disease.

Stress, Acid, and Toxins

Stress itself generates many metabolic by-products that the body must neutralize in complicated digestion and neutralization processes.

In addition to the aforementioned consequences such as the fatigue of the pancreas due to increased sugar and alcohol consumption and the cardiovascular strain, we continue to gain weight because the body can no longer detoxify and eliminate the metabolic by-products. Instead, it “stores” them in the connective tissues.

Autoimmune Diseases—Food as Medicine

A major shift in thinking is needed. With these diseases, deeply rooted in the body and not easily cured like a cold, it’s about a new dimension of illness and health.

Autoimmune diseases educate their people to a healthy lifestyle!

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