Emotional Toxins And Their Significance In Weight Regulation

Emotional Memory

Many of us are virtually ruled by our emotions. Emotions influence our every waking moment; they dictate who our friends are, our attitudes towards ourselves, other people and life in general; and they determine the important decisions we make.

Our emotions form a critical aspect of the mind-body connection and can determine whether you can successfully cleanse yourself and lose weight or whether you desperately want to hold on to excess weight as a defense mechanism.

We know how physical toxins impair our body, compromise its functioning, congest our organs and systems, and ultimately drive us to put on weight. Let us now discuss emotional toxins and their significance in weight regulation.

An emotion starts with a thought or image in the mind – stressful, calming or exciting. Every thought and feeling is instantly translated into biochemical compounds within the brain and within every other part of the body.

Sustained emotional states therefore alter our very biochemistry and internal physiology. When they are strong enough and last long enough, they are apparent even in our physical appearance.

In fact, every bit of mental activity leaves us with a specific physical sensation, known as emotion. Emotions are composites of both mental impulses and physical changes, and they express the totality of one’s health at any given time.

These biochemical processes are essentially hormonal changes. For instance, if you think of a stressful situation like an altercation you had with someone you dislike, the body reacts by releasing the stress hormones adrenaline, cortisol and cholesterol. These hormones are released into the bloodstream in response to anger, fear or rejection. These states constitute what psychologists call the ‘flight or fight’ response, which is a survival mechanism.

However, if these hormones are secreted in an ongoing manner – when you are in a prolonged state of uncertainty, anxiety, fear or dejection – they could damage your blood vessels and impair your immune system.

Your happy emotions, on the other hand, manifest as endorphins, serotonin, interleukin II, among others, that relate to experiences of pleasure and satisfaction. If you produce enough of these chemicals, you may even be able to arrest the aging process.

Controlled studies have shown that you can reduce your biological age by 10 to 15 years within 10 days, provided your interpretation of your life experience undergoes rapid and radical changes. Alternatively, you can also put on 20 extra years within a single day if you enter a state of hopelessness and depression.

Hormones produce extremely powerful effects, both positive and negative. Yet even more powerful than hormones are the thoughts and intentionsthat trigger them.

Research has shown that all our thoughts, feelings, emotions, desires, intentions, beliefs and realizations are instantly translated into neuropeptides or neurotransmitters in the brain. These hormones are the chemical messengers of information. The messages they deliver determine how your body functions.

Scientists have already identified over a hundred neuropeptides, and many more are believed to exist. A nerve cell or neuron produces and uses these peptides to transmit information to other neurons. This form of transmission, called ‘firing’, takes place in each of the millions of neurons in our brain, all at the same time!

As soon as they are used, peptides are neutralized by enzymes, erasing all physical evidence of that thought or feeling. But make no mistake: the experience is stored in the memory bank of your consciousness or subconscious. If you need to, or if there is an appropriate stimulus in your environment, you will be able to recall or remember it.

This brings us to a fundamental question that is currently the subject of research and experimentation: is the brain the ultimate authority of your body? How do the millions of neurons know which type of neurotransmitter they need to make for each specific thought, at the very moment it occurs?

What causes them to ‘fire’ simultaneously throughout the brain and nervous system? And more stunning, how does one neuron know what the other neuron thinks when there is no direct physical connection between the two?

In recent years, scientists have discovered that these chemical messengers are not made by brain cells alone but also by all the other cells in the body. This brings us to the next question: Do we think only with our brain cells or also with other cells in the body?

There is indeed enough scientific evidence to show that skin cells, liver cells, heart cells, immune cells, etc all have the same remarkable ability to think, emote and make decisions as brain cells.

Have you ever stopped to wonder how certain phrases in the English language originated? Such as “I have a gut feeling” or adjectives such as ‘bilious’, ‘phlegmatic’ and ‘sanguine’, which relate to an old system of belief that temperament and personality types originated from four ‘humors’ in the body: yellow bile, black bile, phlegm and blood.

Whether the ‘four-humors’ view is accurate or not, the fact is that since time immemorial, medicine has related behavior and emotion to the physical body, and this is the crux of a holistic approach.

Some holistic practitioners also believe that specific emotional states are localized in specific organs, such as anger in the liver; fear in the kidneys, and depression in the lungs.

Imagine the implications this would have for individuals who are overweight. Not only is a toxic body railing against losing weight; the mind is also cooperating with it!

Toxic Beliefs

Individuals who are preoccupied with negative attitudes and emotions – fear, anger, resentment, unresolved conflict, jealousies, pessimism – are said to live in an emotionally toxic state.

Since we would be overwhelmed by our emotions if we experienced all of them consciously all of the time, we tend to suppress or repress them or store them away in the subconscious.

But even when these feelings and attitudes don’t exist at the conscious level, the negative emotional energy remains embedded in our body’s energy fields and they continue to alter our biochemistry and health.

An emotionally toxic state invariably targets the organs of elimination, simply because it is these organs that rid our bodies of chemical poisons and metabolic waste: the liver, kidneys, skin, lungs and colon.

Unresolved emotions and conflicts block the energy or life force and energy fields of these organs. When they malfunction, physical toxins build up and congest our systems and toxicity levels rise. Now emotional toxicity and physical poisons begin to work in tandem, creating a vicious cycle of toxicity and weight gain.

If you take a deep breath and think about it, the solution to weight gain is clear. In a nutshell, this means: As you gained, so you shall lose.

Classic methods of weight loss, either through dieting or exercise, push your body to its limits. They suggest that you must exert your will and summon every last ounce of energy to ‘conquer’ the battle of the bulge.

Weight reduction the natural way recommends gentle and gradual cleansing and detoxification. It is a process that restores your body and mind to their natural, optimal state of functioning.

Since this is how your body and mind were meant to be, it makes logical sense to seek equilibrium and balance, rather than punish your mind and body into an exceedingly uncomfortable space. After all, why blame your body for being overweight?

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This is an excerpt from my book FEEL GREAT, LOSE WEIGHT