Hei (as we say in Norwegian).

Hope you're having a great day so far!

Before we start, I have one request.

If you find this email in your spam folder, please move it to your inbox and mark it as important. This helps us avoid deliverability problems in the future - thanks :)

Now, let's get into the research.

This weeks research left me excited, terrified, angry and hopeful - all at the same time. I'm excited to share what I think is a fundamental idea for the future of this field.

Let me introduce you to Dr. Gabor Maté.

Gabor is a Canadian physician with over 30 years of experience and has written multiple best-selling books on trauma, ADHD, stress and childhood development.

He's also somewhat of a pioneer when it comes to spreading awareness about the mind-body connection.

This week I've been reading his book When The Body Says No. While the book goes deep on multiple topics, which we'll cover in future newsletters, the core idea is that of hidden stress.

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Acute versus Chronic Stress

To understand hidden stress, it's important to distinguish between acute and chronic stress.

Acute stress is the stress you feel in a threatening or challenging situation. For example when running away from an angry polar bear (where my Norwegians at?) or having a presentation at work.

This is when your heart is racing and you have a pit in your stomach.

Chronic stress, on the other hand, is the constant low-level stress you feel when you're in a toxic relationship, when you feel stuck in a bad job or when someone you love falls sick.

This kind of stress feels more like anxious tension in the body, making it difficult to relax.

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Understanding Hidden Stress

Hidden stress is stress that you may not even be consciously aware of. According to Dr. Maté, this kind of stress comes from unresolved emotional experiences, unmet needs or other pressures that an individual has adapted to - often stemming from childhood.

To deal with such experiences, people develop coping mechanisms. While the coping mechanisms help us survive challenging situations in the short term, they can quickly create chronic stress patterns.

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A typical example

A person growing up in a turbulent household with lots of conflict, might try to ease the tension by assuming the role of "the good child" that never acts up, never gets angry and generally doesn't show their own emotions.

This is an unconscious coping mechanism to try to keep the peace in the household. The mechanism might work to help the child survive during their childhood, but problems arise when they subconsciously bring this coping mechanism into adult life.

As an adult, this person might not be able to express their emotions or assert their boundaries. This becomes a personality trait. People say that they are "the nicest person they know" or that "they always down to help".

In reality, they aren't able to say no or let people know how they really feel. This emotional repression is the source of the hidden stress.

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Why are ALS patients so nice?

This is where things get crazy.

In 1970, two Yale psychiatrists documented their impressions of their ALS patients. "They invariably evoked admiration and respect from all staff who came into contact with them."

They concluded that people with ALS all seemed to have two patterns in their life:

1. Being very competent and never asking for help
2. Suppression of negative emotion

In other words, the patient were incredibly polite, positive and independent. “Characteristic was their attempt to avoid asking for help.”

In When The Body Says No, Dr. Maté refers to another research paper from 1998 called "Why Are Patients with ALS So Nice?".

Dr. Asa Wilbourn, senior author of the paper, noted that technicians that would run tests on potential ALS patients would make comments like "This patient cannot have ALS, they're not nice enough."

​Later research also confirms that people that people with ALS are more agreeable (nice) than the average person.

Throughout the book, Maté ties everything together to suggest that our learned behaviors and coping mechanisms cause hidden stress that may trigger the onset of various diseases.

While this doesn't prove that emotional stress causes ALS, it seems to be a correlation worth investigating further.

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Where do we go from here?

While these insights might seem depressing, they do show us a way forward. Gabor writes:

"Emotional competence is what we need to develop if we are to protect ourselves from the hidden stresses that create a risk to health, and it is what we need to regain if we are to heal. We need to foster emotional competence in our children, as the best preventive medicine."

He suggests that we start by learning to gain awareness of our needs and emotions. When we've gained awareness, we can learn to express them fully.

Thanks for reading!

This book has made a deep impression on me. I keep asking myself: What would the world look like if everyone understood the connection between emotions and health?

What do you think? Hit the reply button and tell me, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

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Talk soon.