The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions » (1st Edition)

Esther M. Sternberg, M.D., is Director, Integrative Neural Immune Program, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health. She was trained in rheumatology at McGill University and practiced medicine in Montreal before returning to a research career and teaching at Washington University in St. Louis. The winner of the Public Health Service Superior Service Award and President of the International Society for Neuroimmunomodulation, Dr. Sternberg has written over one hundred scientific papers, reviews, and book chapters on the subject of brain-immune connections. She lectures nationally and internationally on emotions, health and disease.

Since ancient times humans have felt intuitively that emotions and health are linked. But without compelling evidence, it has been impossible to say for sure that such a connection really exists and especially how it works. Now that evidence has been discovered.

A thrilling scientific detective story, The Balance Within tells how researchers finally uncovered the elusive mind-body connection. In this beautifully written book, author Esther Sternberg--a scientist whose discoveries were pivotal in helping to solve this mystery--provides first hand accounts of the breakthrough experiments that revealed the physical mechanisms--the nerves, cells, and hormones--used by the brain and immune system to communicate with each other. She describes just how the immune system can alter our moods, and how stress can make us more susceptible to all types of illnesses. Finally, she explains why understanding these connections in scientific terms can help answer such crucial questions as "Does stress make you sick?" "Does believing make you well?" and "How do our personal relationships affect our health?"

A fascinating, elegantly written portrait of a rapidly emerging science with enormous potential for finding new ways to treat disease and cope with stress, The Balance Within is essential reading for anyone interested in making their body and mind whole again.

About the Author:

Esther M. Sternberg, M. D., is Director of the Molecular, Cellular, and Behavioral Integrative Neuroscience Program and Chief of the Section on Neuroendocrine Immunology and Behavior at the National Institute of Mental Health and National Institutes of Health. She was trained in rheumatology at McGill University and practiced medicine in Montreal before returning to a research career and teaching at Washington University in St. Louis. The winner of the Public Health Service Superior Service Award and President of the International Society for Neuroimmunomodulation, Dr. Sternberg has written over one hundred scientific papers, reviews, and book chapters on the subject of brain-immune connections, including articles in Scientific American and Nature Medicine. She has also co-directed an exhibition about emotions and disease at the National Library of Medicine and lectures nationally and internationally on emotions, health and disease.

Francisco J. Ayala

The Balance Within delivers the latest scientific advances in prose that is clear and arrestingly beautiful. Sternberg has a gift for the illustrating detail, the clarifying allusion, the telling metaphor. With The Balance Within, Esther Sternberg joins Steven J. Gould, Richard Dawkins, and Edward Wilson in the current pantheon of great biology writers.

1. Emotions and Disease: Molecules and Ancient Myths.
2. Where Do Emotions Come From?
3. The Dirty Soup Beyond Our Skin. How the Immune System Defends Against the Outside World.
4. Putting the Mind and The Body Back Together Again.
5. It's a Two-Way Street: The Immune System Talks to the Brain and the Brain Talks Back.
6. When the Brain-Immune Communication Breaks Down.
7. Can Stress Make You Sick?
8. Connecting to Others: Relationships and the Course of Disease.
9. Can Believing Make You Well?
10. How the Immune System Changes Our Moods.
11. Prometheus Unbound. What Does the Future Hold?