Health & Healing
Throughout history, people believed that love comes from the heart, and poets still pay homage to this notion. Surprisingly, the latest science shows that this idea may be based in reality. The function of the heart does affect the mind and emotions, possibly even more than the hormone-producing endocrine system, which is sometimes referred to as the "second brain."
The power of the heart to influence the mind and emotions was first examined scientifically in the early 1990s. Initially, researchers there were intrigued by the fact that transplanted hearts are able to beat immediately upon transplantation, even before nerves coming from the brain are functional. This occurs, they discovered, because the heart has an intrinsic nervous system of its own, which can cause it to beat even without messages from the brain. This nervous system consists of masses of nerve cells, or neurons, similar to those in the brain. These masses of neurons include parasympathetic and sympathetic neurons that make heartbeat possible: contract, relax, contract, relax. Without them, the heart cannot function. This nervous system has been dubbed the heart-brain.
Most fascinating of all, researchers discovered that the heart-brain even has the power to send messages to the brain. The messages are sent via the spinal cord and through the largest nerve in the body, the vagus nerve, which stretches from the brain to the torso. Therefore, it's outdated to think that nerve messages travel only from head to heart: It's a two-way street.
Because the heart can "speak" to the brain, through the vagus nerve and spinal cord feedback system, it sometimes overrides messages that come from the brain - particularly messages of distress, which can trigger heart attacks.
As researchers continued to study the surprising autonomy of the heart, which was previously considered by most scientists to be just a simple pump, they found that the heart is also an endocrine gland, which secretes its own hormone, ANF (atrial natriuretic factor). ANF influences not only the blood vessels and kidneys, but also the mood-influencing adrenal glands—and the brain.
In the brain, parasympathetic or sympathetic impulses coming from the heart help trigger the onset of either calming or excitatory thoughts. This may be the reason why some heart transplant patients occasionally adopt personality tendencies of their donors, a phenomenon that has been noted since the beginning of heart transplantation.
In emotionally healthy people, there appears to be a strong tendency for the heart and brain to have smoothly functioning dialogue, and to remain in synchronization, or entrainment. Entrainment appears not only to reflect a positive frame of mind, but also to help create it, in part by enhancing balance of the autonomic nervous system. The body, clearly, can help heal the mind. But what inaugurates this healing? The mind itself! Your mind, when focused on appreciation, has an unparalleled power to trigger physical and emotional healing.
