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In 'The Inflamed Feeling' Mats Lekander explores the science behind how you perceive your own health, using visual illusions, personal experiences, placebo, hypochondriacs, and historical anecdotes. Placed against a backdrop of the latest psychoneuroimmunology, he explores why you might feel healthy or why you might feel sick
List of contents
- 1: What does the brain know about the outside world
- 2: What does the brain know about the body
- 3: Our inner defence systems
- 4: The sickness response
- 5: Disgust and prejudice in disease defence
- 6: How do you rate your general health
- 7: Feeling sick and other emotions
- 8: Can you affect your perceived health?
- 9: How society affects our health
- 10: Perhaps its not that bad?
About the author
Mats Lekander is a professor of Psychoneuroimmunology at Stockholm University and of Health Psychology at Karolinska Institutet Stockholm, Sweden. He is co-director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Karolinska Institutet, and a former director of the Stockholm Stress Center, a center of excellence for research on work, stress and health. He heads the Division of Psychoneuroimmunology at the Stress Research Institute at Stockholm University. His central line of research focuses on the relation between inflammation, brain function and behavior, especially related to the sickness response. It is also investigated how humans through perceptual means can detect when others are sick and how such detection affects behavior and attitudes. Other lines of research focus on consequences of disturbed sleep and stress, and psychological treatment of related disorders
Summary
In 'The Inflamed Feeling' Mats Lekander explores the science behind how you perceive your own health, using visual illusions, personal experiences, placebo, hypochondriacs, and historical anecdotes. Placed against a backdrop of the latest psychoneuroimmunology, he explores why you might feel healthy or why you might feel sick
Additional text
Despite major advances in understanding the human immune system over the past few decades, one area that remains mysterious is the intersection between the immune system and other body systems. Among the latter, the nervous system has long been understood to have significant effects on the immune response, and puzzling out the current state of knowledge in this area is the focus of this intriguing book. Lekander (Stockholm Univ., Karolinska Institute) expertly blends current immunological and psychological research with clinical vignettes in a highly readable account.
