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THE BALANCE WITHIN: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions by Esther M. Sternberg, M.D. Publication date: May 8, 2000 W.H. Freeman & Co. Hardcover ISBN 0-7167-3479-6 Paperback, Freeman/Holt May 2001 ISBN 0-7167-4445-7 Translations: Dutch (2001) Chinese (2002) Japanese (2005) Arabic (2006) Order online - Amazon.com Order online - Barnes & Noble Audio Version

“…a tour de force, a romp through centuries of scientific discovery written by an expert in the field who brings us to that point where mind speaks to body.” -- Abraham Verghese, author of The Tennis Partner

For years, believers in common wisdom and New Age gurus have claimed that a healthy spirit will result in a healthy body. But without scientific proof, doctors have not been able to explain or support that belief. As recently as ten years ago, the immune system was believed to be autonomous, with no connection to the brain.

Esther Sternberg, M.D., and other researchers are now making advances that show the actual pathways connecting the areas of our brain that control immunity with those that generate feelings and thoughts. In THE BALANCE WITHIN: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions (W.H. Freeman and Company/May 8, 2000/$24.95 Hardcover) Dr. Sternberg explains the mechanisms and their significance: how nerves, molecules, and hormones connect the brain and immune system, how the immune system signals the brain and affects our emotions, and documents how our brain can signal the immune system, making us more vulnerable to illnesses. They have not only discovered the links, but have demonstrated how they work and what the implications can be for treatable and chronic diseases. What you've known intuitively (that being exhausted or stressed can make you more vulnerable to illness) is now understood scientifically.

Sternberg sets the stage for the recent findings by highlighting earlier medical research. Hippocrates and his contemporaries believed there was a connection between our physical and emotional health. By the 15th and 16th centuries, however, medicine became increasingly specialized as researchers began to map the body and focus on specific parts and their functions. Since then, we have learned an enormous amount about illnesses and infections and their impact on specific organs. Only recently have researchers such as Sternberg begun to incorporate this knowledge into a broader understanding of our body.

Researchers and laymen alike have praised Sternberg for her clear, lyrical writing. Her descriptions of feeling sick are evocative of woozy days you thought would never end. She is forthright about the conflicts among scientists and argues that it was important that medicine specialized when it did, and that it is just as important that researchers pool their knowledge now.

Ultimately, she answers our pressing, relevant questions: Will stress make us sick? Will believing make us well? Why do we feel sick when we get sick? How does our health affect our moods? Until now there has been a lot of speculation about these questions, especially from the New Age shamans, but no serious, informed answers. THE BALANCE WITHIN provides these answers and explains clearly and engagingly how it happens.

More Praise for The Balance Within

"This refreshing personal saga of research on brain-body interactions knits together historic vignettes with recent experimental approaches. The book is a welcome addition at a time when considerable puzzlement and confusion exits regarding alternative or complementary medicine. We learn to respect the powerful influences exerted by the brain on body function." -- Joseph Martin, M.D., Dean of Harvard University Medical School

"Few science books are a beautiful read but The Balance Within achieves exactly that. Esther Sternberg not only illuminates the connections between emotion and health with fascinating precision, but she manages to evoke the emotions themselves, from sunlight happiness to sheltering serenity." -- Deborah Blum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sex on the Brain, Professor of Journalism, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Dr. Sternberg's book is a dazzling tour of a most promising area of neuroscience--the interface between the immune system and the nervous system. This area of research, in which Esther Sternberg has been one of the world's leading scientists for at least a decade, is leading to new understandings and treatments of the stress-related diseases of modern life, including chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia." -- Elliot S. Gershon, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, The University of Chicago

"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 Stephen J. Gould, Richard Dawkins, and Edward Wilson in the current pantheon of great biology writers." -- Francisco J. Ayala, Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences, University of California

“The Balance Within is a tour de force of the past, present, and future of our knowledge of mind/body interactions arid stress. Dr. Sternberg, a leading expert on the interaction of the endocrine and immune systems writes beguilingly. A knowledgeable and entertaining tour guide, she makes complex issues clear. Dr. Sternberg takes us from the origins of medicine in Greece, to early medical schools in Padua, to modern research in Montreal and the U.S. She lucidly describes how we came to appreciate the physiology of stress, how the mind influences the body, and how the body affects the mind. More than food for thought, this book is nourishment for those curious about mind and body.” -- David Spiegel, M.D., Professor and Associate Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine

"The author has undertaken the daunting task of bridging a chasm between what we know as the scientific basis behind disease and what we don't know about how our brains can influence this science to make our physical and mental health either better or worse. She takes us on a fascinating trip, describing difficult scientific concepts in easily understood terms and liberally uses colorful analogies to bring the science into a reality we can all appreciate. However, the journey is not yet at an end, in that knowledge is continuously being added, filling in gaps presently occupied by guesses. One can only hope that Dr. Sternberg will continue to write, acting as our tour guide to interpret the science and connect it with our daily lives in such a way that we can learn to seek and find help within our being!' -- Frances K. Conley, author of Waiting Out on the Boys

"Many of the most pressing contemporary health problems are related to the everyday stressors of contemporary society. In this groundbreaking work, Dr. Esther Sternberg charts the mechanisms by which stress affects health and well-being as well as the means for minimizing its deleterious effects." -- John T. Cacioppo, Ph.D., Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor, The University of Chicago

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