PNI (Psychoneuroimmunology)

For the basics of understanding PNI, a good website I found helpful in explaining what is psychoneuroimmunology, is http://www.nfnlp.com/psychoneuroimmunology_quinlan.htm.

Basically, PNI came about about 40-50 years ago. It was an interesting thought that did not really go far past a certain period of time. That or it just was not that popular. It is rare enough that all my psychology and biology teachers I contacted had no idea what field or study I was talking about.

Strangely enough, the people that I was able to talk more about the subject with were health knowledgeable professors, specifically my stress management/health and wellness online teacher (where it was mentioned in our textbook, thus my sudden interest) and an anthropology teacher up here on my campus.

In short, PNI is about how the mind (psycho-), brain (neuro-), and immune system (immun-) is studied (-ology) through its interaction and relation to each other. The best way to describe what that means is by giving a relative example.

Let's say that you are enjoying life through your everyday routine when something happens and causes stress, for exam, an exam. You start to stress over it, worry, and study exclusively to the point where you forget about eating nutritious food, or at all, you lose sleep staying up late ours, you don't relax because relaxing is for after the test, you then start to feel sick and you come down with the flu blaming it on bad luck.

Now, let's give another example. let's say you have been diagnosed with cancer or a disease that effects your daily life in extreme ways. You decide that instead of letting this challenge become a downer, you decide to look at the bright side and smile about something new everyday (all of us know at least one optimistic person like this).


Both of these relate to PNI because your thoughts influence the immune system by sending neurotransmitters, hormones, lymphocytes, etc. to fight off the stress, the sickness, or whatever your body and mind deems necessary. You may not even realize you have helped cause some of your bad days to become bad days. Your emotions also follow how you feel. If you feel crumby, you will be crumby and your body will respond to that to return to equilibrium. To bring in a familiar understanding, they say that laughter is a medicine in itself. Well, it's true. Laughing releases different chemicals that signal the body positively, thus improving health.

One of the main figures bringing back psychoneuoimmunology back to life is Candice Pert, a neurologist who discovered the hormonal, neural, and other chemical signals from the brain influencing the body and vice verse as described.

It goes into a lot more depth but it is a good introduction to what PNI is about.

However, I personally had a hard time researching a lot of information on the subject. I was able to find a psychology school in California that uses PNI as part of their subject matter and studies, but not as an actual field or degree. It just is no that big yet apparently. I tried researching people with a degree in it. I was able to find one professor teaching at Utah University that received her education some where else but it was a particular emphasis, still not a degree. Thus I came to the conclusion that I would do my own studies.

There is a research program/membership one can have called  PNIRS (PNI Research Society). They make it difficult to be a member including high membership fees for the funding of research. I could not contact them either, that I can remember, to talk to someone part of the society to talk to me about the subject area.
 
There are many therapies and studies done on "mind over matter," but not many, that I can tell, talk about it the other way around. Many stress relieving techniques discuss this way of health and improvement. One of the few, that I have realized is through the studies of alternative medicine or CAM (complementary and alternative medicine).

Once I decided to make it my own study, I started to realize and notice how much art, which is already a big part of my life, has influenced me therapeutically.  Thus, the beginning of my search for a perfect career, with a degree, professional schooling, and in an all new area where I may be the only explorer.

That is when I found ieata.org.

To read on about the beginning please click here.
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