Love is the Heart Rescue

People are suckers for love. This is why pounding-heart lovers will rush into movie theaters tomorrow to see the heartfelt melodrama Slumdog Millionaire. Why not get more inspiration for love?

Love has profound impact on us. Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel laureate and an Israeli psychologist, wrote about what got him into the fascinating field of psychology. When German Nazis occupied France in 1940s, Kahneman and his family lived in Paris. During the wartime, Jews were required to wear the Star of David and had to obey a 6p.m. curfew. “I had gone to play with a Christian friend and had stayed too late. I turned my brown sweater inside out to walk the few blocks home. As I was walking down an empty street, I saw a German soldier approaching. He was wearing the black uniform that I had been told to fear more than others – the one worn by specially recruited SS soldiers. As I came closer to him, trying to walk fast, I noticed that he was looking at me intently. Then he beckoned me over, picked me up, and hugged me. I was terrified that he would notice the star inside my sweater. He was speaking to me with great emotion, in German. When he put me down, he opened his wallet, showed me a picture of a boy, and gave me some money. I went home more certain than ever that my mother was right: people were endlessly complicated and interesting.” (Kahneman, D. 2003. Maps of bounded rationality: A perspective on intuitive judgment and choice) Kahneman’s childhood Nazi experience presented tender loving nature of human beings when the boy least expected it. This particular incident of love display opened his mind to the “complimented and interesting” subject of psychology.

Love is at the heart of human world. No one can deny that people innately embrace the fundamental essence of human nature - love. We live for love, fight for love, and die for love. We compose poetry, write novels and produce movies to spread love. Globalization and civilization help us evolve into a special kind of race that not only reaches tangible goods like food and shelter, but also cultivates spiritual assets like love. Unfortunately, the very people who created love have been too busy to care for it. Current global financial crisis not only alarms business entities and policymakers to develop economic resolutions, it also serves as a wakeup call for global citizens. It urges us to analyze the underlying causes for the calamity and take a closer look at love. Did we jeopardize our well-being by stress, depression and OCD after succeeding at work and failing at home? Did financial and materialistic rewards drive us far away from nurturing love? Were we so involved in acquiring tangible assets that we overlooked the fact that the life’s gemstone is love instead of its filigree like vacation homes and private jets? Is now the time for us to rebound from financial deprivation as well as soul deficiency?

We all know that heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. (CDC’s Heart Disease Facts and Statistics 2009) It is already heartbreaking to know that over 650,000 Americans died of heart disease each year, but it is more heart rending that few know love can really heals the physical heart. Loving relationships promotes better health, happiness and longevity, especially in times of severe downturns. When Dorbert Nerum’s team at the University of Houston conducted a research on the correlation between a high cholesterol diet and heart attack, they came across unanticipated health miracle brought by love. They fed experimental rabbits with the high cholesterol diet that guaranteed to elevate cholesterol level in the rabbits. Consequently, there was a build-up of plaque in rabbits’ arteries. This blocked blood flow and caused heart disease. The surprising finding was that one group of rabbits developed a lower cholesterol level and a smaller arterial plaque volume than expected. It took a while for the befuddled team to discover that a lab assistant’s extra care stopped the rabbits from suffering heart problems. After feeding the rabbits, the lab assistant took them out of the cage, talked to them, played with them and petted them. All these loving activities reduced the risk for heart disease by a very significant percentage, 60 percent! If a simple act of petting could prevent the rabbits from getting heart disease, think about how many lives we can save by doing little things to share love with people around us.

More and more scientific studies have shown that small changes in lifestyles lead to significant improvements in one’s health and well-being. However, love, the most powerful and the most effective intervention, has not been prescribed enough by health practitioners. Love has a stronger impact on the quality of life and development of diseases. It extends emotional transformation to physical restoration. Dr. Candace Pert conducted a famous research on the bio-chemistry of emotions to demonstrate how the emotions are connected to the body. She finds that receptors sit on the surface of body cells, and specialized cells like neurons have millions of the receptors surrounding them. These receptors scan, sense and receive chemical substances known as peptides. These peptides deliver emotional messages to the receptors. The emotional messages elicit bio-chemical reactions within the cells, and have positive or negative effect on cell’s growth and development. Dr. Pert advances the theory of body-mind connection through the evidence of chemical alternation at molecular level. Her finding coincides with the philosophy of Dr. Yongshu Yang, a revolutionary doctor in integrative medicine in China. Dr. Yang has treated thousands of patients through a mind-body approach since 1970s. Her clinical experience confirms that the body has self-healing ability or “natural medicine.” Proper emotional release and positive attitudes restore body’s healing mechanism. An angry individual has angry cells that attack and damage each other. A loving person has happy cells that attract and nourish each other. Dr. Yang discovers that people with anger suppression have greater risks for inflammation in all kinds of body cells, cardiovascular diseases and circulatory malfunction. On the contrary, people with positive and loving attitudes develop less inflammatory conditions and usually have a longer lifespan.

If the best doctor resides inside our mind, why not get involved with love to provide the natural pharmacopeias to others and ourselves? Love is both from the heart and for the heart.

Happy Valentine’s Day!