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Such suggestions may seem quaint in the modern world, but they
are an integral part of the 2000-year-old culture that may have
something to offer today, at least for those who are concerned about
fragile health.
This summation by Yuan and Liu shows that one should respond
promptly and effectively to emotional distress and should cultivate
habits and thought patterns that help one avoid frequent experience of
emotional excess. In the traditional Chinese medical view, the
emotion-based causes of disease, like the external-based causes, are
assumed to fade out as circumstances change. For example, for
someone who is exposed to severe cold, which causes or contributes
to some diseases, the weather in the summer will eventually turn hot
and the initial cause will be removed, at least for a while. Similarly, if
one experiences severe anger, fright, or fear, one will certainly
experience something else later. Rather than waiting for
circumstances to change gradually, one can more immediately
respond to the situation, for example, by warming up the body after
exposure to extreme cold or relaxing anger after a threatening
encounter.
Along these lines, the immune system may regulate the activities
of enzymes, such as aromatase, that converts estrogens to estradiol in
breast tissue (17, 18), where estradiol is thought to contribute to
breast cancer. Cytokine changes (as occur with infection and
inflammation) have been observed in cases of major depression, and
have been suggested to be a potential cause of depression (19, 20). In
fact, some antidepressant drugs are tumor necrosis factor (TNF)
inhibitors; this being one of the cytokines that causes considerable
adverse effects in cancer patients. It is also possible that depression,
and other emotional disorders, will affect the cytokines.