The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions - Softcover

"Dr. Sternberg weaves historical perspective, recent lab results, academic rigor, and popular appeal into an engrossing book." --Dallas Morning News "One of the best books on emotions and health." --Booklist "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 "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 Steven 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, Irvine "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 "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 exists 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 "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 everyday stressors affect health and well being as well as the means for minimizing their deleterious effects." --John T. Cacioppo, Ph.D., Tiffany & Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor, The University of Chicago

This text explores the mind-body connection and what it means for health. Esther Sternberg provides accounts of the experiments that reveal the physical mechanisms - the nerves, cells and hormones - used by the brain and immune system to communicate with each other. She describes just how stress can make us more susceptible to all types of illness, and how the immune system can alter moods.