PNI - The Science of How it’s All Connected
For decades, functional medicine has been carrying the banner for a holistic approach to wellness, taking symptoms out of silos and putting them into the context of an interconnected ecosystem or organs that communicate and influence one another constantly. Psycho-neuro-endocrine-immunology (PNI)is an emerging field of science, established over 60 years ago and it’s foundational to functional medicine. PNI is one of the fastest-growing interdisciplinary fields in health science — bridging psychiatry, immunology, neurology, and behavioral medicine. PNI contextualizes how stress, personal history, epigenetics/genetics, and your nervous system get translated into your health.
The thing about many chronic conditions, and even some cancers, is that it’s not simply a matter of genetics, lifestyle, or stress. It’s a matter of experiencing the extreme instances of two or more of these influential factors at the same time. Some people who smoke never feel the effects of lung disease. Smoking may cause cancer but smoking doesn’t always cause cancer. Chronic stress, plus smoking, plus genetic influence however? That can be a recipe for chronic illness or life-altering diagnoses. Genetics predispose one to cancer but so does emotional insecurity and chronic stress. It’s this cocktail of factors, not only individual factors that influence health outcomes. In the 1970s, when psychologist Robert Ader and immunologist Nicholas Cohen ran an experiment that conditioned rats to associate sweet water with an immune-suppressing drug. In doing so, they discovered that the brain could, on its own, alter immune function and the field of psychoneuroimmunology was born. Researchers like Candace Pert (discoverer of neuropeptides as “molecules of emotion”) and Bruce McEwen (pioneer in stress physiology) expanded our understanding of how experiences, thoughts, and emotions biologically shape immune and endocrine responses.
Gabor Maté is a physician and author working furiously to popularize this corner of medical science. His book, “when the body says no,” is a seminal text in the field. Gabor Mate told the Guardian, “To say that the nervous system is connected to the immune system, and the immune system is connected to the emotional apparatus, all of which is connected to the hormone system, is incorrect. They are not connected; they are the same system.”