Book Review: Molecules of Emotion

Why You Feel The Way You Feel by Candace B Pert PhD, Pocket Books 1999

This book was first published nearly 15 years ago and whilst some of the ideas it expounds have been embraced by the natural healing professions, they are generally still not accepted by allopathic medicine.

For me this book was instrumental in producing a paradigm shift in my understanding of the oneness of the bodymind, the way emotions are generated and memories stored, and the overarching importance of cell receptors in regulating all body processes.

The author, Dr Candace Pert, was involved in much of the groundbreaking research relating to receptors and also in making the issue accessible through this and other books and lecturing internationally on the subject.

Having gained her PhD in pharmacology from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, she spent 14 years working at first the US National Institute of Health and later at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) before setting up her own biotech laboratory.  

Conceptual differences: Natural v allopathic medicine

Dr Pert's research into receptors is of particular importance in the natural health world, which maintains quite simply, that bodily health ultimately comes down to the health of each individual cell. So that if every cell is getting all the nutrients it requires to function and is not unduly hampered by the presence of toxins, health and wellbeing will be the result. However, if the cell is not adequately nourished and/or is exposed to toxins then a slow deterioration in health along a common pathway will result. 

In contrast, the allopathic world has developed many complex explanations for the aetiology of what it regards as being tens of thousands of different diseases.

It also impacts upon another difference between the two schools of thought which is that the emphasis in allopathic medicine is very much upon the genetic code contained in the nucleus of the cell being the most important factor determining health and disease. This is the genetic hand we have been dealt and cannot be altered and the hunt is on for the genes that are thought to code for various diseases. This thinking also leads to practises such as the 'propylactic' removal of breasts in someone with the 'gene for breast cancer'.

Whereas, the newer understanding articulated by both Dr Pert and the biologist and author, Dr Bruce Lipton PhD, points to a dynamic interplay between the information the cell membrane is receiving from the environment via the cell receptors and which parts of the DNA are expressed or suppressed. This concept has given rise to the field of epigenetics and is a source of much enquiry at present. This understanding means that an enormous amount of control can be exerted over the expression of the genetic code by controlling environmental factors and that no one is inevitably pre-programmed for a particular disease.  

Cell receptors

Cell membranes may contain up to 70 different types of receptor of which each cell may have 10-50,000. They float in the oily cell membrane like lily pads - and like lily pads they have roots which snake back and forth through the fluid membrane and reach deep into the interior of the cell.

Opiate receptor molecules are some of the most elegant, rare and complicated molecules. Compared to water which has a molecular weight of 18 units, some receptors have a molecular weight of 50,000 or more units. Opiate receptors were first identified in the 1970s although this information was mostly only of interest to pharmacologists initially.

A ligand is the name given to any natural or manmade substance that binds selectively to specific receptors and they are generally much smaller molecules than the receptors to which they bind. The word ligand comes from the Latin ligare meaning 'that which binds' and shares this same root word with religion.

Cell receptors are effectively 'sensing molecules' which are stimulated to respond when a particular ligand docks on. This makes the process sound more physical than it is, and in fact it is more like the ligand and receptor strike the same note. The cell receptors respond to the energy of the ligand by vibrating and can change between 3 or 4 different shapes or conformations. When this occurs it is like a doorbell being rung within the cell and this brings about a change of state. 

A CELL RECEPTOR

The cell membrane is shown in blue with the extracellular cell receptor with ligand

(shown in purple) and the 'tail' within the cell shown bottom

Activation of the cell receptors can cause new proteins to be made, cell division to occur, or ion channels to open or close. What the cell does is determined by its receptors which are highly specific so that opiate receptors only bind with endorphins, morphine and heroin. 

The author likens the cell to the engine which drives life and the receptors as acting like the control panel for the engine. In this analogy, the ligand is the finger which pushes the buttons.

In evolutionary terms, the ligand-receptor system is much more ancient than the nervous system and can also act over longer time scales and greater distances. It serves to provide communication across systems and integrates structure and function and is common to all creatures. 

The psychosoma or bodymind

The term 'psychosomatic' derives from the word psyche referring to the mind or soul and soma referring to the body. However, in the eyes of many - lay people and doctors alike - introducing the concept of mind into the equation threatens the legitimacy of an illness and is seen as being unscientific.

This split dates back to the French philosopher, Rene Descartes, who made a deal with the Pope of the time in order to acquire the human bodies he needed for dissection. Descartes is often described as the Father of Modern Medicine and, as part of the deal, he contracted not to have anything to do with the soul, mind or emotions which he agreed were the jurisdiction of the Church.

This deal set the scene for all that was to follow and determined the direction of modern medicine to the present day. However, the utility and limitiations of this model are now being exposed, although many stubbornly cling to this concept of separation between the body and mind. This model is now confronted with a holistic model of a bodymind where virtually all illness has a major psychosomatic component.

In this book, Candace Pert examines the molecular basis of emotions and how these mechanisms cannot be separated from the physiological since they run every system of the body. In fact they are a demonstration of the bodymind intelligence - an intelligence that seeks wellness - and one that can keep us healthy and disease-free without modern high-tech medical intervention.

As the author states, truly original, ground-breaking ideas are rarely welcomed at first no matter who proposes them. These new ideas are subjected to more nitpicking scrutiny than those that are already accepted and it is almost impossible to get such scientific papers published. It generally takes about three decades before these ideas become the new status quo with the very people who had done so much to obstruct the new truth eventually touting the new idea.

The basis of emotions

Some still regard the concept of there being a biochemical basis to emotion as an outrageous assumption. Mainstream science regards emotion as being controlled by a part of the brain, but others regard this neurocentric assumption as being either wrong or incomplete.

In particular they regard the limbic system containing structures such as the amygdala, and hippocampus, as being the seat of the emotions. This is partly because direct stimulation of the amygdala during open brain surgery on conscious patients has been shown to induce a variety of profound emotions. 

In contrast, the philosopher, William James, thought that emotions originated in the body and that we then created a story to explain them. So that there was no such entity as an emotion - simply perception and response - and the pounding heart or knot in the stomach were the emotions.

According to Pert's understanding, both these theories may be partly true.

What she proposes is that what we experience as emotions is a mechanism for activating a particular neuronal circuit simultaneously throughout the bodymind which serves to generate behaviour affecting the whole being. She even regards the term neuropeptide is a misnomer since these molecules of emotion actually work on a body-wide basis but are particularly rich in parts of the brain implicated in emotion such as the limbic cortex.

The flooding of specific receptors throughout the bodymind with ligands serves to either retrieve or repress emotions and behaviours by altering the probability of an electrical impulse travelling across the membrane. This means that memories are stored and encoded throughout the bodymind at cellular level. 

Pert also maintains that memories which cannot be drawn to conscious awareness ie: repressed memories are stored in the body which effectively is the unconscious mind and can result in these traumas being expressed physically in a number of ways we label disease.  

Further, this holistic vision means that the endocrine and nervous systems aren't discrete systems at all in the way allopathic medicine understands them. She regards the immune system as acting like a floating endocrine system - and all the receptors that can be found in the brain can also be found on the immune cells.

This means that there is a system in which emotions influence the activity of the immune cells via neuropeptides and also in which the immune cells both make and store neuropeptides with which they can intercommunicate.

Dr Pert also posits that cancer cells are mutated macrophages which had come to the site to clean up toxicity and this accounts for why they have opiate receptors and can communicate with the brain and other cells of the immune system.

What this leads to is a holistic understanding of mechanisms that work simultaneously throughout the bodymind rather than the separation of systems and organs that allopathic medicine regards as existing. It also reveals the incredible dynamism of a system in which receptors in the cell membrane are up-regulated (increased in number or made more sensitive) or down-regulated (decreased in number or made less responsive) in response to factors such as whether we have smoked, taken any drugs, what we have eaten, and the emotions we have experienced in the last few hours. 

The politics of science

Throughout the book, Candace Pert describes her work and delight in being at the centre of a hub of feverish research activity. As a young researcher she had been keen to please her charismatic and powerful boss and in this capacity had co-athored many scientific papers on the subject of receptor science with him.

Which, as anyone who has worked in these circles knows, means that the researcher has the ideas and does all the work and their superior gets to have their name on the scientific paper and to be able to list it in their publications and solicit departmental funding. And, perhaps being somewhat politically naïve, she also describes how her superiors ultimately took the credit for her work.

At the time this occurred, she was reading the story of the work of Dr Rosalind Franklin. It told of how the discoverers of the structure of DNA, John Watson and Francis Crick, got the missing piece of the puzzle by persuading the caretaker to let them into Franklin's laboratory where they stole the ideas contained in her research. Incensed by this act, Candace also noted that Franklin died of cancer at the young age of just 37 just a few years later.

Watson and Crick later openly admitted to the deception, but won the Nobel prize and their place in history for their work and Dr Rosalind Franklin's name is largely forgotten. Franklin, Pert felt, had made the discovery of the century and been hoodwinked by the old boys' network and excluded from the scientific prizes and had ultimately paid with her life.

When Pert's superiors were nominated for a Lasker prize (regarded as being a forerunner to a Nobel prize nomination) for her work, she knew she could not remain silent. Her colleagues all counselled her to accept the situation and hope that her boss would reward her in some way if she played the game. The author bemoans a system in which women are excluded from nomination for - and selection for - the scientific prizes where the committees are almost exclusively male.

Slowly it emerged that her omission from the application for the Lasker prize hadn't been some misunderstanding as her boss had initially claimed, but that he had been deliberately excluded from the nomination. When she found that she was not to be mentioned in any capacity, she asked her boss to make a statement or donate half the prize money as a scholarship in her name. He refused.

Aware that such treachery had possibly sent Rosalind Franklin to an early grave, she thought that it might kill her too. She chose to make a stink about the matter and to publicise the deception in this book and through other avenues and obviously became regarded not only as a maverick, but also as a trouble maker. This may have been, in part, what inspired her to set up her own biotech research company.

Further resources

For more information or to buy the book click the relevant link for Amazon UK or Amazon US.

For related articles refer to It's Official: Junk Food is Addictive, Obesity and Food Addiction, How We Are Wired for Addiction, Postnatal Depression: The Causes, Body Basics for Fatigue Syndrome Sufferers, The Causes of Cancer, Book Review: Your Thyroid and How to Keep it Healthy, Book Review: Trauma and Addiction, Symptoms of Mercury Poisoning, The Role of Toxic Metals in Fatigue Syndromes, Antidepressant Prescribing Up, and Research: Mercury Toxicity, Gluten and Casein or the video Cell Membrane: Fluid Mosaic Model.

Molecules of emotion: Article summary

This article offers a book review of Molecules of Emotion by Dr Candace Pert PhD which looks at how our emotions and health are governed by the dynamic interplay of cell receptors and the substances they bind (known as ligands). 

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The Natural Recovery Plan Newsletter January 2012 Issue 25. Copyright Alison Adams 2012. All rights reserved
Alison Adams Dentist, Naturopath, Author and Online Health Coach www.thenaturalrecoveryplan.com