A recent discovery has show that the lymphatic system, previously thought not to involve the brain, actually extends into the brain.
From my illnesses as a boy, I had such a strong sense that the mind influenced illness, that I began to look for and actually do studies on the relationship between the brain and the immune system. Back around 1970, I began visiting researchers in the field of what both Dr. George Solomon (and Alfred Amkraut) called “psychoimmunology.” I wrote a protocol for such a study at Langly Porter Institute in San Francisco, and later got a small grant to do a study at Albert Einstein COM on Psychologic factors and breast cancer.
This field later took on the more legitimate title of “Psycho-neuro-immunolgy”, bolstered by studies on conditioning the immune response by conditioning, done by Dr Robert Ader at the University of Rochester.
A major step in further demonstrating the validity of this connection between the brain and the immune system came from work by Dr Candace Pert, a neuroscientist who teamed up with her Immunologist husband to show that substances secreted by one organ could affect other organs in the body, including the brain and the immune system.
So it is fascinating to see that yet another link has been discovered between the brain and the immune system, a connection I have watched become more recognized as real over the past 5 decades.
To your health,
Alan M Dattner, MD
