Loss and Awe
The biological responses to grief and the transcendent power of something more than yourself
Last week I was parking my car when an NPR interview caught my ear. Coming in late, I pieced together that the person being interviewed was talking about the biological reactions that happen when someone is going through heartbreak, for him a breakup with a significant other.
The subject was Los Angeles Times journalist Todd Martens, and you can read his whole article here, but the part that grabbed my ear was when they discussed how loneliness, depression, and sadness can produce a potentially “overly explosive inflammatory response”, causing an increased production of additional white blood cells— the cell responsible for my leukemia. Naomi Eisenberger, a professor of psychology at UCLA is quoted further regarding the response:
“A robust immune response is ‘a first line of defense against foreign agents, but chronically high levels of inflammation are implicated in a bunch of chronic diseases. Pick one. Cardiovascular disease. Diabetes. Certain kinds of cancer.’”
While the article deals with the loss of a relationship, my mind prickled interest at the biological effects of loss in general. If the loss of a romantic relationship could produce negative effects in the body, surely those emotions closely associated with cancer: loss of life, mortal uncertainty, and grieving—had to exist in similar circles.
Honing in on grief, I dug up this New York Times article written in response to the pandemic as many lost family and friends close to them. The journalist spoke to Dr. Chris Fagundes, a psychiatrist who published a study in 2019 that showed that people experiencing grief had high levels of the immune system’s markers for inflammation, repeating the idea that chronic inflammation can be dangerous and lead to cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, and some cancers.
It was evidence for an assumption— that when we feel bad or sad or lost, there is a mirrored negative effect in our quantifiable bodily health.
The cancer experience as a whole is precarious enough that to compound health complications with the psychological aftermath is a cruel truth. The effect of cancer begetting depression begetting chronic inflammation begetting cancer is a run of dominoes no one would want to be a part of. But the powerful link between mind, body, and soul was never more apparent than when I experienced the emotional and physical swing I went through from diagnosis to suddenly finding myself in love.
But how can you prevent it? You can’t just tell people to buck up after they’ve been diagnosed or lost a loved one. The bad news that not only might your cells be trying to kill you— but by dwelling on it, complaining about it, or lamenting about it, you might be exacerbating it— is like telling a fish out of water to suck it up. And it does no one any favors to keep it all coiling and boiling inside.
As a cancer patient who owes all of my bodily successes to modern medicine, I have built up a healthy amount of skepticism towards non-scientifically backed remedies for just about everything. Suggestions for any combination of herbs, magical enemas, shamanic rituals, or energy cleanses have all been readily volunteered and politely declined.
But in true self-help-meets-science fashion, the article provides suggestions for dealing with these negatively affecting life events. Calm, connection, and finding renewed purpose all have reported beneficial impacts on your health. Personally, this tracks. Last week I wrote about how finding a sense of direction in my diagnosis, even if it was just survival, was immensely reorienting.
I have also learned that the mind can be as fragile as it is powerful, and have grown more aware of how the ways in which I think can affect how I feel, both physically and emotionally.
Which was why I was drawn to the ending of the LA Times article, when Martens spoke to Derek Keltner, a professor at UC Berkely. In Keltner’s book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, he defines awe as:
“the ‘feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.’ He’s identified eight core spaces in which we can find it: Moral beauty, collective effervescence, nature, music, visual design, spirituality and religion, life and death, and epiphany.”
It can feel a little loosely-scientific, and I have yet to read the book (and I’m still mouthing “collective effervescence”), but in this New York Times article Keltner extrapolates. Biologically, the sensation of awe activates the vagal nerve, a cluster of fibers that run from your brain down your back and interacts with almost every organ in your body. Its stimulation has been known to help control digestion, heart rate, voice, mood, and the immune system. Psychologically, he notes that studies have been done that show that “awe” helps quiet negative perceptions of ourselves, in effect helping to silence our inner critic.
I am not a medical professional or even a journalist— and I can hear my wife yelling at me to check the sources— so all I can offer is my personal experience.
I believe in awe, especially in the sense of learning to feel as if you are part of something that transcends our world. Emily and I are moderately ardent outdoor enthusiasts and nature has become our primary delivery source for awe. We try and hit a new national park once a year and find much rejuvenation in nature, enjoying the reward of a particularly tough hike— bonus points if there’s a waterfall at the end. Amidst towering mountains or the infinite sprawl of a forest— I find peace in the stillness and maybe a small sense of comfort that all of it exists somehow, with or without me.
After being discharged from my transplant, I’ll never forget walking around the front yard of my parents’ house after finally making it home. I needed a moment alone before I went inside.
It was early summer and the sun was out and the radiant oak trees were swaying in the breeze, the thin paper rattle of their leaves gently welcoming me back. After thirty-odd days in a sterile room I’d never felt sunshine like that before.
Its warmth soaked into my soul— a moment of celestial connection between some far away star and every molecule in-between. I could feel myself moving through the humid air, able to taste it and let it fill my lungs. Everything felt alive, as if there was a voice to all of that vibrant green, the white noise of grass and trees and branches rolling along like notes through a player piano. I can close my eyes and go there, I can feel it without trying.
In a world that can seem to be growing in cynicism, accelerated by a polarizing need to know everything all the time, I suppose I’ve grown increasingly interested in things that cannot be explained. Awe fits that bill for me, in whatever way it manifests. Sometimes it feels good to give up, and why not do it in the face of something that you love but cannot explain, let alone put into words (but I’ll try).
The other day I saw a young kid struggling to zip up his jacket. Maybe a couple years old, his parents were busy doing this or that and out of the corner of my eye I watched as this little human slowly worked on the problem. It was funny at first, a cute game of trial and error, his fumbling hands trying his best to replicate the idea of something. And then I saw the frustration set in, a rebellious boil as he committed to doing this thing he had seen his parents do for him so many times, knowing that it could be done… And when he finally did it— He was so proud, and I was so proud of him too.
The next day, Emily went to work before the sun came up and I sat down to get some writing done. I put on a hoodie and when I notched the zipper into the teeth, the easy whir sent me back through time as I thought of that little kid and how I had once been him and he would one day be me… And I thought of where he would be when he stopped thinking about how to zip a zipper and if he would ever pause, many years after that, to wonder how he had made it this far. And for some reason I was proud of him again, wherever he would be.
Sensory Activation: Things I Was Into This Week
Woman Reading, Édouard Manet
We were in Chicago for the weekend and were lucky enough to have our friend take us by the Art Institute. I hadn’t been in yeras, and it was a quick trip before a wedding, but with the lingering thought of the child zipping up his zipper following me around, my eyes were drawn to Manet’s painting of a fleeting moment caught in public. (I am no art buff, and thought it was Monet until I squinted)
It’s a fleeting moment with so few brushstrokes to her face still making me feel like I knew, or could know this woman immediately. The distance between her time and mine were shrunk, and amongst all the other Impressionism, I wondered what she had been reading. (Fun twist; it was actually a staged painting in his studio)
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