The Immune Mind - Books That Make You Think

Welcome to The Business of Psychology Podcast. Today we're talking about the book ‘The Immune Mind’ by Dr Monty Lyman. He has done really interesting work all around the idea of the mind-body-gut-immune connection, which are all things that I'm really interested in, in my practice, and increasingly I think that we need to incorporate into the way that we work, otherwise we're ignoring a lot of really good science.

Full show notes and a transcript of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links/references:

The Immune Mind by Monty Lyman

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

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Shownotes

It has been ages since I've recorded a Books That Make You Think episode, but I absolutely had to revive the format for the book I'm talking about this week because it has completely changed the way that I think about my work fundamentally. Or rather, I would say it's actually given me more confidence to express opinions that I previously held, but didn't fully understand the evidence base for.

So today we're talking about ‘The Immune Mind’, which is a book by Dr Monty Lyman. Some of you might have seen a documentary that he made previously, he's also written a book about chronic pain. There's a whole heap of really interesting work that he's done, and it's all around the idea of the mind-body-gut-immune connection. And as you know, if you've listened to this podcast for a while, these are all things that I'm really interested in, in my practice, and increasingly I think that we need to incorporate into the way that we work, otherwise we're ignoring a lot of really good science.

So, I'll give you a quick summary of the book, and then we'll dive into my thoughts and what I think it might mean for my practice, and hopefully it might give you some food for thought for your own work too.

The book's subtitle is ‘The New Science of Health’, and it begins by explaining the link between the immune system and behaviour in a way that I've not come across before. For example, in an extraordinary experiment, the author actually makes himself sick under lab conditions, and monitors the impact on his motivation, his concentration and his mood, in order to land the point that sickness behaviour looks a lot like mental illness, which it really does. There's also an explanation of the mechanisms behind that, which as a non medic, I found particularly helpful. I think many of us have known the distinction between body and mind is a really unhelpful dualism for a long time, and he spends a lot of time talking about that. I think about books like ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ by Bessel van der Kolk, for example, and that's been highly influential in my work, however, if I'm honest, beyond the word ‘psychoneuroimmunology’, I didn't really have the best grasp of how that works. And while I'm still not going to be able to explain it very well to you, Dr Lyman does do a fantastic job of outlining how the body's defence mechanisms of inflammation, microbes and the gut influence the way that we think, feel and behave. So it's given me a little bit more insight into the nuts and bolts of that mechanism, which just gives me more confidence to bring it up with clients.

The midsection of the book also shows us some quite alarming case studies of situations where the body's defence systems have caused really extreme psychological responses, and often catastrophic psychiatric misdiagnoses. I don't want to give any spoilers away here because I was gripped by this aspect of the book to the point actually where I was exclaiming in public, and I really wouldn't want to take that away from you because it's rare, isn't it, when you're reading a book for professional interest that you can't put it down and you're literally on the edge of your seat. But if you've ever had curiosity about why we're seeing an increase in certain difficulties and diagnoses, or if you've ever experienced a client that just doesn't seem to benefit from any of the usually effective therapies - those people where the drugs certainly didn't work, and the talking therapies aren't really working and even EMDR isn't working - if you've experienced that, I think you'd have to be dead inside not to have curiosity about what could be going on for those people, what might be missing from our formulations, and this provides an additional lens for that formulation. So I'm going to restrain myself and leave it there, but you really do have to read this book if you haven't already.

The final chapters of the book are the practical ones, suggesting how we can reset our defence systems to protect against unnecessary psychological and physical distress. I found these chapters reassuringly similar to what we would have suggested anyway. Basically reducing the amount of processed stuff we eat, taking exercise, being mindful and practising compassion. So if you're an ACT or a CFT informed therapist, it's really the same stuff that you're already saying to your clients and probably to yourself. The only thing that I don't usually talk to clients about is the processed food. I don't really talk about diet at all with my clients, and I think it does raise an interesting debate for those of us that are trained in mental health, but not physical health, because I wouldn't comment on diet with a client. I talk about activity and movement because I do have some background in those things, but I don't give advice very much, and I certainly wouldn't feel competent or qualified to give advice about nutrition or anything along those lines, because although I used to be a fitness instructor, it wasn't a particularly in depth qualification, and I just don't feel like that's what my clients want to hear from me either. So for me, this book does raise the question of whether the knowledge silos that we've created are helpful, and perhaps the future of mental health care should involve practitioners trained more holistically. Maybe the rise of AI might make that possible, as we're able to augment our own cognitive capacities, and perhaps extend our knowledge in more different directions, and get qualified and competent in different things. So I found that exciting, and also quite daunting and scary. I'd love to know what you think about that? Whether you would embrace the idea of getting some training in the physical side of stuff under your belt, or whether you feel like we should stick to what we're good at already. I think it's a really interesting debate and one that I would really love to have more often.

Returning to the book, one thing I would like to see more of in the book is attention to how the mind influences the body's defence mechanisms. This is talked about a bit, but the case studies focus much more on the other direction. And I understand this, as I suspect part of the drive behind the book is to provide support for those who have been dismissed as medically unexplained for so long, and I'm really on board with that mission. However, having witnessed a few extraordinary cases of physical recovery following trauma therapy, I would really like to see a deep dive on that with this new layer of understanding, possibly extending the work from The Body Keeps the Score.

So that is my review of The Immune Mind by Dr Monty Lyman. You should absolutely read it, or you should do what I did and half read it and half listen to it on audible. He's a really engaging speaker, so it's one of those books which is a pleasure to listen to. Not ...