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| "When love blooms therein, the heart dances and tremor cordis is upon me." So wrote Richard Selzer, MD, in his 1996 book of essays, Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery, to recognize the place accorded the heart in our culture. Clichés such as "with all my heart" bespeak this organ’s association with the site of the genuine, irreducible self. But that association stems from a figure of speech, no? The heart is a pump, a muscle – a vital one, true, but no seat of emotion, intelligence or identity in a literal sense. Not so fast, say the founders of the Institute of HeartMath, a nonprofit research organization in Boulder Creek, Calif. Founded in the early ’90s, the center promotes the HeartMath System for stress management, general health, anti-aging and other benefits, all predicated on an understanding of the heart as an "intelligent" organ with its own nervous system and hormone-producing capacities. One just has to harmonize heart/brain communication through "positive" feelings such as appreciation, love and compassion. But skeptics should know that the concept of a "brainy" heart stems from valid research, said Howard Martin, executive vice president of HeartMath and co-author with Doc Childre of The HeartMath Solution. "The heart sends out 40 to 60 times more electrical impulses than the brain. It has 40,000 neurons," Martin said. "It doesn’t just pump blood; it plays a role in controlling emotions, secreting hormones. For thousands of years, people have written about the heart as having intelligence – maybe they were right. Sometimes modern science produces what people already know." Dianne Ball, RN, and Joan Stephens, RN, know one thing: HeartMath saved their jobs. The two nurses at Delnor-Community Hospital in Geneva, Ill., were ready to call it quits to their nursing careers for familiar reasons: stress, burnout, interpersonal and communication problems. Ball, who is now cardiac rehabilitation services director at Delnor, said she heard about HeartMath at a convention, went to California for the training and saw her problems in a new light. "I now had a different perspective, [along with] tools to break down communication barriers and ways to handle stressors better. That’s impacted my health." Stephens, director of home health care services at Delnor, concurred. "In a stressful situation, when everything’s in your face, this system gives you the ability to shift immediately to your heart, to calm its rhythms with positive feelings and respond more appropriately to a crisis." Stephens has been training the staff in HeartMath techniques. "Rather than jump to conclusions, you can use this one-minute power tool for internal balance, to listen intuitively, appreciate the core values of a person," Stephens said. Ball and Stephens’ enthusiasm for the system, used by Fortune 100 companies, the military and other settings, persuaded Delnor to spend $10,000 to certify them as HeartMath trainers and, starting last month, to spend thousands more to train the staff. Delnor is the first hospital to embrace the system on such a wide scale. Through techniques such as Freeze Frame and Heart Lock-In, Delnor’s staff may communicate better, reduce personality conflicts and increase productivity, Ball and Stephens said. They also can measure their heart rates via Freeze-Framer software posted on the floor, which graphically illustrates their heart rhythms. "You can actually see the results of your shift on the screen, right there, in real time," Stephens said. "That’s a big convincer." But Ball’s use of HeartMath with her cardiac patients has impressed her the most. "Before, they would seem to be doing everything right: cholesterol, diet, exercise. But we weren’t focusing on stress, on the emotional aspects that worsened their condition," she said. "Now they can handle the stress better, and that’s impacting their health." Lest this sound like an infomercial, the wider medical community finds HeartMath’s claims about improved blood pressure, anti-aging and "little brains" in the heart inconclusive – to put it gently. This, despite publications such as the American Journal of Cardiology featuring the institute’s research. "There’s no question that the heart and brain are connected and they exchange impulses. And you can train your brain’s responses through meditation or drugs. But most people would reject the idea of an ‘intellectual’ side to the heart," said William Harlan, MD, a cardiologist and associate director for disease prevention at the National Institutes of Health. "We have begun to appreciate that other parts of the body produce important substances, like serotonin. But that doesn’t mean the guts or the heart are intelligent. The brain is still primary." The FDA has recognized neural pathways in the digestive tract – an independent "brain," if you will – playing some role in irritable bowel syndrome, but this only raises more questions about the interconnection of physiology and psychology, said Joanne Spetz, research fellow for medical technology at the Public Policy Institute of California. "These sorts of alternative medicine, usually written off as hokey, do contribute to growing research that sees the body as more than just a walking sack of chemicals," she said. "While inconclusive, it shows how much we have to learn about the mysteries of the body." Until more studies and peer review, agrees Harlan, it’s just too early to say – despite all the wonderful claims. But Ball waves away criticisms of HeartMath as pseudoscience or – at best – a placebo-type therapy. "The proof is in the pudding, so to speak," she said. "We use it and it works." It’s an old debate: Where in the body does the "real me" reside? In his essay, Selzer reminds the reader that in a more "hepatic" age, the ancient Greeks and Romans considered another organ the site of human identity; only with the rise of anatomy studies was "the liver toppled from its central role and the heart elevated to the chair of emotions and intellect." So much the better. "Cross your liver" just doesn’t have the same ring. |
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