At the end of March, New York magazine published a story with the title, is my chest tightness, anxiety, or the coronavirus.
The author was concerned because for days she'd felt tightness in her chest.
That can be a symptom of Covid-19 but it's also a symptom of anxiety.
In the last couple of months, many of us have become familiar with the feeling of fear expressing itself in our bodies.
We may feel restless, physically exhausted.
At times, we may even have trouble catching our breath.
This deep connection between mind and body made us think about an episode we did a while back about a dimension of medicine that few of us recognize.
And we thought we'd bring it back today as a reminder of how our minds are tied to our physical suffering and the complex ways in which healing unfolds.
Here's the this is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedanta.
When you're eight years old, it's not easy to say goodbye to your dad for a whole year.
But that's what Andrew Marvin had to do.
His dad was a commander in the navy and was deployed to Bahrain while his dad was away.
Something happened to Andrew.
Every time my husband's name was brought up, he would develop a headache.
This is Andrew's mom, Anne Marie Marvin.
She knew her son's pain was real.
She didn't want him to suffer.
As she tried to figure out how to help, she remembered an episode of the tv show Mash.
The series is set in a fictionalized army hospital.