Love and the Microscope Michael Yoder
From: Alice - February 2004, Volume 7, Issue 2
So, because it's Valentine's Day, I did an Internet search on "Love and Health", "Love and the Immune System", "Love and Immunity" and the results were phenomenally disappointing.
It seems that the sites that look at the concept of love and health are all spiritually based, or even worse, kind of flaky places.
I guess, for scientists, love and its contribution to health is not worth studying. I suppose we could say that looking at how stress affects the immune system is almost like studying love, but then again - it's not the same thing at all.
Love is something we all seek. Everyone wants to be wanted, loved and cared for by others. We begin needing love as infants - babies who are not touched, are not loved, get sick and don't adjust as they mature into children: sometimes they die from a lack of love. It's not rocket science to suggest that love has a deeply significant impact on our health and our lives.
To dismiss emotion as too complex or abstract to study is a cop out in my opinion. Love doesn't fit the senses so easily and it certainly is open to interpretation by the individual; nonetheless it is no less real than placebo effects in chemically based studies or a viral load test. And if the basis for study is to disprove a theory then science should attempt to disprove the value of love.
Perhaps love is too dangerous a chemical to play with. It holds so much power that to tackle its dissection would be the death of the scientist herself. Simply caring for another, opening our heart to that vulnerable place is scary to the Nth degree, whether it's platonic friendship or intimate companionship - love is one of the most powerful forces in nature.
I wax poetic - the other danger in talking or writing about love. And maybe that's the thing about love. It inspires in people something that science never could explain: the puzzle of pain and joy all rolled into one; something greater than any microscope could comprehend.
So in the end I'll just be content to love and be loved and I'll let the researchers study my white cells instead.