Dr. Samuel Mann

24/02/2025

This topic is really resonating with people! There were over 2,900 views in the first 24 hours 🤯

Thank you to .agle for the interview on, The Raelan Agle Podcast.

I spoke on a new and very different understanding of the mind/body connection; the role of repression of emotion both as a rarely noted or recognized contributor to our emotional resilience and as an unrecognized cause or contributor to medical illness. 

This is relevant to medical conditions including hypertension, chronic fatigue syndrome, migraine, inflammatory bowel disease, and others. I urge you to listen to this interview and continue learning by reading my new book, Hidden Within Us.

24/07/2023

My book:
"Hidden Within Us: a Radical New Understanding of the Mind-Body Connection"

Am proud to have received 2023 Second Quarter Firebird Book Award:

First Place Award in the following 4 categories:
Health
Psychiatry/Psychology
Mind Body Spirit
Alternative Medicine

Available on Amazon

14/09/2022

If you have read my new book, Hidden Within Us, and enjoyed it please pass this link on to a friend or forward your review to your network on Facebook. All reviews and referrals are gratefully received. It can be purchased on Amazon.

Hidden Within Us: A Radical New Understanding of the Mind-Body Connection

05/08/2022

This is a podcast I recently took part in with nationally known pain psychologist Dr. Dan Ratner, that looks at all aspects of symptoms, how to understand them, and how to address them so that one can live pain-free.

Can Mind-Body Issues Lead to High Blood Pressure?
https://youtu.be/iCLg-0nwhDY

If you would like more information, check out my recently launched book, Hidden Within Us...on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Within-Understanding-Mind-Body-Connection/dp/B09XSX849

In this interview, I got to sit down with Dr. Samuel Mann, a nationally renowned medical expert on hypertension, who even wrote one of the chapters of the bo...

12/07/2022

The Failure of Traditional Mind-Body Beliefs
New book: Hidden With Us, A Radical New Understanding of the Mind-Body Connection
https://lnkd.in/eqJHc939

The traditional understanding of the mind-body relationship that has dominated popular and research attention is that the stress and emotional distress that we experience are the cause of many medical illnesses. Many believe that day-to-day stress and emotional distress are a direct cause of chronic medical conditions like hypertension, ulcers, inflammatory bowel disease, and others and that mind-body interventions are useful in treating or preventing them.
However, decades of psychosomatic research have failed to confirm this understanding. Yes, stress can indirectly contribute to illness through its effects on health habits such as overeating, smoking, substance abuse, and others. But, no, research has failed to confirm the belief that stress and emotional distress directly cause medical illness.
My clinical experience agrees with those negative findings. Yet traditional mind-body beliefs persist. In accord with those beliefs, the “psychosocial” history physicians are taught to obtain from patients continues to focus on their current day-to-day stress and emotional distress.
So, is there a mind-body connection? The answer is a definite yes. Yet what I’ve observed has led me to a very different understanding of this connection; one that is rarely, if ever, considered or mentioned. It is a perspective with important implications concerning our understanding and treatment of many widespread medical conditions whose cause remains inadequately understood.
I wrote 'Hidden Within Us' to convey that understanding and its implications. I will present this rarely considered yet unavoidable understanding as it unfolded to me. I learned that, to a large extent, the mind-body connection does not reside in the emotions we feel and that distress us. I came to realize that an absence of emotional distress does not preclude a mind-body origin. I was surprised to observe the unsuspected involvement of much more powerful emotions that, ironically, we don’t feel, and would insist that we don’t feel.
Evidence suggests that this connection pertains to a long list of conditions (among them, hypertension, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, other chronic pain syndromes, colitis, autoimmune diseases, migraine, unexplained anxiety, and possibly many others) that are not well explained by medical science.
I do not believe that this mind-body origin is operative in all patients with these conditions. The proportion of patients in whom a given condition is attributable to this mind-body understanding differs from condition to condition. Even so, I believe it is an unrecognized cause or contributor in many patients and offers important, yet rarely explored treatment implications.

Hidden Within Us: A Radical New Understanding of the Mind-Body Connection

06/07/2022

I was recently introduced to Gina Kolata so have started to follow her writing online. She specializes in hospitals and exercise and has written a lot about blood pressure, my main area of expertise. I thought I'd flag her to anyone who is interested in advances in science and medicine. Here's a summary of recent articles she has written.

Gina Kolata is a reporter at The Times, focusing on science and medicine. Her training is in science: She studied molecular biology on the graduate level at M.I.T. for a year and a half and has a master’s degree in applied mathematics from the University of Maryland. Her work at The Times has....

05/07/2022

I am pleased to reveal my first podcast on Wellness Radio with Dr. J which discusses my new book, Hidden Within Us, A Radical New Understanding of the Mind-Body Connection.

https://www.spreaker.com/user/wellness-radio-with-dr-j/drsamuelmann

Dr. Jeanette welcomes Dr. Samuel Mann, author of Hidden Within Us: A Radical New Understanding of th

29/06/2022

The Psychosocial History
New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Within-Understanding-Mind-Body-Connection/dp/B09XSX849K

As I became more comfortable having intimate discussions with patients, I found myself further expanding the psychosocial history I was obtaining. I began to realize that there was more to it than just asking about current stress. The patient’s life history,
particularly his or her childhood experiences often bore more relevance than a recitation of recent stresses.

I began to ask more patients about their childhood and how events from their past had affected them. Some had been impacted unendingly, and the roots of some of their current issues, both emotional and physical, lay in their past experiences.
Perhaps the most striking and surprising observation was the phenomenon of the patient who had been through hell and was fine and could tell me that he or she had put the trauma behind them and moved on with no lingering effects. They were not saying they were avoiding those emotions. They were saying they were unaware of any emotion or impact related to those events. Without my questions, many had never even mentioned the roughest events of their life.

I was amazed at the resilience of many patients and wondered how they had moved on so successfully following what were often traumatic events. I also wondered whether those events, though patients had no awareness of any emotion related to them, could still be affecting them, emotionally, physically, or both.

It stirred in me a consuming interest in this aspect of resilience and its role in the mind-body connection; looking at the patient’s story rather than focusing only on the emotional distress he or she reported feeling. I was becoming increasingly aware of the critical protective effect of not feeling. At the same time, I was beginning to sense that emotions that were not felt, whether from day-to-day life or events and experiences that had occurred years or even decades earlier, might be contributory to current medical conditions whose cause remained inadequately explained. I recognized that patients, doctors, and researchers rarely if ever consider attributing medical consequences to emotions that patients don’t feel, don’t mention, and aren’t aware of.

These observations were pointing me toward an understanding of the mind-body connection that differed from the long-standing focus on the role of current emotional distress.

28/06/2022

Repressed Emotions and Other Chronic Medical Conditions
https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Within.../dp/B09XSX849K

In medicine, we encounter many common conditions whose underlying cause remains inadequately understood, and whose treatment is often problematic. Decades of mind-body research focused on day-to-day stress and emotional distress have provided scant insight. Further, there is a continuing lack of awareness of, and a dearth of studies concerning, a possible link between repressed emotions and medical illnesses. And since patients who are not suffering emotional distress don’t seek psychological counseling, clinical psychologists are also unlikely to write about this unexplored link.

My experience suggests that here as well a mind-body connection outside the usual focus on day-to-day stress and emotional distress is relevant. And published studies provide support for this understanding in relation to conditions such as chronic fatigue syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmune diseases, migraine, asthma, fibromyalgia, and others whose causes we still don’t fully understand, and whose
treatment remains challenging. And the corollary question that needs to be asked and addressed is whether this understanding offers new pathways for medical healing.

Though at first, I wasn’t looking for it, the specter of repressed emotions arose repeatedly. Ironically, this mind-body connection was often relevant in patients who did not complain of emotional distress and who, if anything, would argue against the existence of such a link.

27/06/2022

Stress and Hypertension
https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Within-Understanding-Mind-Body-Connection/dp/B09XSX849K

I specialize in the treatment of hypertension (high blood pressure), a medical condition that has been the subject of more mind-body research than perhaps any other. The widespread belief has been that stress and emotional distress can cause hypertension and that stress reduction can alleviate it. Yes, stress and emotional distress can transiently increase anyone’s blood pressure. However, decades of mind-body research have failed to confirm that they cause sustained hypertension or that stress reduction and relaxation techniques can lead to sustained blood pressure lowering. Ironically, in a book about the mind-body connection, I begin by stating that in the overwhelming majority of patients with relatively ordinary hypertension, hypertension is not caused by stress and emotional distress and is not a mind-body disorder.

I have found a surprising and unexpected mind-body connection in patients with atypical forms of hypertension, including severe hypertension, unexplained episodic hypertension, or hypertension in relatively young patients. Their stories will make this understanding unavoidable, regardless of whether or not you are one of the over 100 million Americans who have hypertension.

More importantly, I will present observations and published evidence that suggest that this understanding is relevant to other widespread medical conditions that to this day remain inadequately understood and treated.

24/06/2022

Back Pain:
The Work of Dr. John Sarno

Dr. John Sarno was a pioneer in linking medically unexplained pain syndromes, particularly back pain, to repressed emotions, an understanding that has dramatically helped many patients. Dr. Sarno authored several books, including his first, a widely known bestseller, Healing Back Pain. He witnessed the rapid, dramatic improvement that can occur after patients gain awareness of emotions they had avoided.

I was fortunate to know Dr. Sarno. I enjoyed our conversations and contributed a chapter to his book, The Divided Mind. However, I believe there are both similarities and differences between the patients with back pain Dr. Sarno encountered and the patients with hypertension and other medical disorders I encounter, as discussed in my new book, Hidden Within Us, A Radical New Understanding of the Mind-Body Connection.

https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Within.../dp/B09XSX849K