GRUDGITIS

Prof B M Hegde

Grudgitis is not a neo-logism.  It could evoke curiosity.  People would easily understand appendicitis or colitis, but would need an explanation before they could grasp the significance of grudgitis.  The word grudge needs no introduction.  All of us at sometime or the other have suffered from or, harbored grudge against someone.   We have consciously or subconsciously pledged to get even with the person.  Grudgitis is about the disease mankind suffers because of harboring grudges against others. When you want to get even with some­one else, the changes in your body physiology are such that the grudge tries to get even with you.  That was very well understood by the science of Ayurveda, thousands of years ago, when it stated; " Kshamavaan, Aapthopasevi Bhaveth Aaarogyam" (Forgive, and love every one in the world as your own kith and kin to enjoy perfect health). 

Even religions knew about this and Jesus wrote " Love thy enemy; love thy neighbor."  Of course, Jesus must also have been aware of the naked truth that the worst enemy of most of us is our own neighbor.  I do not get excited when people say that it is a great scientific achievement that man has been able to land on the moon.  I would have been very excited if science could make us land happily in our neighbor’s drawing room with a genuine smile on our face.

Modern medicine seems to have realized, very late in the day though, that hostility; the human enemy numero uno is at the root of most of our killer diseases.

The conventional risk factors like cholesterol, sugar, obesity, high blood pressure, etc., do not explain the incidence and progress of vascular accidents like strokes and heart attacks.  In fact, the commercial exploitation of x-ray evidence of vessel blocks, (angiographic blocks) has very little role to play in the final assault on the heart or the brain.  Many a time people with normal looking vessels (no blocks in the angiograms) are at a greater risk of a heart attack, as they do not have the usual protection (pre-conditioning) that people with blocks have, when they get the final blow of an abnormal blood clot inside the blood vessel (thrombosis).  Grudgi­tis has a strong role to play in bringing on a clot. 

Audit has clearly shown the fallacy of giving importance to vessel blocks (atherosclerosis) in the final assault.  Less than 30% of the infarct related vessels (blood vessel in relation to a heart attack) are more than 50% blocked.  Consequently most of the heart attack related ves­sels are minimally blocked or not blocked at all seconds before a fatal heart attack.  The crucial seconds before a heart attack, even in sleep, changes take place in the flowing blood chemistry in such dramatic ways that the fluid blood suddenly clots at the crucial place inside a blood vessel.  Grudge is now known to help small blood cells, the platelets, to come together initiating a clot.

Dr. O Spergeon English published an excellent, illustrated book explaining how emotions can cause debilitating and fatal illnesses.  The emotional centre in the brain effects these far reach­ing changes by three methods.  

1) By changing the amount of blood flowing through an organ.
2) By affecting the secretions of certain glands, and
3) By changing the tension of muscles.

If you were to just take into consideration one of the multitude of endocrine glands, the adre­nals, you will soon realize the enormity of the problem.  Emotional changes in adrenal secre­tions could cause high blood pressure, joint diseases, kidney diseases, and thickening of the blood vessels (atherosclerosis).  The last one alone is supposed to kill more than 8,00,000 Americans per year.  There is hardly any disease of the body, which does not have emotional reverberations as its cause or effect.

It is not what "you eat" that kills, but it is what "eats you" eventually kills you.  Shakespeare must have known this when he wrote in Macbeth;

"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote,
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff,
Which weigh upon the heart?"

The Holy Bible has beautifully depicted this in Proverbs chapter 15 Vs 17 " It is better to eat soup with someone you love than steak with someone you hate."

John D Rockefeller Sr. was a sturdy young man with the best of health in his twenties when he took to business.  He really drove himself that fast that he pulverized most Texan oil men and became the youngest billionaire in America.  He hated everyone and did not bat an eyelid to finish off (not physically) a competitor if he thought it was necessary to further his business.  He earned so many enemies that people burnt his effigies daily; he had to have bodyguards wherever he went.  He soon fell into a strange distemper.  He could not sleep well.  He could hardly enjoy his food.  He looked aged when he was only fifty-three years.  A peer of his remarked " he looks like a very old man at this middle age."

One night when he was tossing in bed he realized for the first time that he would not be able to take even one single dollar with him at the end.

That did it! That did it all! He changed. He felt a strange happiness come over him when he decided to "give" rather than "get". The birth of the Rockefeller Foundation and many other charities were due to this. Senior Rockefeller lived happily ever after believing in Christ " It is not for thee alone, pass it on, pass it on."

Grudgitis would have killed him early had he not realized his folly and mend his ways. Amy Cassidy, an American poetess, wrote, " if joy is what you give away joy is what comes back each day." The truth, whole truth, nothing but the truth!  Practise it and feel the difference.

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