Excerpts from Jo Marchant's book 'Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body'

 "A large proportion of the lonely people's up-regulated genes were involved in inflammation, whereas many of their down regulated genes had roles in antiviral responses and antibody production. In sociable people, the reverse was true — biological activity in their immune cells was skewed towards fighting viruses and tumour cells and away from producing inflammation. Crucially, the difference related most strongly not to the actual size of the volunteers' social networks but to how isolated they felt themselves to be." - Page 215

"We are humans, not machines, after all. When we’re receiving medical care, our mental state matters. Those who feel alone and afraid do not fare as well as those who feel supported, safe and in control." - Page. 154

Page 130

"More than three quarters of clinical trials in the U.S. are funded by drug companies, who understandably have no interest in proving the benefit of any approach to care that might reduce the need for their products. Pills and medical devices are clearly a more attractive business proposition than hypnotherapy or biofeedback. The enthusiasm for physical interventions goes beyond market forces, however: almost all public money goes to conventional drug research too. The annual budget of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is around $30 billion, for example, of which less than 0.2% goes towards testing mind–body therapies. The bigger problem, I’d argue, is a wider, deep-seated prejudice against the idea that the mind might have the power to heal, or to keep us well. The materialist worldview described in this book’s introduction—which prioritizes physical test results and interventions, and sees subjective experience as a distraction—still reigns supreme in science ... Ignoring subjective experience is great when you’re trying to eliminate bias from your scientific experiments but is not always helpful in caring for patients, when psychological and physical wellbeing are inextricably entwined." - Page 294

Page 128

"When we’re under chronic stress, however, cortisol is released into the body all the time. This acts as a permanent off-switch, and suppresses the immune system. Chronic stress impairs our response to vaccines, and makes us more susceptible to infections from the common cold to HIV [and perhaps covid 19 as well]" (addition is mine)" - Page 161