So far, very few treatments have been scientifically proven to be effective. One of those is hypnotherapy. Really good psychotherapy is like physiotherapy for the nerves. It eases tensions, and teaches us how to move in a more healthy way – at the neural level. Because.

As it happens, the higher the hygiene standards in a country, the higher that nation’s incidence of allergies and autoimmune diseases. The more sterile a household is, the more its members will suffer from allergies and autoimmune diseases. Thirty years ago, about one person in ten had an allergy; today, that figure is one in three.

Saliva is basically filtered blood.

Silly stress at the office or exam-related anxiety become less threatening when we refuse to let them affect us so personally.

I’m sometimes shocked by the way scientists huddle behind closed doors to discuss important research results without informing the public about them at all. Academic caution is often preferable to premature publication, but fear can also destroy opportunities.

Looking closer at human beings, it becomes clear that each of us is a world of our own. Our forehead is a breezy meadow, our elbows are arid wastelands, our eyes are salty lakes, and our gut is the most amazing giant forest ever, populated by the weirdest of creatures.

The gut has not only a remarkable system of nerves to gather all this information, but also a huge surface area. That makes it the body’s largest sensory organ. Eyes, ears, nose, or the skin pale by comparison. The information they gather is received by the conscious mind and used to formulate a response to our environment. They can be seen as life’s parking sensors. The gut, by contrast, is a huge matrix, sensing our inner life and working on the subconscious mind.

Our stomach sits much higher in our abdomen than we think. It begins just below the left nipple and ends below the bottom of the ribcage on the right. Any pain felt farther down than this lopsided little pouch cannot be stomachache. Often, when people say they have stomach problems, the trouble is actually in the gut. The heart and the lungs sit on top of the stomach. This explains why we find it more difficult to breathe deeply after eating a lot.

Count Dracula. A genetic defect has been identified in his home country, Romania, that results in symptoms that include a lack of tolerance to garlic, sensitivity to sunlight, and the production of red urine.

While some of us might be sitting around thinking “Nobody cares about me!”, our heart is currently working its seventeen-thousandth twenty-four-hour shift – and would have every right to feel a little forgotten when its owner thinks such thoughts.