Early mind-body studies showed that people were more likely to become ill after suffering severe emotional trauma; recent studies have been able to actually measure the dip in immune defenses. In one study the immune cells of students dropped significantly during exam week, presumably because of the extra stress. In another, rats were taught to shut down their own immune systems by conditioning alone.In 1990 a Stanford University Medical Center psychiatrist who set out to disprove the mind-body link provided strong evidence that it does exist. In the study, women with advanced breast cancer attended support groups in which they shared feelings and information and learned simple relaxation techniques. When compared with women who did not attend the groups, the supported women were less depressed, felt less pain, had a more positive outlook and lived twice as long. Two of the women were still alive and disease-free ten years later, but none of the unsupported women survived. Many scientists suspect that the mind-body connection is involved in the documented spontaneous remissions from cancer and many other diseases that appear to be otherwise inexplicable.As a result of these and other experiments, modern immuno-biologists routinely refer to the immune system as a circulating nervous system. Needless to say, this has immense significance in our daily lives. Press your fingertips to your lymph glands. Do they feel hard and tender? If so, your nervous system is communicating to you that it is tired. One system is expressing the state of another, seemingly separate system.