The Vagus Nerve Is Part of A Much More Important System

Welcome to the fascinating world of Psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology – the interrelationship between psychology, neurology, and the endocrine and immune systems

Andy Murphy
4 min readOct 25, 2024
Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash

Do you know what the longest word in the English language is?

Before I reveal how many letters it has see if you pronounce it first:

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

If you couldn’t, don’t worry, you’re in good company.

Anything that’s 45 letters shouldn’t really be a word. It should be a small sentence.

But as hard as it is to say, it has a pretty cool meaning. It refers to a lung disease that’s contracted from inhaling volcano dust.

Wild.

Well, not as wild as the study of psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology.

Although it pales in comparison to its longer-worded friend (a mere 30 letters long) it’s one of the most fascinating interconnected systems in the body.

Psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology is “The science of how our psyche, nervous system, immune system, and endocrine system interact and affect our health.”

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