It was during a period of extreme stress in my life that I developed inflammatory arthritis. My mother was dying of breast cancer, and on a flight back to my home in Washington, D.C., one of my knees swelled up. Over the next several weeks, the other knee swelled, then my elbows, my shoulders and my ankles began to ache. I felt stiff when I woke up, like a rusty car. I’m a rheumatologist, and now I knew what my patients meant when they said they felt stiff.

I realized that I had inflammatory arthritis. Not a huge surprise, as half my family had one rheumatic disease or another – my mother had rheumatoid arthritis, or RA, my grandmother, lupus, and on and on.

My mother died shortly after I had moved into a new house in Washington, D.C. My new neighbors – a Greek-Finnish couple who had seen me on my deck with my laptop computer, writing what was to become my first book – asked if I was a writer. I said, “Why do you ask?” They said, “Because we’ve always wanted an author to stay at our cottage in Crete.” I said, smiling, “I’m a writer!”

And so began my road to healing. I went with them to their tiny village of Lentas on the south coast of Crete, and spent hours every day swimming in the calm, warm waters of the bay, eating delicious Greek food – tzatziki, dolmades, fresh fish and vegetables, and lots of virgin olive oil. I inhaled the sweet scent of jasmine and lemon blossoms on the night air, the eucalyptus and lavender. I gazed for hours at the blue, blue Mediterranean sea, from my perch in the doorway of a tiny stone chapel on a hill above the town.

New research is telling us that it was not a coincidence that I got sick when I did, during a period of extreme chronic stress, and it was not a coincidence that I began to heal when I went to Greece and changed my lifestyle.

The stress didn’t cause my arthritis – my genes predisposed me to it. But the stress triggered a state of burnout that made me more vulnerable to developing the arthritis when I did. When I finally let go, slowed down and began to let myself emotionally heal, so too did my physical illness begin to heal.

Once I returned home, I learned to take time out of every day to savor the world around me and contemplate; to pace myself and get enough sleep and rest; to eat a healthy diet and exercise gently every day; and to seek the company and comfort of family and friends. I take nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medication when I begin to feel a flare and stiffness, but this approach to life has helped control my symptoms so that I can live an active and fulfilling life, largely pain-free. Even people with much more active and severe disease than mine can benefit from this lifestyle.

Now my professional work as a scientist has become a personal mission. I want to really understand not only on a molecular level but also in practical terms how stress affects biology, and I want to share those insights with others who, like me, need to help their body heal.

As you read my column in issues to come, please share your own stories and questions about illness onset and healing, and together we will find our “balance within.”

Esther M. Sternberg, MD, rheumatologist and researcher, is the author of Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-being (2009, Harvard University Press).