"The Princess on the Pea" is a Danish fairy tale by Han Christian Andersen. The story tells of a prince who wants to marry a real princess, but cannot be certain who is a real princess.

One stormy night a young woman seeks shelter in the prince's castle. She claims to be a princess, so the prince's mother decides to test their guest by placing a pea in the bed, covered by 20 mattresses and 20 featherbeds. Only a real princess would have the sensitivity to feel a pea through such a quantity of bedding. In the morning, when asked how she slept, she said, "I have hardly closed my eyes the whole night! I seemed to be lying upon some hard thing, and my whole body is black and blue this morning." They saw that she must be a real princess as nobody but a real princess could have such a delicate skin and sensitive nature. So the prince rejoiced and took her to be his wife.

In real life, physical sensitivity has nothing to do with royalty or who you really are, but it does affect how you view your health. Some people are born with bodies that give them high volume feedback. If you get big reactions to minor things, it is easy to become alarmed and continually worried about your body.

My advice to people with this type of body is to "turn down the volume" of the feedback and pay less attention to all the noise. You can spend all your life's savings chasing tests to find out what is wrong and what all the commotion is about. While you should get yearly blood tests and exams from your medical doctor, they are unlikely to find the cause of your sensations. For actual relief, this body type works best with an alternative physician who has more sensitive ways of testing body complaints.

I have noticed that many people with this body type have shallow, hard-to-see lines in the palms of their hands. They usually have to put more work into their health and generally do best on raw diets with lots of rest.

The up side to this body type is that these people are not allowed the luxury of ignoring their bodies, and can often perceive what foods or other things in their environments are causing stress. Observing and acting on these indicators can help a person maintain good health.

With its "early warning system", this body type can last a long time with the proper diet and care it needs.

Does this sound like your body type? Maybe you have more of a "Sherman Tank " body type.

May you be healthy and live happily ever after!

Dr. Pepi

November 2 , 2009