Is It All in Our Mind?
Last time I shared with you information from Lissa Rankin’s book Mind Over Medicine as she sought out research on the role of positive beliefs often witnessed as a result of the placebo effect. But she also wanted to examine the role of negative belief on the body’s physiology. So she went in search of finding evidence supporting the answer to this question: Do people have the power to think themselves sick? This question led her to clinical studies incorporating a ‘nocebo’.
One study showed that 79% of medical students report developing symptoms suggestive of the illnesses they were studying. Another study found that three fourths of a trial group, when given a sugar pill that they thought was an antihistamine, reported drowsiness. When a clinical group was given anesthetic nitrous oxide; which participants told would cause pain…it did. (although Nitrous oxide is actually designed to relieve pain). When patients are given noceboes, and told the pills are actually real drugs and are warned about the drug’s side effects; 25% of participants experience those side effects. Dr. Bernie Siegel’s, author of the book In Love, Medicine and Miracles, cites a study that shows patients in a control group are told they are being given a chemotherapy drug, and 30% of them lost their hair! Whoa…sounds crazy doesn’t it?
So what do you think….do people have the power to think themselves sick? Yep, turns out they do. And that brings us back to Ralph Waldo Trine’s quote from several blogs ago: ‘’Never affirm or repeat anything about your health that you do not wish to be true.”
Our negative thoughts can inject poisonous venom into our systems, and that poison creates a big conundrum as it opens the door for the biggest boogie man and illness creator of all…Stress. Stress keeps our body from doing what it was created to do when we become ill; heal itself. Continued stress over time will do the Devil’s work for him, as it sucks the healing mechanisms dry. Stress can come in a number of forms including; toxic relationships, our jobs, our financial situations, loneliness, lack of creative outlets etc..
Doctor Lissa Rankin writes; “After researching the placebo and nocebo effects, I felt very comfortable authoritatively stating that the body is designed to repair itself and that positive belief, nurturing care, and the relation responses they induce set the stage for the body to heal itself. But until we partner with a nurturing physician, Rankin says, that understands the importance of working with the patient to embrace responsibility and take action to alleviate the stressors in his/her life, we won’t see much improvement.
Interested to learn more? Listen to Dr. Lissa Rankin explain about the role our minds play and the science behind it in her 'TedTalk' titled, “Is There Scientific Proof We Can Heal Ourselves?”
One study showed that 79% of medical students report developing symptoms suggestive of the illnesses they were studying. Another study found that three fourths of a trial group, when given a sugar pill that they thought was an antihistamine, reported drowsiness. When a clinical group was given anesthetic nitrous oxide; which participants told would cause pain…it did. (although Nitrous oxide is actually designed to relieve pain). When patients are given noceboes, and told the pills are actually real drugs and are warned about the drug’s side effects; 25% of participants experience those side effects. Dr. Bernie Siegel’s, author of the book In Love, Medicine and Miracles, cites a study that shows patients in a control group are told they are being given a chemotherapy drug, and 30% of them lost their hair! Whoa…sounds crazy doesn’t it?
So what do you think….do people have the power to think themselves sick? Yep, turns out they do. And that brings us back to Ralph Waldo Trine’s quote from several blogs ago: ‘’Never affirm or repeat anything about your health that you do not wish to be true.”
Our negative thoughts can inject poisonous venom into our systems, and that poison creates a big conundrum as it opens the door for the biggest boogie man and illness creator of all…Stress. Stress keeps our body from doing what it was created to do when we become ill; heal itself. Continued stress over time will do the Devil’s work for him, as it sucks the healing mechanisms dry. Stress can come in a number of forms including; toxic relationships, our jobs, our financial situations, loneliness, lack of creative outlets etc..
Doctor Lissa Rankin writes; “After researching the placebo and nocebo effects, I felt very comfortable authoritatively stating that the body is designed to repair itself and that positive belief, nurturing care, and the relation responses they induce set the stage for the body to heal itself. But until we partner with a nurturing physician, Rankin says, that understands the importance of working with the patient to embrace responsibility and take action to alleviate the stressors in his/her life, we won’t see much improvement.
Interested to learn more? Listen to Dr. Lissa Rankin explain about the role our minds play and the science behind it in her 'TedTalk' titled, “Is There Scientific Proof We Can Heal Ourselves?”
posted by Karen @ 5:40 AM
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