It was once considered “all in the mind” nonsense. But the Placebo effect has been proven, time and again, to be real and often more powerful than drugs and high tech treatments.
Ancient cultures have records of mind-based spiritual practices, many of which are powerful healing methods. Control of breath, auto hypnosis and suggestion, meditation, energy work and belief all play into the realm of self-healing.
The basic “idea” here is that the person believes that what they are doing is making changes in their body. They believe they are connected to source energy, other realms, and effective healing methods. And it is a combination of the belief and the method that fosters the change.
Science has scoffed at placebo in the past, but now that is all changing. Entire television shows and documentaries are made about the healing effects of placebo. Medical centers and research universities are conducting studies to learn more about this amazing mind-healing method. In fact, a new large studies, lectures and books are being brought out faster than ever. I hope people are listening!
Lissa Rankin’s TED talk
I love watching TED talks. They are extremely informative, interesting and thought-provoking on a wide variety of subjects. And all of them, from the heart. Recently, Lissa Rankin, MD did a talk about spontaneous healing, titled “Is There Scientific Proof We Can Heal Ourselves?”
She discussed the spiritual and scientific implications that the placebo effect has over us and how our thoughts powerfully affect our physiology when we believe we can get well.
The discussion comes on the heels of her recent book, “Mind Over Medicine.” She’s fascinated with how people who have stage 4 cancer, HIV and heart disease have been able to recover spontaneously and their morbidities sent into remission, without prescription medication or high tech treatments. Andrew Weil wrote a similar book some 15 years ago, that I love, titled Spontaneous Healing, wherein he discussed the topic and offered many case studies.
Spontaneous remission project
In 1993, the Institute of Noetic Sciences published “Spontaneous Remission: An Annotated Bibliography.” At the time there were no strong references for this subject matter, but there were plenty of self-healing remission stories. In this work, the authors define spontaneous remission as “the disappearance, complete or incomplete, of a disease or cancer without medical treatment or treatment that is considered inadequate to produce the resulting disappearance of disease symptoms or tumor.”
The project reviewed and cataloged the world’s medical cannon to document, in one place, the literature on the subject matter. More than 3,500 references from 800 journals in 20 languages reported cases of spontaneous remission, or the powerful healing effect of placebo.
In her TED talk, Rankin gives one example of a patient from the study with multiple cancer tumors who believed he was given a powerful drug. The tumors shrunk to half their sizes within a few days, but when he was told the medicine was reported to not work, the tumors re-grew!
His doctor then injected him with water, telling him he had a batch of a stronger drug, and the man’s tumors disappeared! His belief in the treatment, both times, changed his physiology—for better, then worse, and then into remission.
9 ways to radical remission
Rankin points people to another book by Kelly Turner titled, “Radical Remission: The Nine Key Factors That Can Make A Real Difference.” In this work, Dr. Turner uses the terms “radical” instead of “spontaneous” as she sees nothing spontaneous in the event of these cures.
Those whose diseases went into remission were not casually sitting by, sitting on their haunches and contemplating their belief. Rather, she found they were actually engaging in a process of changing nine specific things in their lives; “only two of which might be recommended by a forward-thinking physician,” she notes.
- Radically changing your diet. 2. Taking control of your health. 3. Following your intuition. 4. Using herbs and supplements. 5. Releasing suppressed emotions. 6. Increasing positive emotions. 7. Embracing social support. 8. Deepening your spiritual connection. 9. Having strong reasons for living.
In perspective
While Turner found that the above nine key factors overlapped, not all people in the Noetic Sciences studies or Andrew Weil’s book or throughout history have done them all. However, many people who are very ill already have many of those in place in their daily beliefs and ways of life. Others, with poor lifestyle choices, need to make more radical changes overall.
The main point is, belief without action may not be enough to create physiological change in your body for us all. However, for some, a very strong belief in the “cure method” is enough to do this. The studies show this to be the case.
I find that many people are so tired of being sent from expert to expert and treatment to treatment, that they give up, and this is when their health worsens.
Yes, the placebo effect IS in the mind, rooted in belief. Yet it does much to solidify that we humans have an innate ability to heal ourselves, if we believe we can.
Is there anything more powerful than the mind, especially a mind trained on something specific and with an unwavering belief system behind it? After all, we create with our minds, feel better when we change the way we think about something, can lower our vital signs with deep breathing and visualization.
One powerful mind-strengthening exercise that de-stresses you by deactivating your sympathetic nervous system so you can relax and be in control of your thoughts and health is called cadence breathing.
It’s a bit like Qui-gong in that it strengthens the connection of breath-mind-body so they work together for better results.
First, sit comfortably with your back straight.
Second, begin to slowly inhale and exhale at a set cadence that you choose. Five seconds in, five out, or whatever feels good. This establishes an inhale-to-exhale tempo and links breathing to your thinking.
Third, elongate the exhalation to employ your para-sympathetic systems. This flips the “relax” switch, but also it lets your mind become free of worry and stress so you regain control.
This is essential. Forcing all your breath out signals your mind that you are in charge and exhaling, which is what you do when you relax, not catching your breath and inhaling, which is what happens when you are stunned or frightened.
10 minutes of this relaxed inhalation and controlled elongated exhalation at a set cadence is best to ingrain the feeling of control and the connection between the mind and body for better health.
References
http://www.noetic.org/research/project/online-spontaneous-remission-bibliography-project/
http://www.noetic.org/library/publication-books/spontaneous-remission-annotated-bibliography/
