Never Be Sick Again (28 page)

For Lisa and Ruth, certain “rewards” for being sick superseded their desires to get well or stay well. This way of life is not uncommon; people often have psychological reasons to get sick or stay sick—usually not on a conscious level. People often learn hopelessness instead of hopefulness.

If you are sick, be sure to ask yourself,
What is my reward
for being sick? Am I willing to give up my reward? Do I truly
want to be well?
These questions can be followed with affirmations or mantras, such as
I am well. I am getting better,
healthier and stronger every day.
Reprogramming your mind-set or approach is the key, whether you are talking about the thoughts you think or the foods you eat. Health is a choice, and the best chance to realize it comes from making your top priority to get well and stay well.

The Placebo Effect

One of the most familiar descriptions of the power of the mind over the body's responses is the placebo effect. This concept is based on research by Henry K. Beecher, published in a 1955 paper, “The Powerful Placebo,” which concluded that roughly one-third of people who receive medical treatment will show improvement simply because they believe the treatment will work, regardless of how pharmacologically effective the treatment is. People's thoughts affect their health—not exactly a news flash, but a scientific fact nevertheless. When the research was published, Beecher's paper made a huge impact on the scientific community, and since then, thousands of published studies on the same topic demonstrate clearly that what you think affects how your body functions.

The term placebo refers to a substance, procedure or treatment that, when given to a patient, produces a beneficial effect on the body that is not a direct result of the placebo's chemistry. Now, medical scientists use placebos to measure the effectiveness of a certain treatment—often a medication— versus “no treatment” at all. In a typical study, for instance, one group of patients is given a drug and another group of patients, unknown to them, receive pills that contain essentially nothing—a placebo.

This approach and the results based on this approach, however, are misguided because the placebo—by virtue of positive thinking—does have effects. Doctors and scientists portray their disrespect for the patient's power by thinking of the placebo as something to be “factored out of the equation,” as an unwanted, or at best, uninteresting effect. More medical support for this power could go a long way toward helping all become and stay well.

Scientific work with the placebo proves what we already know instinctively: Beliefs, attitudes and patterns of behavior play a major role in health and disease. Our state of mind is as much a part of our lifestyle as our diet, amount of sleep or exercise. Let us harness the principles of the placebo effect and use that power. In a sincere, direct and informed manner, we can use it more profoundly.

The Best Health Coverage

The support, encouragement and good bedside manner of a health practitioner (be it a modern practitioner or an ancient witch doctor) can help a patient recover, even if this “help” exists only through the “effect of the mind.”

Down through history, many or perhaps most of the successes of health-care treatments have been and are due to behavioral and psychological factors. A 1993 study in
Cardiology
raised the possibility that a large share of the presumed benefits of prescription drugs actually results from people believing they are being helped.

New York Times
columnist Margaret Talbot summed up this idea, noting that “the truth is that the placebo effect is huge.” In studies of new drugs, she says, between 35 and 75 percent of patients benefit from taking a dummy pill. This “placebo effect,” she writes, “should probably be put to conscious use in clinical practice, even if we do not entirely understand how it works.”

Talbot continues:

For centuries, Western medicine consisted of almost nothing but the placebo effect. The patient who got better after a bleeding—or a dose of fox lung, wood lice, tartar emetic or any of the other charming staples of the 19th-century pharmacopoeia—got better either in spite of them or because of their symbolic value. Such patients believed in the cure and in the authority of the bewigged gentlemen administering it, and the belief gave them hope and the hope helped make them well. There were exceptions—remedies, like quinine for malaria, the vaccine for smallpox and morphine for pain relief, which actually worked. But generally speaking, if all the drugs of the day “could be sunk to the bottom of the sea,” as Oliver Wendell Holmes observed in 1860, “it would be all the better for mankind—and all the worse for the fishes.”

We need to use the principles of the placebo effect deliberately— without trying to deceive the patient—to benefit health and performance. Imagine the potential gains if modern health care included an educational and “coaching” dimension as part of a more comprehensive approach to healing. This rarely happens. Modern health care focuses almost exclusively on diagnosing and treating the physical body, usually with drugs or surgery, and typically fails to consider the behavioral, emotional, perceptual, learning, cognitive and spiritual factors that may be playing a significant role in becoming sick or well.

Believing that you “have” a disease and playing the role of a “sick person” is the way to stay sick. By contrast, being healthy means believing that you are getting well and staying well; it means “playing the role” of health.
Every thought has
a physical effect on your cells.
Negative thoughts, particularly about disease and death, can literally kill you.

An Infection of Negative Thoughts

Although we used to think of mind and body as entirely separate, the last twenty-five years of scientific research have taught us a great deal about the dimensions of mind and body and how, together, they establish body-wide communication networks. Our bodies create chemical messengers (neuropep-tides, neurotransmitters and hormones) that allow the body to communicate with itself, to self-regulate, to adapt. Through these chemical messengers the cells know when and what to do. Cells throughout the body (not just in the brain) both create and are affected by these chemical messengers. All cells are in constant contact with one another, whether they are brain cells, muscle cells, nerve cells or any other kind.

Every thought and emotion triggers the release of chemical messengers throughout the body; in other words, there is no such thing as “just a thought.” Every thought has a physical consequence, for better or worse. Feelings of anger, apathy, gloom and resentment weaken the immune system and damage health. Positive thoughts of love, compassion, joy, humor and the like support good physical health.

It takes some effort and discipline, especially on the bad days, to keep an open and positive mindset, but the health benefits definitely make it worthwhile. The goal of this chapter is to explain how psychology affects health at the cellular level and to identify some of the most important psychological concepts, as well as some of the most common (and self-destructive) mistakes. The goal is to help you improve your psychological pathway—one of the major avenues between health and disease.

Minds Need Reprogramming

Our minds are rather like computers: Whether intended or unintended, they do what they have been programmed to do. A big part of using the psychological pathway to stay healthy is the ability to recognize your current programming and to learn new programs—new thoughts, attitudes and behavior patterns.

As demonstrated by my clients Lisa and Ruth, some people find it hard to develop the will to change old patterns. For these two women, habitual thinking and imagery created their destiny. They were in reach of health, but let it go. Why? Not because they lacked the necessary information, the problem most people face, but because their strategies for achieving short-term security had been tried and proven, and were too difficult to unlearn.

Negative health programming can come from a visit to the doctor. Even the sight of a physician can cause blood pressure to rise; the effect is called “white-coat hypertension.” The stress resulting from the diagnosis of a grave disease can do serious damage, precisely like voodoo or a witch's hex. A 1991 study in the
Medical Journal of Australia
concluded that negative suggestions from physicians and caregivers were significant negative factors in cancer recovery. Deepak Chopra, M.D., made a similar observation in his book,
Creating
Health:
“I have frequently observed that a rapid progression of symptoms and then death from cancer occurred
after
the diagnosis of cancer was made. It is almost as if the patient was dying from the diagnosis and not from the disease.”

Physicians must exercise great care not to create negative expectations. We need support and reassurance from our physicians and caregivers. We need them to believe in us and to help us through our processes of healing and recovery. Certainly, we expect honesty from them, but we do not need discouraging remarks and ominous statistics about our slim chances for survival (as I was told that nothing more could be done for me, before I saved my own life).

Regardless of what your health practitioner says or does, getting well and staying well is your responsibility. Taking that responsibility actually helps make you healthier. Unfortunately, most patients relinquish this responsibility to their doctor. They play a passive role of bystander or victim; they think of the health-care provider as their problem solver.

Patients' positive attitudes toward their health or disease help to make them not only informed but also empowered. Approaching health care with the belief that you, as the patient, are in charge can vitalize your efforts. You ask more questions. You feel more control over the outcome. As Bernie Siegel, M.D., reminds us in
Love, Medicine & Miracles,
the patient must be the primary source of healing. “Exceptional patients,” he wrote, “refuse to be victims. They educate themselves and become specialists in their own care. They question the doctor because they want to understand their treatment and participate in it. They demand dignity, personhood, and control, no matter what the course of disease.”

There is nothing wrong with going to the doctor—so long as you realize that your health is your responsibility, not your doctor's or anyone else's. Because belief in your own health makes a critical difference, you need to work with professionals who acknowledge how essential this outlook is. You need caregivers to support you in your efforts to participate, and who can assist you in educating yourself productively, rather than hinder you, which is often the case.

Often, psychological healing is thought to be unimportant to treatment in modern health care, but the miracle is precisely the opposite. Unfortunately, modern medicine overlooks the whole person. “Fixing” only the physical body, as if it were a separate entity, is to overlook the complex weave of physiological, psychological and spiritual dimensions that define human beings—including you, your tissues and all of your cells. The standard approach is not good enough.

Healthy Mind, Healthy Immune System

Negative behaviors, thoughts, emotions and stress can adversely affect the functioning of your immune system; they can lower your resistance to infections and make you more susceptible to bacteria, fungi, viruses and other microorganisms. Yet, you can exercise control. You can begin immediately, actively and consciously to improve your ability to fight disease and maintain optimal health.

Speaking about the psychological dimension of the immune system, David Felton, M.D., professor of neurobiology and anatomy at the University School of Rochester, said, “Now there's overwhelming evidence that hormones and neurotransmitters can influence the activities of the immune system and that products of the immune system influence the brain.”

In order to protect you from infections, your brain and your immune system must be in constant dialogue. The brain sends information to the immune system by producing certain types of chemical messengers (neuropeptides). That information is delivered to immune cells through receptor sites on cell membranes. Rather like plugging an electrical appliance into a wall outlet, chemical messengers from your brain “plug in” to the receptor sites on the immune cells. This messaging process happens on a very large scale, allowing the brain to deliver information to immune cells throughout the body. Likewise, the body's immune cells respond by creating new chemical messengers, sending information back to the brain. This process creates a constant link or feedback loop between the brain and the immune system.

The role of the psychological pathway in immune system function is illustrated by a study of twenty-six bereaved spouses. The study demonstrated that the pain and stress of bereavement significantly depressed the effectiveness of the immune system. In other studies, depressed immunity in students, determined by the number and activity of T-cells, has been shown to result from the psychological stress of taking exams. Psychologically depressed immunity can even lead to cancer. As far back as the second-century A.D., the physician and philosopher Galen observed that melancholy dispositions disposed women toward developing breast cancer. A 1998 study in the
Journal of the National Cancer Institute
came to the same conclusion. In that study, women who experienced long-term depression were almost 90 percent more likely to develop cancer than their upbeat counterparts.