Superhealing: Engaging Your Mind, Body, and Spirit to Create Optimal Health and Well-Being (ARC) (11 page)

“I’m living with a lot of stress.” Rarely is there a disconnection in

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their minds between the stress that is occurring in their lives and their physical health.

I’d like to ask you a similar question now for your consideration

before you go on reading. What’s interfering with your experience

of optimal health and well-being? Awareness is the first key ingredient to tapping into your mind’s superhealing abilities. When you are able to answer this question truthful y, you will create a space in your mind that aligns you with your superhealing power.

This is indeed a marvelous time for those of us who decide to take charge of our health and well-being. The information available today is nothing short of remarkable. The research on how our minds and

bodies interact inspires me. Years ago I set out on a path to improve my health and well-being, and I remain on that path to this very day.

For a long time, I focused exclusively on my physical health. Then, during a hospitalization for a heart condition, I realized how deeply I was being affected by my emotions, and I began to pay more attention to the health of my mind. I learned to manage my thoughts, and I am now happy to report that I no longer experience the heart problem.

The body-mind-spirit whispers, speaks, and screams its messages to us about what it needs, and it slaps us down if we don’t listen. When I ask the people I coach about their health the simple question “What’s stressing you?” most answer without missing a beat. They are aware of what’s causing their stress, but they usual y feel helpless to address their responses to it, because they believe they have little or no control over their emotions. Fortunately, this can be changed. Our seemingly knee-jerk stress-induced emotional responses can be reined in and transformed.

YOUR UNFOLDING BRAIN: NEUROPLASTICITY

Colleen (not her real name) experienced a devastating stroke that

paralyzed the left side of her body. I watched her valiantly struggle 60

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to relearn how to walk and incremental y recover. In the beginning, her physicians feared she wouldn’t live, much less recover, Her family maintained a close watch over her as she improved. I wondered if she’d ever walk again, but her persistence and commitment allowed

her to regain her ability to walk. At one time, it was believed that a stroke caused permanent damage, but now we know that the brain

can reorganize itself. She did real y wel , valiantly and actively recovering from a stroked that paralyzed the left side of her body. In a few weeks, her brain reprogrammed itself, creating new pathways that

bypassed the damaged area that had controlled her ability to move

her left arm and leg.

Did you know that your brain has the ability to regenerate? For

most of the twentieth century, the prevailing scientific opinion

among neuroscientists was that brain structure is fixed and un-

changeable after childhood. In medical school, my fellow students

and I were taught that nerve cel s were different from other cel s because they lacked the ability to regenerate. Now we know that this simply isn’t true. In recent decades, a vast array of research has revealed that the brain remains plastic—adaptive and moldable—even

into adulthood.24 Scientists have proved that the brain has a dramatic capacity to change in response to stimulation throughout every stage of life. In particular, the discovery that the adult brain can create new cel s, a phenomenon known as
neurogenesis,
has caused a major shift in medical protocols and given us a new appreciation of our capabilities.25 The concept of neuroplasticity has replaced the formerly held position that the brain is a physiological y static organ.26

Our brains change in response to our experiences in a multitude

of measurable ways, from the growth of new connections between

existing nerve cel s to the birth of new cel s. The brain is, in fact, so exquisitely responsive to shifts in our thinking, feeling, emotions,

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and behavior and to the external environment that we should take

this as encouragement to purposeful y continue to grow, learn, and develop new skil s and talents for our entire life spans. The brain is far more dynamic than most people realize. It is never too late to change. This process is actively involved in how we change our response to distress.

Neuroplasticity occurs on a variety of levels, from cel ular changes caused by learning to the large-scale changes of cortical remapping in response to injury. The role of neuroplasticity is widely recognized in healthy development, learning, memory, recovery from brain damage, and the successful management of stress.

Your brain’s plasticity is important because that determines how efficiently your brain works. The more connections your brain makes, the easier it is for you to process information and make decisions. During your lifetime, your brain’s capabilities will increase and decline depending on your lifestyle. Use them or lose them.

By seeking to determine the outer limits of the brain’s capacity,

scientists discovered that we can change the brain’s structure by altering our thought processes—our beliefs. Do you realize how pro-

found the implications of this are for your health and well-being?

We know now that the brain is a relay station of sorts. Our thoughts are not just words, impressions, and pictures floating through our heads, they are chemical and biological messengers that can and do affect the pathways they move through. The connection between our cognition

and our physical condition is so profound that if we learn to manage our thoughts, feelings, and emotions, we can harness them to treat physical and mental disorders and deepen our sense of spiritual connection.

We can use the power of the mind to enhance our capacity to

experience and express anything, including love, empathy, gratitude, and compassion.

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THE POWER OF YOUR BELIEFS

Your beliefs have the power to change your physiology and im-

prove your health. They also have the power to harm you. As dem-

onstrated by the perceptual and emotional stimulation of your stress response, your beliefs can unleash very powerful forces inside your body.

My most intense personal experience with the extraordinary

power of belief came when I was part of a team of doctors treating George (not his real name), who for several months had been experiencing unusual pain and other symptoms in his intestinal tract.

A soft-spoken man in his late sixties, he had been referred to our hospital because his local doctors could not diagnosis the cause of his symptoms.

Throughout his diagnostic tests, George was quiet, cooperative,

and extremely pleasant. After several days, an unfortunate diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer was made. I was in his room when

his physician gave him the news, surrounded by our entire medical

team. George looked as though a bomb had exploded in his mind.

Stunned and unable to respond, he sat before us in a stupor. He

didn’t ask any questions. His wife, who was at his side, seemed more engaged. An hour or so later, she stopped me in the hal way just outside her husband’s room. She grabbed my hand, looked directly into my eyes, and asked, “Is my husband going to die?”

Since her husband’s primary physician had already told them he

would die, I knew in my heart that she was searching for a ray of

hope that I couldn’t provide. Her sincerity pierced my heart. I wasn’t equipped to answer the question, so I stumbled through with a response that neither comforted nor soothed her. “We’re all going to die one day. I don’t think anyone knows exactly when that’s going

to happen.” I didn’t know what else to say. With that, I awkwardly

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escaped her grip and went about my business. Looking back on that

scene, I now wonder if perhaps George’s wife had felt something in her husband’s response that caused her more concern than the doctor’s words.

After lunch, I walked past George’s room and noticed that a nurse

was changing his sheets. The room was empty. I wondered where he

and his wife were. I didn’t think any additional diagnostic tests were scheduled, so I asked the nurse. She replied, “George just died.”

I was stunned. I raced to the nurses’ station and asked my intern

if he knew what had happened. “Seems like he had a heart attack,” he answered. “I’m not sure we’ll ever know. Considering he was terminal, an autopsy real y isn’t in order.”

I believe the news of George’s diagnosis frightened him to death.

I real y do. There have been numerous reports of people receiving

frightening news and dropping dead on the spot. The damaging

changes to the brain that occur in the face of significant stress can be attributed to its adaptability to the environment. Our beliefs direct and shape our whole physiology in remarkable ways.

Perhaps the most significant example of the power of belief is the placebo effect. A placebo is an inert substance without any medicinal value, such as a sugar pil , that is given to a person who is under the false impression that it is an effective treatment. An individual’s belief alone can sometimes prompt an improvement.
Placebo
is Latin for “I shall please.” Thus, the
placebo effect
is the medical term used to describe the healing power of the mind.

Traditional y, even though the placebo effect can be measured,

it is explained in a way that minimizes its true power. Among re-

searchers, the placebo effect is presented as a nuisance, an interfering human artifact that compromises the pure approach of scientific research on active substances, such a medications and surgery. As

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a young doctor, I learned that the placebo effect was something we

“just had to live with.” It was to be tolerated, not accepted as a possibility in planning a course of treatment. However, I was absolutely fascinated by the notion that the mind was so powerful. Although

most people have heard of the placebo effect, I do not think many of us appreciate the opportunity it represents.

Your beliefs are quite powerful and have a direct effect on your

body’s responses. In fact, under the right conditions, your mind can heal your body in the absence of drugs or surgery. This is one of the most fascinating aspects of your superhealing ability.

The placebo effect is recognized as being so potent that for any

new drug to be considered a valid healing agent, it must be measured against a placebo to prove its effectiveness compared to the effectiveness of beliefs. To be approved by the Food and Drug Administra-

tion, every new drug study includes a placebo, and most approved

drugs actual y do only a little better than placebos. But doctors and drug companies don’t general y advertise this fact. As Ted Kaptchuk, a Harvard University professor and researcher who has spent his career studying the effect of placebos, has said, “Mainstream medicine uses the placebo effect all the time. Doctors don’t tell you the drug they’re giving you is barely better than a placebo. They all spin.” 27

In drug studies that take into consideration the power of the mind, the statistical difference between the “real thing” and the placebo is rarely more than 15 percent. Several studies have proved that placebo-induced sham treatments produce outcomes equal to those attrib-

uted to drugs and surgery in terms of providing relief from several common conditions. For instance, at Baylor College of Medicine, a

group of orthopedic surgeons led by J. Bruce Moseley were prompted to explore the true benefits of a type of arthroscopic knee surgery that is recommended to patients with osteoarthritis when medication fails

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to relieve their pain. Although the surgery brings results, it is unclear to surgeons what the true physiological source of pain relief is. There is no proof that arthroscopy actual y cures or halts the process of osteoarthritis. So this team of surgeons designed a study to assess the true effectiveness of arthroscopic surgery.

The Baylor College study was a double-blind design, which means

that neither the subjects nor the researchers themselves knew which patients received arthroscopic surgery and which did not. There were 180 patients with degenerative knee arthritis in the study; the experimental group was given one of two kinds of authentic orthopedic

surgery—one using a laprascope, the other using lavage (washing

out) or debridement (removal of tissue)—and the control group was

given a fake surgery. In the control group, three scalpel incisions were made around the knee like those used in actual surgery so as to keep the patients and the medical evaluators from discovering that they hadn’t been operated on. The results of all the surgeries—both of the real ones and the fake one—were the same. The findings determined

that surgery mostly relieves pain because the patients believe it does.28

Knee surgery for arthritis is not the only operation to be under-

mined when compared with sham surgery. Another study found

something similar with patients undergoing a common procedure

called vertebroplasty, which involves an injection into the lumbar spine. The procedure alleviated pain to the same degree as a placebo

“surgery” in which the physicians tapped on the spine and piped in the smell of cement to the treatment room to make groggy volunteer subjects believe they were receiving the real treatment. Researchers found that the thirty-six volunteers who received the sham surgery did just as well as the thirty-five who got the real operation.29