Whole Health (23 page)

I suggest to my patients that they distill the issue down to a “feed or feel” proposition. They can either continue to try in desperation to feed the pain back down, or they can feel the pain out. I suggest that they begin looking at their pain as mere energy. Consciously deemphasize all stigmas and associations. Try to release the memories of the people, places, and things involved with your core pain. See your pain as pure energy that's accumulated excessively over the years, which you are now going to begin releasing. I suggest that these people begin learning what it means to exercise emotion with a sense of finality. This is saying two very important things. First, it says that we as a culture have been programmed to exercise our bodies and our minds. Fitness, exercise, and looking good are extremely important to many in our culture. Exercising the mind through education is also a powerful theme in our culture. Yet when it comes to exercising the human heart, we are at a complete loss. It is seen as an obstacle in the way of our drive for material achievement. Furthermore, no one wants to be reminded of their own stored, repressed heartache by observing yours. So when it comes to exercising body and mind, we're all in. But when it comes to exercising our emotions, count us out.

The second message my statement offers is that when people do have a handle on releasing their emotions, they tend to forget that there can be an endgame. You and I have the power to sit down in a quiet room, feel the pure energy of an emotion, and release it with the sense that when we get up from the chair to leave the room we can be done with that emotion forever. It's a mere concept, but a very powerful one. Merely thinking that we are going to really let it all out with the intention of releasing every last drop of any given emotional energy has great power. It represents power
that we are not accustomed to having. All transformational change begins with a change in our thinking.

Whole Health Suggestions for Emotional Overeaters

1. Begin thinking of your eating disorder as a heartache disorder that you have begun to associate with food consumption.
   
2. Choose to begin feeling your pain out, rather than feeding it down.
   
3. See your emotional pain purely as energy that has built up in excess, and nothing more. Your commitment is simply to release it.
   
4. Affirm that you have the power of closure over any given emotional release. You can, and will, complete the release of your emotional pain.
   
5. Never be afraid to seek professional assistance. It represents a source of support for your personal transformation. You will always remain the most vital source of true power in your own life!
   

WHOLE HEALTH MIND BALANCING

PLACEBO/NOCEBO: THOUGHT DRUGS

During my earlier years of practice, I thought that optimal wellness was mostly about nutrition, but as time went on I began to appreciate just how multidimensional human health really is. I would soon discover the complexities and dynamics of the interconnections between spirit, mind, and body. Like many at that time, I knew that T'ai Chi, meditation, and yoga lowered stress hormone levels and relaxed the nervous system, but I became interested in the details. All at once, it had become very important for me to better understand how life-threatening stress was communicated from thoughts and feelings to cells and tissues. The prospect of a spirit dictating to the mind, the mind dictating to the brain, and the brain dictating to the body compelled a great sense of wonder in me.

I started to figure out that dis-ease often results when a
rebellious spirit separates the mind from the body. I have witnessed a thousand patients violate their hypoallergenic diets by giving in to some pleasure food they were uncontrollably obsessed with. A rebellious spirit can easily coax the mind into the notion of instant gratification. Meanwhile, the victim body is forced to go along for a rough ride. The body may not have the same decision-making power—or voice—that the mind does, but it will eventually speak in its language of symptoms. And when the body speaks its pain, the spirit and mind are forced to listen. Pain is the voice that reminds us that the body, mind, and spirit are inseparable.

A man once walked into my office, sat down, and proceeded to explain to me that he had a rare condition whereby if he as much as thought about hot, spicy food, he would almost instantly break out into an acute full-body rash. He pointed out that his condition became chronic nine years earlier after having consumed an overdose of Trinidad Moruga Scorpion chili peppers, reputed to be the hottest of any pepper. From that time on, his thoughts alone were more than enough to trigger a terrible rash. Of course, I'm sure you know what comes next. I asked him if he felt comfortable with the idea of demonstrating this phenomenon. Sure enough, the man closed his eyes, visualized himself eating a hot spicy chili pepper, and within a matter of seconds, right before my eyes, his entire body broke out in a bright red rash.

I think of myself as a pretty accomplished problem solver, but you can be sure this gentleman's quandary put my abilities to the test. My natural instinct was to avoid going the way of the pill. My sense was that his body imbalance was rooted in his mind, and therefore he'd require a little neural pathway reformatting. I asked the man to close his eyes and take three slow, deep breaths. I wanted to guide him into an alpha brain wave state. Together, we could then create a visual image in his mind so that every time he thought of anything spicy he would immediately imagine a frigid, icy, snowy
day. We further associated a great chill all throughout his body with the newly programmed image. We taped our brief session, which lasted for approximately fifteen minutes. He was instructed to listen to the tape twice daily for ninety days, and then return for a follow-up visit. He returned three months later and reported that his condition had been completely reversed! He learned that what his mind had been trained to expect is exactly what he got. We merely retrained his mind to expect a new result.

EXPECTANCY

I feel most fortunate to have come upon a remarkable story that appeared in the April 19, 2011, issue of
Psychology Today
, authored by Pamela Gerloff, entitled “The Possibility Paradigm: Transformational Change for Individuals and the World.” Gerloff recounts the story of an overweight, forty-year-old teacher named Lester Levenson, who was diagnosed with a heart condition and told he had only a few months to live. His condition was so advanced that he was told by his doctors that even attempting to tie his shoes could be life-threatening. Paralyzed by the fear of dying, Levenson decided to deeply examine his every option. It clearly wasn't safe to move his body, but he could certainly move his mind. He concluded that deep unhappiness and negative thinking were among the causal roots that he could safely and instantly begin addressing. He began ridding himself of every negative thought pattern he'd ever had, and soon attained a state of what he called “imperturbability” (enlightenment). Within just a few short months, Levenson's heart condition was medically cleared, and he was declared completely healthy. Moreover, the state of mind he'd attained miraculously empowered him to heal other people and fix broken objects, by merely believing them to be “perfect.”

Inspiring his students to inspirational levels of consciousness, Levenson would encourage them to remove all self-imposed
limitations. They began to note that many of the lofty visions they'd discussed in class actually started happening to them. Levenson created a contagion of positive expectancy, for himself and for those around him. Thought expectancy generates a powerful flow of energy that is communicated from the spirit, to the mind, to the brain, to the nervous system, and to the immune system. Even the world of science has begun to discover that reality begins and ends with expectancy.

Noted Harvard psychobiologist Dr. Walter Cannon reported on a number of perfectly healthy tribal subjects who died soon after having been cursed by voodoo witch doctors. Cannon found that the reasons for death were ultimately the subject's belief in the spell and their certain expectancy that death would soon follow. To put it succinctly, when it comes to placebo (healing thoughts) and nocebo (harmful thoughts), what you've been trained to expect is exactly what you tend to get. It seems that our sense of reality is affected by our cultural beliefs and rituals, as well as by the perceptions and beliefs we share with our culture. Cannon reported that most voodoo deaths typically occur within one to three days and that the cause of this death was of psychobiological origin. The past forty years of placebo/nocebo research suggests that factors such as emotions, moods, language, ritual, attention, imagery, cognitive processing, and planning all greatly influence the placebo/nocebo effect. Studies have demonstrated that those inculcated in environments where negative thinking predominates are more inclined to nocebo tendencies, whereas those raised in more positive mental environments are more inclined to placebo effect. Yet another wave of studies suggests that one who is previously programmed into a negative cultural persuasion can be reformatted into a positive placebo mind-set. Thoughts alter cells. Expectancy alone has demonstrated its proven potential to produce marked changes in human brain chemistry.

In 2002, Emory University researcher Dr. Helen Mayberg
administered PET (positron emission tomography) scans on mildly depressed subjects. Her study revealed that regardless of whether the subject received the antidepressant drug Prozac or a placebo, the same regions of the brain were activated. Patient expectancy can activate brain chemistry in a way that simulates actual drug treatment. The human brain is a powerful pharmacy that responds to the prescriptions written by our thoughts. Researchers Fabrizio Benedetti and Martina Amanzio of the University of Turin have performed studies on the neurochemistry of medical rituals. They have discovered that the rituals of Western medicine alter the neurochemistry of the brain in much the same way as tribal rituals. They've discovered that the expectancy of medical effectiveness is often more than enough to engage the healing effect. The smell of the hospital, the doctor's language, and the confident anticipation of results all make a significant difference in the placebo response. The research suggests that the same holds true for nocebo. Expectancy appears to be the medium for both placebo and nocebo chemistry, and the nature of expectancy begins with tribal ritual (or family system, in the Western sense) downloading. Cultural and environmental programming set the tone for our belief system to expect either good or bad outcomes. What we expect mentally, we receive physically.

My tendency has always been to use every healing tool available to me. Having rejected pharmaceutical power, I learned early on to rely on the intention of the spirit, the energy of the mind, the neurology of the brain, and the biochemistry of the body. From the very start I worked tirelessly to set a tone of positive expectancy. It became clear to me immediately that there were powerful, transcendent mental determinants at work that were more than capable of influencing overall health. True from the beginning as it is today, many of my patients routinely overcome conditions that the medical establishment insists they don't have the ability to recover from.

In 2010, I coproduced a minidocumentary (now accessible on YouTube) entitled
Choosing to Live
. It's based on six remarkable patient recovery stories—prostate cancer, breast cancer, multiple sclerosis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and nonalcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. The minidocumentary came about because so many of my patients demanded a forum to tell their amazing stories. I have hundreds of patients still waiting to share their “impossible dreams.” This joint effort is determined to show the world the uncharted possibilities of healing. As a culture, we have a difficult time grasping the power of positive placebo. But there is a well-documented history here that began more than thirty-five years ago.

In 1975, University of Rochester psychologist Robert Ader conducted an experiment designed to train rats to develop an aversion to saccharin-flavored water. First, Ader gave the rats saccharin water, and soon after drinking the water, the rats were injected with cyclophosphamide, a drug that causes extreme nausea. Much to Ader's surprise, many of the rats died. After tireless investigation, Ader eventually learned that not only does cyclophosphamide produce nausea, it's also a very powerful immunosuppressant. Thus, he tried giving the rats saccharin water without a follow-up cyclophosphamide injection. Nevertheless, the rats still died. He was amazed to discover that by programming the rats to behave as though the drug were in their systems, he had inadvertently taught them to suppress their own immunity whenever they drank saccharin-sweetened water.

One of my favorite placebo/nocebo stories involves a physician named Bruno Klopfer. In 1958, he was attending to a terminally ill cancer patient named Mr. Wright. The patient had overheard the doctor having a discussion about a new experimental “miracle” cancer drug. Wright begged Dr. Klopfer for the miracle medicine, but Dr. Klopfer refused, saying that it required more trials. Wright pleaded until Klopfer finally gave in. By all previous accounts,
Wright wasn't expected to live more than two or three days, as his cancer was quite advanced.

The drug, called Krebiozen, was administered on a Friday. Dr. Klopfer fully expected to come in that next Monday morning and be notified of Wright's passing. Instead, what he saw that Monday morning was Wright walking around in his room with a broad smile on his face. After further investigation, Klopfer wrote that in a mere three days, Wright's grapefruit-size tumors were “melting like snowballs on a hot stove!” A few days later, Wright was sent home, cancer free.

After two months, Wright remained cancer free—that is, until he read an article in his local newspaper reporting that researchers had discovered that the Krebiozen was being dropped from research due to trial failure. Within two weeks of reading the article, Wright was back in the hospital with his cancer returned.

This time Dr. Klopfer had a plan. He informed Wright of a new, improved form of Krebiozen being studied that was considerably more powerful and, initially, more effective in trials. Wright received injection treatments immediately, but unbeknownst to him, the only thing Dr. Klopfer was injecting him with was saline solution and sterile water. In two weeks, Wright's cancer had vanished, just as before. And for two months he remained cancer free until he'd heard a television report that Krebiozen had again failed trials and was being dropped. Wright died two weeks later. The spirit of the mind informs the brain, and the brain informs the body.

My father loved to tell a nocebo story related to his orientation week in the navy. Early one morning his squad was marched to the medical facility for their group inoculations. He said that the line was as long as the eye could see. As the line started to feather down, those men who had already received their shots were walking by the waiting line with pained looks on their faces, holding their ailing arms. As those men continued to pass by, they told the men
waiting in line that the needle was frighteningly long, and as time went on, more men passed by the waiting line with increasingly exaggerated stories about the dreaded needles. Dad said that after thirty to forty minutes of having their anxieties inflamed, a number of the men waiting in line actually started passing out. When it came time for my dad to receive his shot, he was not surprised to find that the needle was actually quite small. I can still hear my dad's words: “Those men who passed out in line were merely victims of their own fearful imaginations.”