Healing Thyself
“The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne sold over nineteen million copies. Want to be driving a Jaguar convertible sports car? According to “The Secret”, all you need to do is picture yourself driving it, parking it in your garage, owning it; believing in all that. You can pretty much get or do anything in life with “the power of attraction.”
Byrne was supposedly influenced by Wallace Wattle’s 1910 book, “The Science of Getting Rich.” His “Certain Way” is to form what you want in your mind, believe it is yours, and it will be created out of “Formless Substance.”
Wattle was influenced by Phineas Quimby’s mental healing. A medical doctor who lived from 1802 till 1866, Quimby saw patients and traveled about, lecturing. He did not write much but kept a journal – interesting reading when you get past his ego. He said that he was not religious, but throughout his journal made reference to Christ. He said Christ, the secular man, was the ultimate teacher. Quimby felt that he was a Christ, the ultimate secular teacher in his field of mental healing.
Though a medical doctor himself, he was the anti-medical establishment of his time. He believed disease was an error, and truth or wisdom the cure. Disease is the result of a wrong direction given to the mind, sometimes by doctors. The doctor tells you have a disease and what the disease can do to you. Autosuggestion takes over from there, sometimes instantaneously creating symptoms that match the diagnosis.
His method of healing was sitting with the patient and by discussing their error that binds them to a depleted state of mind and body. He worked with his patient to destroy beliefs that were attached to the disease, replacing these beliefs and opinions with “truths and wisdom.” His ideas were, of course, in opposition to the established ideas of the day. His ideas are in opposition to today’s medical practitioners who have at most fifteen minutes to spend with each patient. One hundred years later, most doctors write a prescription and move on to the next patient.
After seeing patients daily and corresponding with them for years, he decided he could not spend sufficient time with individual patients and so took his talk on the road to reach large audiences with two-hour talks in hope of persuading others to understand and practice what he labored for and to reduce his theories to a science.
He said that man’s happiness and misery is the effect of his/her belief and that all medical remedies affect the body through the mind. The one who takes the medicine must believe in the medicine and anticipate the desired result. The result is then created by the believer.
Phineas Quimby died in 1866, but it would not be until 1978 when the neurobiology of the placebo effect was born. Up to then, it was known that the placebo sugar pill could block pain (analgesic effect). Now it was shown that the placebo analgesia could be blocked by the opioid antagonist naloxone. This indicated an involvement of opioids produced in the body (endogenous) that were blocking the pain. Expectation of an effect induces the release of endogenous opioids.
That takes a bit of unpacking. What it means is that since the placebo effect of pain relief was blocked by giving an opioid blocker, the placebo effect must be caused by an opioid produced by the body. If it were not an opioid, the opioid blocker would not have blocked it.
Expectation
Healing
In 1957, Bruno Kopfler’s journal article, ”Psychological Variables in Human Cancer” told about a Mr. Wright, a stage four cancer patient who heard about a “miracle drug” Krebiozen, part of a study at the hospital where he was bedridden. Dr. Philip West, his doctor, would not include him in the study because to be eligible the patient must have a life expectancy of at least three months. A prognosis of one week might have been seriously stretching it for Wright, who was immobile with a high fever and gasping for air.
Wright begged so hard, though, for what he called this “golden opportunity” that West, against the rules of the drug committee, injected him with the drug on a Friday to satisfy the last wish of his dying patient. Monday morning, to his amazement, Dr. West found him moving about the ward without his cane, spreading the good news to anyone who might listen. Upon examining Wright, Dr. West found all of the tumors had melted to half their size.
Wright had received no other medication or treatment besides the one shot of Krebiozen. He had fully expected the drug to make him well. He had read about the miracle drug in the newspaper. He had no doubt whatsoever that Krebiozen was his ticket to recovery and a speedy one at that.
The injections were continued three times weekly for a period of ten days. They were stopped when all symptoms of the disease were completely gone. In ten days he went from a terminally ill patient gasping through an oxygen mask for his last breaths, to a fully active recovery. He was discharged and took off piloting his plane at 12,000 feet with no discomfort.
None of the other patients improved and after two months all of the other clinics reported the discouraging news about the effectiveness of Krebiozen. Newspapers all picked up on this and when Wright read this news, he became discouraged again, began to lose weight, and after two months of practically perfect health, tumors grew back and he slid back to where he started.
By now Dr. West realized that it was Wright’s optimism. His expectation, not Krebiozen was responsible for his amazing recovery. West decided no harm would come in lying to Wright and using his optimism in hope of another recovery. The alternative was Wright dying within a short period of time.
Conditioning
He told Wright not to believe the new reports. The reason for the failure of the trials was the drug had lost potency due to its short shelf life. The clinic would be getting a fresh doubly potent batch the next day, which he expected to produce even more astounding results. Doctors reported Wright was “almost ecstatic and his faith was very strong.”
The next day Dr. West administered a shot of fresh water. The results were more astounding than the first time. This time around, it was both expectancy and conditioning. Tumor masses melted and chest fluid vanished. In a short time, in perfect health, he was discharged and took up piloting his plane.
Two months later the AMA came out with their final announcement: “Nationwide tests show Krebiozen to be a worthless drug in the treatment of cancer.” Wright read the report in the newspaper, was readmitted to the hospital, and in less than two days of his admission he died.
Pure Conditioning
With a conditioned placebo effect, first, the active drug is administered. Later, an inactive compound that looks just like the first drug is administered. If conditioning works, the inactive compound produces the effect of the active drug. Wright’s second cure was likely due to a mix of expectation and conditioning. It is difficult to know with a human subject whether the cure might have been due to expectancy, conditioning, or some mixture of both.
The way to rule out expectancy is through animal research. In 1975, Dr. Robert Adar, the research psychologist who coined the name psychoimmunology, gave one group of rats saccharine-sweetened water accompanied by an injection of cyclophosphamide, a chemical used to treat malignant diseases that can cause significant suppression of immune responses and stomach pain. A control group got just the sweetened water.
The conditioned group of rats, as expected, would not drink water after the painful association with the cyclophosphamide. Experimenters did not want the rats to die, so they force-fed them water, but they died anyway. The cause was not the cyclophosphamide, because the dose was strong enough to give stomach pain, but was not lethal.
They died from the water, from suppression of immune response and bacterial and viral infections that their immune system could not fight off, just as if they had received a lethal dose of cyclophosphamide. They died from a conditioned placebo response that made the body react as though it had been poisoned.
A more recent conditioned placebo study with dogs was published in October 2014 issue of Applied Animal Behavior Science. The dog is introduced to a new room with its owner. The owner leaves and two minutes later a stranger comes in who attempts to interact with the dog. Then the stranger leaves and the owner returns. This is the “Strange Situation” and rating scale developed by Mary Ainsworth to assess the level of parent-child attachment, this time with owner-dog.
In the next part of the study, before each trial, half the same dogs were given a dose of Sedalin (a tranquilizer) hidden in a piece of liverwurst. The other dogs got a vitamin inside a piece of liverwurst. As expected, the dogs given the tranquilizer were more relaxed.
Both groups were separated from owners in the same room as before. Both groups received a vitamin. The conditioned group (the dogs who had been previously given a tranquilizer) showed less active signs of distress (separation anxiety) and a relaxed passive behavior when the owner left the room. These dogs responded as if they had again been given the sedative.
Belief Faith and Expectation
In his two books, Harvard cardiologist and author of “Relaxation Response and “Relaxation Revolution,” Herbert Benson discusses how mind-body techniques lower blood pressure, calm brain activity, and balance healthful emissions of nitric oxide in the body’s cells.
Next, he wanted to determine whether mind-body techniques might alter gene expression. Which, if any, of the body’s 54,000 genes were “turned on” or “turned off” by mind-body techniques. Epigenetics is the turning on or off of genes by life situations.
His team discovered 2,209 genes that are in fact affected by mind-body techniques. These genes affected by mind-body training are associated with stress-related medical problems involving immune response, inflammation, aging, thinning of the brain’s cortex, and oxidative stress causing damage to physical tissues by the release of destructive oxygen molecules known as free radicals.
Mind-body practices take a bad gene and make it better. The benefits of mind-body practices include healthful regulation of the immune system, lowered psychosocial stress levels, less destructive oxidative stress, and a reduced tendency toward premature aging. These benefits are associated with healthful gene activity, the opposite of that found in cardiovascular diseases and other medical conditions.
Benson was aware that his relaxation response was due at least in part to the placebo response. But all medication and treatment effects are at least thirty percent due to the placebo effect. The placebo response is the body using its own resources to heal, and healing without medication or surgery is the most natural way of healing.
Rather than discard the placebo response, Benson established the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine (BHI) at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Ongoing research employs evidence-based techniques to strengthen the natural healing capacities of the body and mind. BHI clinicians serve as a resource in the areas of mind body and integrative medicine available to all departments of the hospital and community.
A part of Benson’s program engenders belief, expectation, and faith, by explaining how mind-body healing works. His explanation promotes faith in him and encourages belief and expectancy of a positive outcome. Educating the client regarding the efficacy and value of the program had best be an ongoing part of the program. Of course, the treatment must effectively warrant belief, faith, and expectation.
Starting with Aikido and Ki Breathing Meditation, along the way, I added Vipassana Insight Meditation, Open Focus Training, and Attention Training Therapy. Belief, faith, and expectation came with years of practice, though at 81, I no longer practice the martial art of Aikido, but practice Ki Breathing Meditation every day.
Self-help books that help:
Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus
The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body
