The Power of the Mind for Illness and Health

I was reading an article at the blog of Michael R. Eades, M.D. titled Snake oil comes in all types of bottles wherein Michael comments on the placebo affect in science and medicine. He wrote about studies of weight loss diets in conjunction with injections of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) that showed it worked no better than placebos in helping people lose weight.

A couple comments were made by someone who had lost weight using HCG, convinced that it was effective. This person could not be dissuaded. The idea that it might have been “all in her head” was probably offensive, as it would be to most of us. To deny that a particular treatment was ineffective is a form of mental protection.

I mean, what happens if you believe in something and it works for you, and then you realize you were ripped for thousands of dollars for what turns out to be a sham? This is why it is so important to have an open mind and be willing to be wrong. But isn’t it also empowering to know that your mind is so powerful that it can affect matter?

Another problem in saying a condition is caused by thought is that people take it to mean that they invented their illness or their recovery or that they are imagining it. But this isn’t happening on a conscious level. It’s the subconscious mind that rules the roost.

As an example, years ago when I was still a Christian, I attented a Kenneth Copeland faith rally in Los Angeles. It was several days long, and we were all sore from sitting in chairs and standing. My feet and back were killing me. I responded to an altar call, and while standing in line I vaguely heard Copeland say something about feet. And then my feet and back stopped hurting completely! I went from hobbling to no pain at all. The effect lasted a few hours and then the pain returned. This is how powerful the mind is. God didn’t heal my feet. My mind–prompted by something Copeland said–told my feet that they no longer hurt.

I recently read a story of a prisoner of war who was tied to a chair in a dark room, a small cut was made in his leg, and he could hear the blood dripping all night long. He was dead by morning. But the cut was superficial and the bleeding soon stopped. The sound he heard was a recording that played all night. His mind killed him. Isn’t this how voodoo works?

Perhaps you’ve seen the episode on M*A*S*H where the hospital runs out of morphine, so they inject the patients with saline. All the patients happily float off the sleep. The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot is full of all sorts of strange tales of mind over matter, such as the religious group that hit each other with sledge hammers and attempted to pierce one another with swords, all to no avail.

The mind is an amazing organ. While under hypnosis, skin can form blisters at the mere suggestion that it’s being burned. I’ve read of people with multiple personality disorders where one personality is healthy and another has all the clinical signs of diabetes. And I’ve read of the effects of worry on T-cell counts and that those most likely to survive cancer are those with a fighting attitude.

When people hear that their condition is a result of thought, they think they’re being blamed or conned. That they’re hypochondriacs or gullible. That’s not it at all. Your body is just doing what your mind believes is true. This is why science developed the “double blind” test, meaning both the patient and the doctor were unaware of who was receiving the treatment and who was receiving the placebo, because the doctor’s belief could affect the test.

If anything, the placebo response shows you how very powerful you are to control your own body with your mind. Personally, I think the mind rules everything, but it’s easier to believe in nutrition and exercise and sunshine than it is to overcome millenia of race conditioning that tells us we get sick and die.

There Is No Cure

Sadly, if you consult a physician for a chronic disease, his typical response will be, “There is no cure.” He’s right about that, because there is no such thing as cure. There is only self-healing.

But his thinking is that you can’t do anything about your illness and will need ongoing pharmaceutical care or surgical intervention. In most instances he’ll be wrong, because most chronic diseases are reversible when you remove cause. But if you believe the doctor, then you are doomed to eternity in his care. Your belief will validate and feed the thought of illness.

Photo credit — Squeaky Marmot

Medicine, homeopathy, herbalism…the focus of all of these is symptom management through biochemical interference. But symptoms are the body’s attempt to heal. Yes, an herb may reduce a fever as well as a drug, but the fever is a healing event that kills bacteria and speeds enzymatic action. An herb may reduce inflammation just as a drug may, but inflammation is prompted by the body in response to irritation. It is the body’s attempt to correct an imbalance.

It is only when you remove the cause that the body reaches homeostasis and restores itself to health, provided permanent damage has not occurred.

Here’s a quote that I can’t quote often enough:

If many kinds of diseases get well at nature’s hands, and others get well under the treatment of all sorts of mountebanks, quacks, cults, and deluded scientists, what does that mean? It means that headaches and many other minor discomforts–such as colds, sore throats, indigestion, constipation, diarrhea et alii–come and go, receiving no attention, or at most home remedies whose principal virtue is in not doing any harm. This tendency to stay normal, or to get back to the normal, or to throw off disease, is so constant that all sorts of delusions, theories, and systems of cures have been given life and perpetuity. Every sort of scientific medical man, mountebank, adventurer, knave, and fool has found success and a following–for a time at least–in this No Man’s Land, with its serious, grotesque, scientific, pseudoscientific, and superstitious therapeutic cure-alls. The advocates of all sorts of overnight cures, physical and mental, extend their pipelines into this Fool’s Medical Paradise, and never fail to suck sustenance–a thing made possible by the fact that nature so often cures ills without extraneous aid from any source.” –J. H. Tilden, M.D.

Additional Reading:

Symptom Suppression Does Not Equal Healing Or Cure
What’s Wrong with Pharmaceutical?
Book Review: Human Life Its Philosophy and Laws — Herbert Shelton