Lately I’ve been filtering my experiences through the lenses of a hypnotherapist, and how each and every one of us flows through the constructs of our surrounding environmental and social terrain, and how these factors invariably affect our psyche, and in turn influences the immune system, the endocrine system, gastrointestinal system and, well, pretty much every system in the body.
This is the study of a fascinating field called, psychoneuroimmunology. Say it with me, ‘psy-cho-neu-ro-immun-ology.’ The most common word that we can associate that with today is called ‘placebo,’ or the placebo effect. You very well know what that entails. Recent studies have shared that a whopping 57% of people will respond to a placebo effect when it comes to pain management. Fifty-seven percent. Think about that for a moment and let that sink in. We know placebo works, and for those of you that might not know, when somebody gives you some sort of shamanic therapy, or a sugar pill even, but tells you that this is going to stop your migraine or headache, 57% of the population will feel relief from their pain. Simply because they believe it.
Interestingly, there was this other study where they gave a control group knee surgery to relieve pain and the other group had their knees opened but nothing was done. It was a fake surgery. The results were insane. The people who had the fake surgery reported much better results than those who had the actual corrective procedure. Even years later they were still pain free.
Placebo has been proven effective for asthma, allergies, skin conditions, and all sorts of psychiatric disorders. It’s all about belief. The pharmaceutical industry still has to test every new drug against it. To them it’s probably a nuisance. To me, the implications of this are astounding and should be the focus of all our research. If we can figure out how the mind heals the body, then, it’s a whole new ball game.
Remember, every emotion has a biochemical counterpart. You know that when you feel stress, certain hormones and chemicals are released in your system. Well the same thing happens for every emotion. Each has a signature cocktail of chemicals and hormones, like how there are certain hormones released when you’re feeling exhilaration and joy. Google this hormone called ‘interleukin-2’. This is a chemical released when you are feeling joy, and it’s now being tested on various types of cancer, with surprising results. Not sure if you have recently come up on an article a few weeks ago how the drug ‘ecstasy’ has shown to kill cancer cells to some degree. If you don’t know, ecstasy gives you this sense of happy euphoria when consumed.
What makes you feel joyful? Think of a time you were and remember. You’re probably smiling as you think about that time, and that smile, however so subtle, triggers your brain to start releasing those happy hormones. Feel it? Understand something about the amazing capabilities of our bodies and our minds and brains. We are always doing drugs because our body makes our own valium, morphine, speed, you name it, we do it.
And it’s cool that our system knows the exact dosage it needs. No side effects either. You can imagine every cell feeling the way you feel at any given moment. If you were depressed, stressed, or angry, so were your cells. And as you’re happy, excited, and invigorated, you can also feel it. I’ve come up on a couple of books that take on this subject which you might decide to check out: Biology of Belief, The Genie in our Genes, and The Molecules of Emotion. These touch upon the study of emotions and belief and how they affect our entire biological status.
Lastly, I’d like to finally touch on what’s also known as, ‘nocebo,’ or the nocebo effect, which unfortunately is just as pervasive as placebo. It’s the opposite of a placebo response, in that people are negatively affected by a certain belief. That’s in effect when a doctor, who has a dangerous ability because of their expertise and authority, to give some dire prognosis on their patient that could harm instead of help them. The power of words! Seriously. If doctor’s were taught on how to communicate effectively because of the healing power of suggestive words, then their words can serve as additional medication to their patients. Instead, doctors in the Western world are prescribing their patients pharmaceutical drugs that are tagged with a slew of disturbing side effects. Don’t tell me you haven’t seen a pharma advertisement that verbally and quickly states all the side-effects of the drug, and usually they’re pretty lengthy. What’s surprising is that the same ads even state paralysis or death. We need to understand how our minds respond to the influence of toxic ads. They are unknowingly harming people, not by the drug itself, but by their understanding of the side-effects that come along with it.
I’ve thought about how today a common disorder which has swept the news is the ever-rising condition of bi-polar disorder. You know that it’s about a child’s or adolescent’s emotions swing wildly from one spectrum to another. It’s funny because it used to be called puberty in my time. But now, the parents, the teachers and their peers will treat them accordingly and will most likely grow into that label. They’ll be medicated so they won’t learn how to navigate through their own emotional states like a normal human being should, not to mention that the drugs have been known to cause violence and suicidal tendencies. And this gets me riled up that people openly take pharma drugs for granted.
Speaking of drugs and the placebo effect, there’s one more study I’d like to share that’s pretty fascinating, where they took some graduate students, and separated them into two groups. One was given amphetamines and the other group was given barbiturates. Damn! I wan’t to go to grad school to do just that!
Anyway, what’s interesting about the experiment is each group was told they were getting the opposite drug. I forget the exact figure, but the majority of the people involved in that study actually experienced the effects of the drug they thought they got. So not only does the mind work on placebo, but it can actually counteract real drug interactions. This is why I stress the power of your own mind which many people have no control of, because of the lack of understanding of how the mind actually functions even with all the anecdotal, qualitative, and quantitative evidence that blankets the web. It is irrefutable. So in the end, understand how your mind works, be the master of your own mind, even in this crazy world, and maybe, just maybe, you can have the potential to heal yourself, and make yourself feel holy, I mean, wholly… =)
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