reactions to anticipation and stress that help them cope and survive. Each time you experience something and react to it, you learn from it and condition yourself to react before the event even occurs. So the relationship between a thought and a negative reaction is something we experience daily.
That goes for positive associations as well. Also, in the Jan/Feb 2000 issue of the FDA publication The Healing Power of Placebos, Dr. Jospe adds, “The placebo effect is part of the human potential to react positively to a healer. You can reduce a patient’s distress by doing something that might not be medically effective.” He gives the example of children and adhesive bandages. If the adhesive bandage you put on a child’s wound has stars or cartoons on it, it can actually make the child feel better by its soothing effect, though there’s no medical reason it should make the child feel any better than a plain adhesive bandage. The positive reaction of the child to the images on the bandage seems to make the difference.
In some cases, the placebo may be as good as the actual treatment. One study found that placebos do as well as antidepressants in the majority of patients treated. Other studies have shown that multicolored placebo pills work best overall, green placebos produce better results in anxious or phobic patients, red or orange ones perform better as stimulants, blue ones as sedatives, and yellow ones for depression.2 Barring some of our new miracle drugs, there are few medications today that have the power of our body’s own chemicals.
Amazingly, placebos are also organ-specific. They work exactly the way the actual drug is supposed to work on precisely the body part or organ they’re intended to affect. So a placebo taken for joint pain will alleviate the pain in that particular joint, and one taken for a digestive problem will work on the stomach or intestines. One of the best examples of this was illustrated in a Canadian prostate study where more than half the men who had benign enlargement of their prostates were given placebo pills and reported significant relief from their symptoms, including faster urine flow. Researchers theorized that their patients’ positive expectations of the drug’s benefits caused therapeutic smooth muscle relaxation by decreasing nerve activity to the bladder, prostate, and urethra. In another major placebo study (reported in the Jan/Feb 2000 issue of the FDA publication, The Healing Power of Placebos), two-thirds of subjects given a pill they were told would produce severe stomach activity quickly experienced strong stomach churning.
Does the placebo effect work on everyone? No. The answer may lie in individual differences in personality and attitude. Patients who visualize positive outcomes, eliminate stress, and participate in their own healing are the most successful. Those who dwell on the negative and believe that there’s no hope experience the “nocebo effect,” a negative reaction that depresses the immune system and makes one even more vulnerable to disease. The placebo effect helps prove that having a positive attitude and the will to get better triggers the release of brain chemicals needed for spontaneous healing.
How exactly does the interplay of psychological and physiological mechanisms trigger a healing process that can be as effective as most medicines we take? Today’s brain imaging techniques lend support to the theory that thoughts and beliefs not only affect one’s psychological state, but also cause the body to undergo actual biological changes. Together, the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems stimulate the release of chemicals that, during emotional responses, sets the healing process in motion.
When you think about it, the human body is an immensely complex system of molecules, which stimulates nerve connections that respond to our mental suggestions. So it makes sense that the placebo effect is really nothing more than a normal immune response. How else can we explain what some people call miracle cures but what more and more doctors refer to as “unexplained spontaneous healing?”
I believe the phenomenon of spontaneous healing occurs because something within us triggers a major response in our immune system, which literally floods our body with increasing white blood cells that attack and destroy whatever is causing the illness. We shouldn’t be at all surprised that this happens as often as it does. Without such a response, we’d be dying of diseases at a much more rapid rate. What should surprise us is that we know so little about how to use the mind-body connection to strengthen immunity and spontaneously heal ourselves in the process.
“Mind over matter” is not simply a catchphrase. It is a truth based on what we know to be fact: that the brain, given the right set of directions, the right environment, and the proper stimuli, will always choose healing over disease.
The ability to fend off illness and disease depends on several factors, some of which are beyond your control, but others of which are not. The type of stressor you’ve been exposed to, such as a pathogen, an injury, or a traumatic event may be—in fact, usually is—beyond your control. But the way you react to the stressor and the general health of your immune system are things you can influence. Harnessing the power of your brain and thus enhancing your ability to boost your immune system is definitely something you can influence. Remember that at the center of it all is the brain, and as we have discussed, the brain is “command central” for the mind and the body.
Homeostasis: An Internal Balancing Act
Each of us has, in our brains, an internal engine that fine-tunes our life processes and keeps us in balance. That engine is homeostasis. For example, when our body temperature increases or decreases too much, homeostatic systems engage to get us back to normal. When our blood sugar gets out of balance, those same systems work to return it to a healthy level. In essence, we stay healthy and disease-free because our body’s engine helps keep us within a normal physiological range.
When we lose our ability to get back to that normal range, we set ourselves up for danger. Physical and emotional stress significantly decreases the effectiveness of homeostatic systems by altering biochemical reactions and flooding us with hormones that disrupt life processes. Additionally, as we get older, we don’t cope as well with sudden changes because our homeostatic mechanisms aren’t as efficient as they once were.
By definition, disease is the failure to maintain homeostasis. Disease is a state of imbalance that usually begins at the tissue level and eventually affects organs or entire organ systems. Sometimes our immune system needs a little help because it doesn’t react quickly enough. A bacterial infection, for example, may spread rapidly and overwhelm us unless antibiotics are given to keep the pathogen population down long enough for our own defenses to take over. In most cases, our natural defenses are enough to get the job done, and often we’re not even aware that we’re being attacked.
A physician friend once told me, “If there was anything in the world I would wish for my patients, it’s a healthy and responsive immune system.” As long as we have a healthy immune system, the disease process begins and ends fairly quickly. For instance, there is good evidence that cells are making mistakes all the time—including the mistakes that lead to cells becoming cancerous—but the immune system fights back. The body can recognize that a cell is a mutant and destroy it. So we may have cancer for a brief moment of time and then it’s gone. Or, we get an infection and our body gets rid of it in short order. It’s when our immune system is weakened by internal and external forces that we succumb. A breakdown in homeostasis is often exacerbated by persistent negative thoughts,
