Letting the Mind Heal the Body

Our brains are so powerful. They can make physical changes in our bodies beyond what we would normally give them credit for or realize. One good example is the placebo effect. Researchers that study the brain-body connection have shown in numerous experiments how the brain can be tricked into believing that a simple sugar pill can relieve pain or cure an illness if the person is told and believes that the pill being taken truly is genuine medicine.

Some years back, I was re-reading a book I’ve talked about many times before called Super Brain by Deepak Chopra and Rudolph E. Tanzi. They point out that any of us can, if we so chose, set up or create our own placebo effect at any time and without any kind of pill.

Chopra and Tanzi explain that “the effect isn’t limited to drugs, which is important to remember: anything you believe in can act as a placebo.” The authors go on to ask the question concerning patients that took the sugar pill. “Where did the patient’s relief come from? It came from the mind telling the body to get well.”

The body really believed what it was being told and then it relieved the pain or healed the sickness. In other words, your mind can, and does, control healing of all kinds including pain, disease, and wounds that our bodies deal with from time to time.

These authors go on to say “Being your own placebo is the same as freeing up the healing system through messages from the brain. All healing is, in the end, self-healing. Physicians aid the body’s intricate healing system (which coordinates immune cells, inflammation, hormones, genes and much else), but the actual healing takes place in an unknown way.”

Using the mind-body connection certainly takes a lot of work inside the brain but when you think of the huge possibilities you can quickly see that it’s certainly worth the work and effort. One of the conclusions that the authors suggest in conquering and taking advantage of the mind-body connection is summed up in this sentence: “In serious illness, doubts and fears play a marked role, which is why a practice like meditation or going to group counseling has been shown to help.” That is certainly worth trying for most, if not all of us, whenever we want to cure our pain, problems, or disease.

The authors suggest that there is a method through which anyone can apply their own placebo effect:
1. You trust what is happening.
2. You deal with doubt and fear.
3. You don’t send conflicting messages that get tangled with each other.
4. You have opened the channels of mind-body communications.
5. You let go of your intention and allow the healing system to do its work.

When we get a cut finger, we slap on a band aid and know that it will heal itself. In doing that, we’ve just let our brain send a positive message to our cells to do their job. But when we get a serious disease, we often let our minds jump into the mix with all kinds of worry and negative thoughts doing pretty much the opposite of the list above.

The bottom line here is, if were are going to benefit from our own built-in ‘placebo effect’ we’ve got to, at a minimum, follow the list of 5 conditions above. If you can do that, you are supporting your body’s ability to take care of you, as it is supposed to do.

The Great Gratitude List

Although I’ve had a few small health challenges of late, I’ve been feeling a bit better and even more healthy in some ways. I was also grateful that I had not gotten COVID but, oops, it finally caught me! Ouch. Talk about feeling strong and healthy and then suddenly losing all of it and feeling ten times as terrible or even more!

COVID sure got its revenge, but I am finally feeling much better. My terrible experience of feeling so sick struck me hard and made me realize more fully how much good stuff we really have in our lives. I’ve been reminded of just how much we tend to take for granted, at least until we lose some of that great stuff. It’s not just health we take for granted, but happiness and our great friends and family as well. Not many people, including myself, take time to think about these things, maybe taking even less time to count them or make a list of all the wonderful things in our lives so we can really appreciate how much we have. But when things turn bad, and the things we just assume will be there each day aren’t there, that’s when we finally come to truly understand what they mean in our lives. However, it really shouldn’t be just at those times that we realize that.

It’s no surprise that my recent fight with COVID had me thinking about how much I have to be super grateful for. It led me to the idea of listing all the things I am grateful for right now, with a goal to add to that list over time. Of course, I’ll need to include reviewing that list when I’m feeling poorly, am hard on myself, or when my thoughts or actions are bringing my mind and attitude down.

I think that last part is particularly important. Reviewing these kinds of lists can really help the human mind focus and see the positive in our daily lives and beyond. And I do think I have one of those human minds that can use that kind of help. Okay, maybe sometimes my wife doesn’t think my mind is very human!

Sorry! I was just kidding about my wife. She is always so supportive and a really great person. She is one of the things I am super grateful for and I never want to forget that, not even for a moment.

I’m not alone wishing I was more grateful more often for all the many wonderful things I have, am I? If you’re like me, why don’t you give a “Gratitude List” a try. See if it doesn’t help you focus and appreciate all the great things your life has in it!

The Friend Factor

I don’t know about you, but this world stopping virus has pounded into my head how very important and uplifting friends, and socializing in general, is to our lives. I’m sure you are like me, feeling the loss of this huge reduction of face to face socializing with friends, business partners, and even some family, especially right now. I’m sure that it’s not only me that believes keeping up friendships is important to your health and quality of life. I came across an article on the Mayo Clinic website about just how important it is to maintain your friends and social circle.

According to this article friendships can:

1. Increase your sense of belonging and purpose.
2. Boost your happiness.
3. Reduce stress.
4. Improve your self-worth.
5. Help you cope with traumas, such as divorce, serious illness, job loss, or death of a loved one.
6. Encourage you to change or avoid unhealthy lifestyle habits, such as excessive drinking or lack of exercise.

Now, that’s a lot of benefits for something most of us would like to do anyways. Of course, with the COVID19 virus we are suddenly hit with a huge shortage of social encounters that we have probably been taking for granted. So why don’t we, even under normal times, keep up with our friends better? It’s likely because life just gets in the way.

We are constantly drawn away from time with our friends by other priorities such as work, caring for children or elderly parents, or trying to make a dent in that long to do list that is always hanging over our heads. Also, many of us do a lot traveling and even move around the country so sometimes even our well-established friendships start to fade with the distance between us all. And then, sometimes, it’s hard to find the time and even the motivation to go out and make new friends. But that is something that we really cannot afford to not do.  Hey, maybe this virus scare will stimulate us to greatly improve our drive to be closer to our friends and make more of them.  Personally, I am certainly going to pay more attention to my face to face social life and my friends when this thing is over.

When I think of my own life and all my friends, I realize and appreciate, even more, my business of investing in real estate and all the friends I made along the way. Most are still great friends to this day. I also got a huge increase in good new friends from that thing called TENNIS-I love it!!

So, hey… let us all stay positive during this virus thing and make plans to spend more time with our friends when this is over as well as having plans to make new ones!