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Transcriber: Gabriel Orozco Hoyuela
Reviewer: Chryssa R. Takahashi
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Can the mind really heal the body?
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And if so, is there
any scientific evidence
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to convince skeptical physicians like me?
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These are the questions that fueled
the last few years of my research
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and what I discovered
is that the scientific community,
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the medical establishment,
has being proving for over 50 years,
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that the mind can heal the body.
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We call it the "placebo effect".
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And we've been trying
to outsmart it for decades.
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(Laughter)
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The placebo effect is a thorn in the side
of the medical establishment.
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It's an inconvenient truth,
that gets in between,
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trying to bring new treatments, new
surgeries into the medical establishment.
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So it's a problem!
Supposedly.
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But I actually think,
this is really good news!
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The placebo effect is excellent news!
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Because it's concrete evidence
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that the body holds within it
innate self-repair mechanisms
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that can make unthinkable
things happen to the body.
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So, if you find this surprising,
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if you have a hard time believing
that the body can heal itself,
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you need look no further than
The Spontaneous Remission Project,
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a database compiled
by the Institute of Noetic Sciences
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of over 3500 case studies
in the medical literature
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of patients who have gotten better
from seemingly "incurable" illnesses.
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You think there's such
a thing as an incurable illness?
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I swear, if you go look at this database,
it will blow your mind.
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Everything is in there.
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Stage 4 cancers that disappeared
without treatment.
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HIV positive patients,
that became HIV negative.
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Heart disease, kidney failure,
diabetes, high blood pressure,
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thyroid disease,
autoimmune diseases, gone.
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A great example of this
in the medical literature,
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is a case study from 1957 of Mr. Wright
who had advanced lymphosarcoma.
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So, things weren't going well for
Mr. Wright, time was really running out.
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He had tumors the size of oranges in his
armpits, neck, chest, abdomen.
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His liver and spleen were enlarged,
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and his lungs were filling up with
two quarts of milky fluid every day
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that have to be drained
in order for him to breathe.
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But Mr. Wright wasn't giving up hope.
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He had heard about
this wonder drug called Krebiozen,
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and he was begging his doctor,
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"Come on, just give me some of that
Krebiozen, it's all going to be good."
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Now, unfortunately the Krebiozen was
only available on a research protocol
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and the protocol required that the doctor
be able to make an assessment
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that says that this guy has
at least three months to live.
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And his doctor,
Dr. West just couldn't do that.
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But Mr. Wright was tenacious
and he didn't give up.
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He kept badgering his doctor,
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until finally his doctor was like,
"OK, fine I'll give you the Krebiozen."
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So he dosed him up on a Friday,
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not expecting that Mr. Wright
would make it through the weekend.
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But to his utter shock, when Dr. West
came in to do rounds on Monday,
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Mr. Wright was up,
walking around the wards,
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and his tumors had shrunk
to half of their original size.
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They had melted like
snowballs on a hot stove.
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And ten days after getting
the Krebiozen, they were gone.
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So Mr. Wright was up
rocking and rolling like praising
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Krebiozen as the miracle drug
he believed it to be, for two months,
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until the initial reports
came out about Krebiozen
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that said that it didn't really look like
Krebiozen was working so well.
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Mr. Wright fell into a deep depression
and his cancer came back.
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This time Dr. West decided to get sneaky,
and he told his patient, that,
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"You know that Krebiozen that you got,
that was a tainted version, not so good.
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But I got us some ultrapure
highly concentrated Krebiozen,
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This stuff's got it going on."
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He then injected Mr. Wright
with nothing but distilled water.
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And once again, the tumors disappeared,
the fluid in his lungs went away.
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Mr. Wright was up rocking and rolling
for another two months.
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And then the American
Medical Association blew it,
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by publishing a nationwide study
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that proved definitively
that Krebiozen was worthless.
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Two days later, Mr. Wright,
after hearing this news, died.
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Soon after that,
I came across another study
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in the medical literature
that was the stuff of fairy tales.
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Three baby girls were born,
delivered by a midwife,
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on Friday the 13th in the Okefenokee
Swamp, near the Georgia-Florida border.
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And the midwife pronounced
that these three babies,
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born on such a fateful day,
were all hexed.
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The first, she said, would die
before her 16th birthday.
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The second, before her 21st.
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The third, before her 23rd birthday.
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And as it turned out, the first girl died
the day before her 16th birthday,
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the second died the day
before her 21st birthday,
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and the third girl, who knew what
had happened to the other two,
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got wind of that, and the day
before her 23rd birthday,
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she showed at the hospital
hyperventilating,
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begging them,
to make sure she survived.
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She wound up dying that night.
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These two case studies are great
examples from the medical literature
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of the placebo effect, and
its opposite, the nocebo effect.
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When Mr. Wright got that distilled
water and his tumors melted away,
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that's a great example
of the placebo effect.
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When you get a seemingly
inert treatment
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and yet something is happening
physiologically in the body,
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such that the disease goes away.
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The nocebo effect is the opposite.
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So the three hexed girls are
an example of the nocebo effect.
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When the mind's belief that something
bad is going to happen in the body
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then it comes to manifest.
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So the scientific literature,
medical journals
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like the New England Journal of Medicine
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and the Journal of the American
Medical Association,
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these scientific journals are
full of evidence that the placebo effect,
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and the nocebo effect
are incredibly powerful.
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We've known this since the 1950s,
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and we've seen countless case studies
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that show that in almost
everything you study,
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if you give people
a fake treatment, a sugar pill
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a saline injection, or most effectively,
a fake surgery,
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(Laughter)
- yeah, really -
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18-80% of the time, people get better.
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And it's not just in their mind,
that's what I thought in the beginning,
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like "Oh! They're just feeling better,
they're thinking better."
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But is not.
It's actually in their physiology.
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This is measurable.
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You can actually see
what happens to the body.
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So for example patients getting placebos
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were found to have ulcers that healed,
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colons that became less inflamed,
bronchi that dilated,
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warts that disappeared, cells
looked different under the microscope.
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It's provable, it's happening in the body,
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even though it's initiated by the mind.
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So, when you look at these,
some of the studies are just amazing.
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I love the Rogain studies.
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You get a bunch of bald men,
you give them placebos.
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They grow hair!
(Laughter)
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The opposite is also true,
so if you give people a placebo
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and you tell them it's chemotherapy,
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they vomit, and they lose their hair.
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So this is really happening in the body.
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My question was,
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Is it just the mind's positive belief
that's making this happen?
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Not according to Harvard
researcher Ted Kaptchuk.
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According to him, he thinks
that the most essential part
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is actually the nurturing care
of a healthcare provider,
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more so even than the mind's
positive belief
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that some of the studies actually say
that the doctor is the placebo or can be.
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So Ted Kaptchuk wanted to study this,
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and he did a great study
looking at patients
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that were getting placebos for an illness,
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for treatment of an illness
and he told them,
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"You're getting a placebo,
there's nothing in here,
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inert ingredients, nothing active."
They still got better.
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Most likely, Kaptchuk postulated,
because they felt tended, nurtured,
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they felt like they were doing something,
they felt like somebody cared.
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So to say that you can heal yourself
is sort of a misnomer.
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You know, the body can heal itself.
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The body has these innate
natural self repair mechanisms,
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but the scientific data
proves that you need
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the tending nurturing care of a healthcare
provider, of some sort, of a healer,
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to facilitate that process.
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It's not an easy process
to go through alone,
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so it makes a big difference
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if somebody else is holding
that positive belief with you.
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But the problem is while
the doctor can be the placebo,
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the doctor can also be the nocebo.
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So, what patients need from us,
as healthcare providers,
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they need us to be forces of healing,
not forces of fear or pessimism.
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So every time your doctor tells you,
"You have an incurable illness,
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you're going to have to take that
medication for the rest of your life,"
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or God forbid,
you get cancer and they say,
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"You've got a 5% five-year survival rate,"
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it's really no different that when
that midwife told those three baby girls
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that they were hexed.
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It's a form of medical hexing
that's so prevalent.
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As doctors, we think
we're being realistic, you know?
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We're giving people
the kind of information
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we think they need to know,
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but we actually can be harming them.
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Instead we need be more
like Dr. West. You know?
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Taking that distilled water,
"Really Mr.Wright,
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I promise, this is going to
do it for you."
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But do we have to count on
our doctors to dupe us?
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Do we have to get fake surgeries
and fake drugs,
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and wind up in clinical trials?
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This is what led
the next phase of my research.
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So in my last TEDx talk, l talked about
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a new wellness model that I developed,
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called the Whole Health Cairn,
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and this came about
as part of my research,
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trying to find how else can
we harness this mind's power
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that's clearly evidenced by
the placebo effect and the nocebo effect,
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can we do something without
being in a clinical trial?
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And my hypothesis was
that in order to heal ourselves,
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in order to be optimally healthy,
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we need more than just a good diet,
regular exercise program,
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getting enough sleep, taking your
vitamins, following your doctor's orders.
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Those things all are great,
and critical and important.
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But I also came to believe that
we need healthy relationships,
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a healthy professional life,
a healthy creative life,
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a healthy spiritual life,
a healthy sex life,
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a healthy financial life,
a healthy environment.
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In essence, we need a healthy mind.
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So I wanted to try to prove this, and
I went into the medical literature
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and the copious data that I found,
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proving that all of those things
are essential, really blew my mind.
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I compiled them all into my upcoming book,
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"Mind Over Medicine: Scientific
Proof You Can Heal Yourself".
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But I want to give you a few highlights
about what this is all about.
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So you can see from
the Whole Health Cairn,
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that all this facets are built upon
a foundation stone
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that I call your Inner Pilot Light.
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And for me that's the essential
authentic part of you,
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that knows what's true for you.
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That's willing to tell you the truth
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about maybe what's out
of alignment in your life,
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what stones in your Whole Health Cairn
might be out of balance.
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And as you see I've put the body,
physical health,
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on the top of the Whole Health Cairn
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because it's the most fragile,
the most precarious,
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and the most easy to kind
of fall out of balance
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if other things in your life
aren't going so well.
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So what I found in the medical data
is that relationships matter.
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People that have a strong social network
have half the rate of heart disease
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compared to those who are lonely.
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Married people are twice as likely
to live long lives than unmarried people.
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In fact, curing your loneliness may be
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the most important measure of prevention
you can enact upon your body.
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More so than quitting smoking
or starting to exercise.
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Your spiritual life matters.
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Those who attend religious services
live up to fourteen years longer.
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Your professional life matters.
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You really can work yourself to death.
In Japan they call it karoshi.
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Death by overwork, and the survivors
of those who die of karoshi,
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can actually apply for workman's
comp-like benefits in Japan.
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But it's not just Japan, it's actually
happening even more in the United States,
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we just don't get benefits here.
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So one study found that people
that fail to take their vacation,
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are actually a third more likely
to get heart disease.
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Your attitude really matters.
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Ηappy people live 7 to 10 years
longer than unhappy people,
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and optimists are 77% less likely
to get heart disease than pessimists.
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So how does this happen?
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What is happening in the brain
that is making the body change?
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This is what was fascinating to me.
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I found that the brain communicates
with all the cells in the body
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via hormones and neurotransmitters.
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So, for example, if you have
a negative thought, belief
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or feeling in the brain,
your brain triggers this as a threat.
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Something's wrong.
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If you feel lonely or pessimistic,
things are bad at work,
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you are in a toxic relationship,
the amygdala says, "Τhreat! Τhreat!"
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and it turns on the hypothalamus,
that talks to the pituitary gland,
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that communicates with the adrenal gland
and the adrenal gland start spitting out
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stress hormones like cortisol,
norepinephrine, epinephrine.
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Ιt turns on what Walter Cannon
at Harvard called the stress response,
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that triggers the sympathetic
nervous system,
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and puts you into that
fight or flight mode, which is adaptive,
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it's protective if you are running away
from a mountain lion,
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but in every day life, you're supposed
to have that quick stress response
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if there is a threat and then
it's supposed to switch right off.
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This isn't what happens
in our regular lives these days.
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But fortunately there is
a counter balancing relaxation response
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that Herbert Benson at Harvard described.
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And when this comes about,
the stress response turns off,
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the parasympathetic nervous system
turns on,
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and healing hormones like oxytocin,
dopamine, nitric oxide, endorphins
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fill the body and bathe
every cell in the body.
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What I found the most amazing about this
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is that those natural self-repair
mechanisms that we all have,
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they only flip on when
the nervous system is relaxed.
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So when you're having stress responses,
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all those natural self-repair
mechanisms get flipped off.
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The body is too busy trying to fight
or flee, in order to heal itself.
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So, when you think about this,
you have to start to wonder like,
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How can I possibly start to change
the balance in my own body?
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So one study showed
that on average we have
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more than 50 stress responses per day.
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And if you're lonely, or depressed
or pessimistic or unhappy at work
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or in a miserable relationship that number
is going to be more than twice as many.
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Now this relaxation response
is what researchers think
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explains the placebo effect.
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So when you're going to get supposedly
maybe a new wonder drug -
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you don't know whether you're getting
the placebo or not -
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it triggers that relaxation response,
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that combination of the mind's
positive belief
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and the nurturing care
of a healthcare provider
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relaxes the nervous system.
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And then all those natural self repair
mechanisms can come into play.
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Fortunately though you don't have
to be in a clinical trial
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to turn on your relaxation responses.
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There are lots of simple
pleasurable activities
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that turn on the relaxation responses
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and these have been proven
in the medical literature.
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So you can meditate,
you can express yourself creatively,
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you can get a massage,
do yoga or tai chi,
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you can go out with your friends,
you can do work that you love,
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you can have sex, you can laugh,
exercise, you can play with animals.
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So I ask you to consider
the Whole Health Cairn in your own life.
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Which stones in your Whole Health Cairn
might be out of balance?
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Each of these stones can be a factor
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for creating stress responses
or relaxation responses.
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How might you turn on more
relaxation responses in your body?
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And most importantly,
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what does your body
need in order to heal?
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What prescription do you need
to write for yourself?
00:15:43
And are you going to be brave enough
00:15:45
to take action on the truth of what
your inner pilot light already knows?
00:15:50
I believe our healthcare system
is badly broken,
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and it's largely because
we've lost respect
00:15:55
for the body's ability to heal itself.
00:15:58
The medical establishment
has gotten arrogant.
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We've come to think
that with all of our modern technology,
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and all that we've learned
in the past century,
00:16:05
that we've mastered nature,
and we find it repelling
00:16:10
to think that maybe nature could
be better than we are sometimes.
00:16:14
And yet, spontaneous remissions
from incurable diseases are proof
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that sometimes nature
is just better than we are.
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It's a narcisitic wound for physicians.
00:16:23
We don't know what to do with that.
00:16:25
It makes us feel helpless
and hopeless and useless.
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But fortunately, we're needed.
00:16:30
The physician and all the other
healthcare providers
00:16:33
are absolutely essential to this process.
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We need to embrace this.
00:16:38
And patients need to change
their outlooks on this as well.
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It is not just doctors.
00:16:42
We need patients to stop thinking
that your body is not your business,
00:16:45
taking your power and handing it
over to other healthcare providers.
00:16:49
Your body is your business,
and your mind has tremendous power
00:16:53
to communicate with your body,
such that your body can heal itself.
00:16:59
So I once had a dream,
and in my dream I was standing there,
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looking at these mountainsides,
full of millions of people
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that were standing shoulder to shoulder,
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and they were all facing due north,
dressed in all these tribal garbs,
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beautiful colors covering
the mountainsides like a quilt.
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And there was a bright
streaming light on their face
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and everyone was facing this light,
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and that's what I think of,
when I think of healthcare.
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I think of all of us, standing up,
and facing the light.
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So please stand with me for a moment.
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It's going to take all of us.
00:17:31
Just because things have gotten bad
doesn't mean they can't get better.
00:17:36
I believe that just like there are
no incurable illnesses
00:17:40
there are no incurable systems.
00:17:42
But it's going to take all of us, needing
to open our heart and our minds,
00:17:46
and bring care back to healthcare.
00:17:48
So please hold hands
with your fellow neighbor
00:17:50
and let's just set
the intention right here,
00:17:53
that things are going to be
different from now on,
00:17:56
that we can start this grassroots effort
that it all starts with you.
00:18:01
Be the love that you want to
see in healthcare,
00:18:05
and I believe miracles can happen.
00:18:07
As we do this you're releasing oxytocin,
dopamine, you start to heal yourself
00:18:13
and as we do so we can heal healthcare.
00:18:15
Thank you.
00:18:17
(Applause)
