Surprisingly researcher admits mind plays a big role in healing or worsening your body.
Because they themselves have a scientific term for this and it’s called the Placebo effect or Nocebo effect.
Welcome to Active Human’s 21st newsletter.
As you know at Active Human we are improving the 5 pillars of our wellbeing. These 5 pillars are Nutrition, Exercise, Sleep, Removal of Toxicity, and Improving Brain Chemistry.
Quickly, What is the Placebo Effect?
The placebo effect is when a person experiences a real improvement in their health after receiving a treatment that has no effective drug in it. Basically, healthcare providers use a dummy thing pretended as real effective drug in clinical trials and people actually gets better.
So is the placebo effect a kind of quackery?
No, Infact The placebo effect is actually evidence-based.
In 1993, the Institute of Noetic Sciences published Spontaneous Remission: An Annotated Bibliography. In this work, the authors, Caryle Hirschberg, and the late Brendan O’Regan, defined spontaneous remission as “the disappearance, complete or incomplete, of a disease or cancer without medical treatment or with treatment that is considered inadequate to produce the resulting disappearance of disease symptoms or tumor.”
The Spontaneous Remission Project has collected a database of around 3500 cases where patients went into remission. There are various cases of incurable diseases like Cancer, HIV, Lung issues, and Nervous System issues that have gone into remission and even reversed.
In one of the TEDx Talks, Lissa Rankin, MD tells a real-time case study from the Spontaneous Remission Project. (The link to her video is also given in the resources, please watch it after reading this. She explains it magically)
This is how she narrated it,
“In 1957, a patient called Mr. Wright who had advanced lymphosarcoma and things weren't going well for Mr. Wright. Time was really running out. He had tumors the size of oranges in his armpits, neck, chest, and abdomen. His liver and spleen were enlarged. And his lungs were filling up with two quarts of milky fluid every day that had to be drained in order for him to breathe.
But Mr. Wright wasn't giving up hope. He had heard about this wonder drug called “Krebiozen”. And he was begging his doctor, "Come on, just give me some of that Krebiozen. It's all going to be good."
Now, unfortunately, Krebiozen was only available on a research protocol, and the protocol required that the doctor be able to make an assessment that says that the patient has at least three months to live.
And his doctor, Dr. West just couldn't do that because Mr. Wright did not have 3 months.
But Mr. Wright was tenacious and he didn't give up. He kept badgering his doctor until finally, his doctor was like, "OK, fine I'll give you the Krebiozen."
So he dosed him up on a Friday, not expecting that Mr. Wright would make it through the weekend.
But to his utter shock, when Dr. West came in to do rounds on Monday. Mr. Wright was up, walking around the wards, and his tumors had shrunk to half of their original size.
They had melted like snowballs on a hot stove.
And ten days after getting the Krebiozen, They were fully gone.
So Mr. Wright was up rocking and rolling praising Krebiozen as the miracle drug he believed it to be, for two months, until the initial reports came out about Krebiozen. That said it didn't look like Krebiozen was working so well.
Mr. Wright fell into a deep depression and his cancer came back. This time Dr. West decided to get sneaky, and he told his patient, that, "You know that Krebiozen that you got, that was a tainted version, not so good. But I got you some ultrapure highly concentrated Krebiozen.
This stuff's got it going on." He then injected Mr. Wright with nothing but distilled water.
And once again, the tumors disappeared, and the fluid in his lungs went away. Mr. Wright was up rocking and rolling for another two months.
And then the American Medical Association blew it, by publishing a nationwide study that proved definitively that Krebiozen was worthless.
Two days later, Mr. Wright, after hearing this news, died.”
You can take a pause if this story has moved you.
So, How does Placebo effect work, and What happens hormonally in our body?
If a person knows that they are getting some care, someone cares for them, and there is something that can help them. Their mind actually helps them heal. Some brain chemistry changes happen that initiate self-healing.
Researchers are now able to show that placebos can activate the brain’s natural painkillers and alter brain regions involved in mood, perception, and self-awareness.
A notable study published in The New England Journal of Medicine highlighted the placebo effect's potency. Researchers found that patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) who knowingly took a placebo pill experienced significant symptom relief compared to those who received no treatment. The study concluded that "the act of taking a pill, along with the ritual and care involved in the process, plays a substantial role in patient outcomes".
But you don’t have to get dummy things to get placebo effects, There are known other methods too to help your mind help you heal. We will cover them later.
Once again, it works because the moment you know, Someone, or something is there, your outlook changes.
People with some sorts of diseases have the Sympathetic nervous system activated all the time which does not allow the body to heal. So placebo effects help Your Body to go into a relaxation mode and activate the Parasympathetic nervous system which is your repair mode nervous system. It happens because of:
Expectation: When we expect a treatment to work, our brain releases chemicals like endorphins and dopamine, which can alleviate symptoms and improve our mood.
Conditioning: Past experiences with successful treatments for other minor diseases can condition our brains that pills work and that help us respond positively to a placebo.
Psychological Factors: Trust in healthcare providers and the medical environment that gives you feeling that you are in good hands amplify the placebo effect.
Can you also harness the benefits of Placebo Effect?
Means can you allow your mind to heal you?
The answer is Yes.
There are known and proven ways to activate the parasympathetic nervous system along with some intervention from your healthcare provider which can help you activate healing.
These are
Meditation
Yoga
Pranayama,
Box Breathing Exercise
Engaging in Creative Work
Gardening
Long Walks in nature,
Any activity that helps you relax deeply.
And Most importantly believing in your healthcare provider.
Your healthcare provider should cultivate a mindset of optimism and hope and you two build strong relationships and have faith in your treatment plan.
The placebo effect should remind you that your beliefs can shape your reality.
What are your thoughts on the placebo effect? Have you experienced its power firsthand?
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See you Next Saturday,
Manish Bhagwani,
Human →Active Human
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At Active Human, We work on Chronic lifestyle disorders including Diabetes, High Blood Pressure, Obesity, Thyroid Issues, PCOS, IBS, Migraines, High Cholesterol, Autoimmune Diseases, Heart health issues, and Hormonal Imbalance issues. We take a scientific approach to arrive at your root cause using blood reports (advance tests) and then set protocols to reduce and correct your root cause. It is a process and not a quick fix and it takes 3-6 months to understand and work on the root cause and start seeing results. If you know someone who has any kind of lifestyle disorder. Please help me spread the word and help them reach out to me at manishkbhagwani@gmail.com. We are a team of functional nutritionists who follow a functional medicine and correcting root cause approach.
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Resources:
IBS relief due to Placebo effect: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0015591
Spontaneous Remission project: https://noetic.org/publication/spontaneous-remission-annotated-bibliography/
Parasympathetic Nervous system activate repair: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5025532/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3582394/
Power of Placebo effect: https://www.health.harvard.edu/mental-health/the-power-of-the-placebo-effect
TED X Talks of Lissa Rankin, MD: Video Link