Key Messages
The Incredible Power Of The Mind In Healing: Discovering How Suggestion, Placebo Effect, Meditation, Spirituality And Technology Help Us Find Cures
The Cure Book Summary tells us about the incredible power of the mind when it comes to curing diseases.
It goes beyond conventional medical treatments, such as drugs and surgery, to explore how suggestion, placebo, meditation, spirituality and even hypnosis can be incredibly powerful tools in the healing process.
In this book we learn why blue sleeping pills are ineffective for Italian men, how one patient suffered from pain he shouldn’t logically have had and how Battlefield veterans use computer games to alleviate their pain.
All of these things demonstrate a new appreciation for the power of the mind in curing disease.
This is an understanding that we should all gain more awareness about–it makes a huge difference in achieving holistic health and wellbeing.
Believe It To Achieve It: How Placebos Exhibit Their Power In Medicine And Everyday Life
It’s been proven time and again – if a person believes in the medical intervention they are taking, it can have incredible results.
Studies have demonstrated that drugs, from antidepressants to sleeping pills, can work thanks to the placebo effect – that is when people believe a treatment is helping them even when they’re not actually receiving treatment.
Secretin, a gut hormone, is one example: although it was supposed to cure autism, studies were also finding that children benefited just as much from the placebo as they did with the actual hormone!
The success of medical interventions is largely dependent on what a person believes about it.
Fake surgeries can have “dramatic” results similar to powerful sedatives – just ask Janet Hardys’ Australian research team or the surgeons who discovered that 80% of their fractured-spine injection patients responded due even though they had only received placebos.
Even common examples of the placebo effect occur day-to-day, such as when people think an expensive wine tastes better even before tasting it.
At the end of the day, having confidence in a drug or treatment leads to greater outcomes than simply taking something believing nothing will happen.
The power of belief should not be underestimated!
The Nocebo Effect: How Your Mind Can Influence Your Body’S Performance
It’s amazing what an influence the mind can have on your physical body and performance.
Take, for example, the nocebo effect: if you anticipate negative side effects from a medication, even when there aren’t any actual ingredients to cause those side effects, you may experience them nonetheless.
A 29-year-old man in Mississippi found this out firsthand– after taking placebo pills on a clinical trial and then experiencing physical symptoms in response to an argument with his girlfriend, he was shocked to find that these symptoms completely disappeared upon being informed that the pills were actually just sugar.
Even when it comes to normal limits of performance and energy expenditure, our minds can give or take away.
South African physiologist Tim Noakes has discovered that cyclists rarely use up more than 50% of their muscle fibers yet will still feel exhausted and need to stop.
This is because as part of our genetic code we’re programmed to stop before running energy reserves too low.
But what’s even more incredible is how expectation can affect real change.
Elite cyclists in Wales experienced a two to three percent speed increase simply from believing they were taking an active ingredient which would enhance their performance – even though this was not the case at all!
This demonstrates just how powerful your mental attitude can be towards improving bodily outcome.
Harnessing The Power Of Placebos With Real Drugs, Pills, And Rituals
To tap into the power of the placebo effect, you need to do more than just taking medicine; you need to make sure it looks right and use certain rituals.
First of all, making your drugs look a certain way can have a placebo effect.
That’s why pharmaceutical companies may want to make big pills with recognizable stamps on them – studies have proven that this can have an impact on efficacy.
Additionally, depending on cultural influences, certain colors or shapes may be even more effective.
For example, blue sleeping pills might not produce a placebo effect among Italian men, as they associate the color blue with their national football team!
It’s also important to incorporate rituals and routines into your medication regimen – these can amplify the placebo effect in an unexpected way.
Experiments such as Manfred Schedlowski’s show that by using things like strawberry milk with green food coloring and a dash of lavender oil when you’re taking your medicine (or other ways to make a memorable experience) can increase how effective it is.
Finally, you should combine real drugs with placebos to reduce the amount of medication needed – studies have shown that children with ADHD still remained attentive even after reducing the dosage of their usual ADHD-medicines when placebos were in place.
In short, if you want to fully exploit the benefits of the placebo effect, make sure your medications look right and use rituals to create unique experiences every time you take them – in conjunction with real drug dosages for maximum positive results!
The Healing Power Of Human Care: Why Palliative Care May Be The Best Kind Of Medicine
The importance of an environment of care and comfort when it comes to help patients cope with pain has been proven over and over again.
Studies have found that women who were supported by one person during childbirth experienced less need for C-sections or painkillers, and their labor was shorter, while their babies were born in better health.
Meanwhile, Elvira Lang conducted a study on the effects of comfort talk during laparoscopic surgery.
The results of her research showed that those who received this comforting talk had maximum pain levels at only 2.5 on a scale of 10, compared to those who underwent regular treatment with a maximum pain level at 7.5!
Even people facing terminal diagnoses are not forgotten here.
Palliative specialists provide mental support to such people in order to raise the quality of life for them before they pass away.
Jennifer Temel’s study found that lung cancer patients in her program experienced significantly less depression, along with fewer physical symptoms and higher overall quality of life than those who didn’t receive palliative care sessions.
It is therefore quite clear that a caring environment can do wonders when it comes to helping people cope with pain—both mental and physical.
The Benefits Of Social Connections: How Friends Help Us Keep Our Cells And Immune Systems Healthy
Do you know what it takes to keep your body in its best condition? According to recent research, it turns out that having friends can actually be beneficial for your cells and your health overall.
It all starts with telomeres, which are the caps at the end of chromosomes.
These constantly shorten each time your cell divides, and they reflect your cells’ age.
But here’s the good news: social contact can help keep telomeres long!
Take the research team headed by demographer Luis Rosero-Bixby for instance.
They found that residents of a small Costa Rican city called Nicoya had higher life expectancies than usual due to their unusually long telomeres.
Why? Because Nicoyans tend to have more social contact with others and especially with children, which helps prevent telomeres from shortening too soon!
Friends also strengthen another important aspect of your health – Immunity!
When highly social people experience stress, their genes start producing antibodies that protect against viruses and tumor cells.
Isolated people however suffer from inflammation responses which do long term harm – an evolutionary issue since physical threats (like predators) are not as common anymore.
The Mindset You Have Towards Stress Matters: It Can Make Or Break Your Performance
Stress can have a serious impact on our physical and mental health.
Believe it or not, the effects of stress can be life-threatening in extreme cases, such as the 1994 Los Angeles Earthquake that killed 125 people from heart attacks due to the acute stress.
Chronic stress is just as bad, with an increased risk of obesity, diabetes, inflammation and oftentimes even Alzheimer’s.
To prove this point, consider a 2014 study done by the University of California which compared the telomeres of mothers of children with or without chronic diseases and found that mothers who had been through round-the-clock stress appeared to be 10 years older than those without it.
However, although too much stress isn’t good for us, it can also have some benefits if we approach it in a proactive and positive way.
If you face stressful situations with the mindset that they are solvable rather than threatening then your body will enter into a fight response mode which boosts performance and sends oxygenated blood to your brain.
Studies conducted by psychologist Wendy Mendes showed that when participants were told about the positive aspects of being stressed prior to taking important exams, their anxiety levels were lowered and their overall scores were higher than those who weren’t given any information beforehand.
So while unaddressed stress definitely has its repercussions on our overall wellbeing, approaches to manage it could bring out potential advantages when acting proactively against stressful situations in our lives.
Religion And Other Forms Of Spirituality Are Good For Your Health
The power of spirituality and its health benefits is incredibly vast.
There is a lot of evidence that suggests that being religious is beneficial to your health, such as lower rates of heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer and so on.
Studies have even found that regular church-goers are about 20 percent less likely to die in the following five years.
But you don’t need to believe in God to get the benefits relationship between spirituality and health.
Prayer and meditation can be just as powerful in helping maintain good physical and mental health.
One study found that prayer reduces heart rate and blood pressure while another showed that meditation lowered stress hormones like cortisol, as well as markers of inflammation.
Incredibly, it has even been found that a three-month meditation retreat lengthened telomeres in participants and slowed down their cell aging.
For those interested in getting into spiritual practice without religion, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) could be incredibly helpful.
It teaches patients to stay in the present moment instead of worrying about future or past events – something which has been found to reduce depression symptoms, improve quality of life and prevent relapses for people not on medication.
Regardless of how people choose to engage with spirituality, it’s clear that the connection between faith and health should not be underestimated!
How Hypnosis Is Used By Scientists To Help Treat Diseases
It’s true—hypnosis can actually help cure serious diseases.
Though it is often associated with magical shows at a circus, hypnosis also provides scientists with a tool for exploring the depths of the human mind.
When people are in a hypnotized state, they are more focused and less aware of their surroundings than normal.
This phenomenon was demonstrated in a study done by Edoardo Casiglia of the University of Padua, Italy who found that when hypnotized volunteers were told that he would draw half a pint of blood from their arm, the subjects reacted as if they had actually lost blood, experiencing lowered blood pressure in the arm in question.
Moreover, David Spiegel of Stanford University discovered that when people were hypnotized and instructed to see a grey-scale image, their brains responded accordingly—even though they were actually seeing a full-color image.
The effects of hypnotherapy have also been studied extensively in medical research.
In 1984, Peter Whorwell used hypnotherapy on patients suffering from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and was able to alleviate their symptoms immensely.
Even among patients who could not be helped through conventional treatments, 70-80% showed major improvements after undergoing hypnotherapy.
Clinical trials have also shown potential for using hypnosis to treat autoimmune diseases such as Crohn’s disease and gastrointestinal disorders like noncardiac chest pain.
Virtual Reality: A Pain-Relief Technology That Helps People Overcome Trauma And Injury
Virtual reality technology is proving to be an effective way for people to cope with pain and trauma.
In fact, a recent study conducted at the Medical Center of the University of Washington showed that when patients played a game called Snow World using virtual reality gear, their pain ratings were reduced by 35 percent – compared to just 5 percent for those who were listening to music.
A similar experiment was conducted by doctors at the Brooke Army Medical Center on injured soldiers.
One of these injured soldiers was Lieutenant Sam Brown who experienced a dramatic reduction in his pain score from 10 out of 10 down to 6 out of 10 while playing Snow World.
Furthermore, Brown reported spending only 22 percent of his time thinking about his pain while playing, compared with 76 percent normally.
On top of that, virtual reality devices can also be used as powerful tools for hypnosis.
Rather than gaming, patients can mount prerecorded hypnotherapy sessions through their virtual reality device’s goggles and see calming images such as forest scenes while being instructed on how to relax and reduce their pain levels.
Studies have shown that hypnotherapy through virtual reality can even be more effective than gaming in preventing rises in pain over the course of a day – something which psychologist David Patterson has observed firsthand among patients with broken bones and gunshot wounds.
Technology Can Give Us Control Over Our Bodies And Reduce Symptoms Of Diseases
Modern technology is transforming the way health care is provided.
In particular, patients can now take advantage of technological breakthroughs that allow them to monitor their body functions in real time, giving them greater control and insight over their internal processes.
Biofeedback devices are a great example of this phenomenon.
They let patients track their heart rate variability (HRV), which has been linked to increased emotional resilience against stress and more harmonious social relationships.
Through conscious breathing techniques, people can learn to manage their HRV and reap the benefits for themselves.
Additionally, new medical approaches such as vagal nerve stimulation (VNS) are helping combat chronic conditions such as epilepsy, rheumatoid arthritis and asthma in ways that have never been possible before.
VNS has even led to patients regaining movement or experiencing complete freedom from pain.
This revolutionary technology shows how advanced tools can revolutionize health care and bring radically better results than traditional treatments.
Wrap Up
Cure, by Christina Egolf, is a powerful book that details the connection between the body and mind with groundbreaking science.
She goes deep into the possibility of using hypnosis, biofeedback and other modern technology to heal a wide range of ailments.
This book ultimately reveals that the power of our mind can bring healing to both physical and mental illnesses when we properly use new technologies and methods.
We often think of medicine as a cure-all, but this book shows us that in many cases the power for health is within us.
By understanding how to harness our minds, we can unlock a wealth of potential for healing ourselves from illness and disease.
