How to Harness Your Mind to Improve Your Health

Facing the fear of a scary diagnosis or medical procedure can feel daunting. We can feel powerless. Wouldn't it be great to know that you have the power to improve your health? Recent studies show how we can harness our brain power to affect positive health results.

Source: Photo by Online Marketing on Unsplash

According to surveys by the American Psychological Association, health anxiety is on the rise. Many of us are worried about a family member's health or struggling with our own health issues. COVID remains a mutating virus rapidly spreading, infecting, and reinfecting the population.

Scientists have been puzzled about why some people exposed to a virus get sick and why others stay well. Some patients respond well to medications and vaccines, while others do not.

Placebos and Nocebos

Physicians and medical researchers know from published studies that some patients will improve with a placebo (a fake pill or treatment). To determine if a medication truly works, it must perform better than a placebo. About 30 percent of people will improve from a placebo. Just believing that you are doing something helpful can make you feel better.

In contrast, about 25 percent of patients assigned to placebos in drug trials report negative symptoms like headaches, pain, and nausea. Something quite different seems to be happening in the brains of those who experience pain from a placebo compared to those who experience relief. Those who imagine adverse outcomes seem to suffer, even when they have received no treatment. These are called "nocebo effects." Placebo comes from Latin, meaning "I shall please." The word nocebo means "I shall harm."

Ted Kaptchuk, research professor at Harvard Medical School, co-founded the Program in Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter. He and his associates created an interesting placebo study of patients suffering from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). They compared a group of patients on a waiting list with a group that received fake acupuncture (no real needles or skin puncturing.) A third group received sham acupuncture with a warm and caring treatment provider.

Results showed that 28 percent of those on the waiting list reported symptom improvement, 44 percent of those receiving sham acupuncture alone reported progress, and a whopping 62 percent of patients who received sham acupuncture from a warm and caring provider reported significant improvement.

Researchers were surprised that combining a caring provider with a placebo treatment caused subjects to improve just as much as the group that received actual IBS drugs in clinical trials (Kaptchuk, T. J. et al. 2008).

Mindset and Placebo Effects

Is there a way to help yourself heal faster or provide some protection to yourself by harnessing your brain power?

New research suggests that our thoughts and beliefs impact us on the cellular level. Consider the milkshake study. Dr. Alia Crum and colleagues from Stanford University tested the same group of people on two separate occasions. Both times subjects were given a 380-calorie milkshake to drink. On the first occasion, subjects were told they were drinking a 620-calorie "indulgent" milkshake. The milkshake showed a fake label with false nutritional information.

On the second occasion, the same subjects were told that the milkshake was a 140-calorie "sensible" shake with a different false label of nutritional information. Experimenters measured levels of the hormone ghrelin before, during, and after drinking the shake. Ghrelin is a hormone that rises when we feel hungry and falls when we feel satiated.

Something extraordinary happened. Subjects who thought they got a high-calorie shake had a huge drop in ghrelin, showing they felt full. When subjects thought they were getting the equivalent of a low-calorie snack, their ghrelin levels remained flat (Crum, A. et al. 2011).

The subject's hormones followed their beliefs, not the reality of the calories they consumed.

If our thoughts and beliefs can change our hormones, what else can they impact?

A recent study looked at the effects of mindsets on oral immunotherapy for peanut allergies in children. Groups of children (with their parents) were provided with a treatment to help prevent the life-threatening consequences of peanut allergy. One group was told that non-life-threatening side effects might occur from the treatment. The other group was told that the non-life-threatening side effects meant that the medicine was working by desensitizing them to the allergic reaction.

Health Essential Reads

Taking Health Literacy to the Next Level

Are Women Really Better Doctors?

The results of the study were quite profound. The group that believed the side effects were a sign that the treatment was working responded significantly better to the medical treatment. Their positive beliefs about the medicine, and its side effects, lowered their anxiety and improved their physiological response to the therapy (Howe, L.C. et al. 2019).

Create Your Own Placebo Effect

If our beliefs and mindsets can produce significant changes in our physiology, it suggests that we can harness our brain power to improve our health. We can create our own placebo effects. It helps to start with the story you tell yourself about your health. It helps to create an internal story that has a happy, desirable outcome. Here's how:

1. Imagine and visualize healing: Imagine that your medication will help you. Visualize the best outcomes for your surgeries, treatments, or health conditions.
2. Choose warm and caring providers: Show your providers gratitude. Warmth, caring, and gratitude help ease nervous system arousal and lower anxiety and stress.
3. Cultivate positive emotions: Positive emotions such as awe and wonder are known to lower inflammation. Engage in acts of kindness, love, and gratitude to soften your response to stress (Stellar, J. E. et al. 2015).

I hope you feel inspired and empowered by your magnificent brain. Challenge your negative mindset and create your own placebo effect. It can help you feel more hopeful. Hope is healthy.