can the heart heal

can the mind really heal the body? and if so, is thereany scientific evidence to convince skeptical physicians like me? these are the questions that fueledthe last few years of my research and what i discoveredis that the scientific community, the medical establishment,has being proving for over 50 years, that the mind can heal the body. we call it the "placebo effect". and we've been tryingto outsmart it for decades.

(laughter) the placebo effect is a thorn in the sideof the medical establishment. it's an inconvenient truth,that gets in between, trying to bring new treatments, newsurgeries into the medical establishment. so it's a problem!supposedly. but i actually think,this is really good news! the placebo effect is excellent news! because it's concrete evidence that the body holds within itinnate self-repair mechanisms

that can make unthinkablethings happen to the body. so, if you find this surprising, if you have a hard time believingthat the body can heal itself, you need look no further thanthe spontaneous remission project, a database compiledby the institute of noetic sciences of over 3500 case studiesin the medical literature of patients who have gotten betterfrom seemingly "incurable" illnesses. you think there's sucha thing as an incurable illness? i swear, if you go look at this database,it will blow your mind.

everything is in there. stage 4 cancers that disappearedwithout treatment. hiv positive patients,that became hiv negative. heart disease, kidney failure,diabetes, high blood pressure, thyroid disease,autoimmune diseases, gone. a great example of thisin the medical literature, is a case study from 1957 of mr. wrightwho had advanced lymphosarcoma. so, things weren't going well formr. wright, time was really running out. he had tumors the size of oranges in hisarmpits, neck, chest, abdomen.

his liver and spleen were enlarged, and his lungs were filling up withtwo quarts of milky fluid every day that have to be drainedin order for him to breathe. but mr. wright wasn't giving up hope. he had heard aboutthis wonder drug called krebiozen, and he was begging his doctor, "come on, just give me some of thatkrebiozen, it's all going to be good." now, unfortunately the krebiozen wasonly available on a research protocol and the protocol required that the doctorbe able to make an assessment

that says that this guy hasat least three months to live. and his doctor,dr. west just couldn't do that. but mr. wright was tenaciousand 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. wrightwould make it through the weekend. but to his utter shock, when dr. westcame in to do rounds on monday, mr. wright was up,walking around the wards,

and his tumors had shrunkto half of their original size. they had melted likesnowballs on a hot stove. and ten days after gettingthe krebiozen, they were gone. so mr. wright was uprocking and rolling like praising krebiozen as the miracle drughe believed it to be, for two months, until the initial reportscame out about krebiozen that said that it didn't really look likekrebiozen was working so well. mr. wright fell into a deep depressionand 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 us some ultrapurehighly concentrated krebiozen, this stuff's got it going on." he then injected mr. wrightwith nothing but distilled water. and once again, the tumors disappeared,the fluid in his lungs went away. mr. wright was up rocking and rollingfor another two months. and then the americanmedical association blew it, by publishing a nationwide study that proved definitivelythat krebiozen was worthless.

two days later, mr. wright,after hearing this news, died. soon after that,i came across another study in the medical literaturethat was the stuff of fairy tales. three baby girls were born,delivered by a midwife, on friday the 13th in the okefenokeeswamp, near the georgia-florida border. and the midwife pronouncedthat these three babies, born on such a fateful day,were all hexed. the first, she said, would diebefore her 16th birthday. the second, before her 21st.

the third, before her 23rd birthday. and as it turned out, the first girl diedthe day before her 16th birthday, the second died the daybefore her 21st birthday, and the third girl, who knew whathad happened to the other two, got wind of that, and the daybefore her 23rd birthday, she showed at the hospitalhyperventilating, begging them,to make sure she survived. she wound up dying that night. these two case studies are greatexamples from the medical literature

of the placebo effect, andits opposite, the nocebo effect. when mr. wright got that distilledwater and his tumors melted away, that's a great exampleof the placebo effect. when you get a seeminglyinert treatment and yet something is happeningphysiologically in the body, such that the disease goes away. the nocebo effect is the opposite. so the three hexed girls arean example of the nocebo effect. when the mind's belief that somethingbad is going to happen in the body

then it comes to manifest. so the scientific literature,medical journals like the new england journal of medicine and the journal of the americanmedical association, these scientific journals arefull of evidence that the placebo effect, and the nocebo effectare incredibly powerful. we've known this since the 1950s, and we've seen countless case studies that show that in almosteverything you study,

if you give peoplea fake treatment, a sugar pill a saline injection, or most effectively,a fake surgery, (laughter)- yeah, really - 18-80% of the time, people get better. and it's not just in their mind,that's what i thought in the beginning, like "oh! they're just feeling better,they're thinking better." but is not.it's actually in their physiology. this is measurable. you can actually seewhat happens to the body.

so for example patients getting placebos were found to have ulcers that healed, colons that became less inflamed,bronchi that dilated, warts that disappeared, cellslooked different under the microscope. it's provable, it's happening in the body, even though it's initiated by the mind. so, when you look at these,some of the studies are just amazing. i love the rogain studies. you get a bunch of bald men,you give them placebos.

they grow hair!(laughter) the opposite is also true,so if you give people a placebo and you tell them it's chemotherapy, they vomit, and they lose their hair. so this is really happening in the body. my question was, is it just the mind's positive beliefthat's making this happen? not according to harvardresearcher ted kaptchuk. according to him, he thinksthat the most essential part

is actually the nurturing careof a healthcare provider, more so even than the mind'spositive belief that some of the studies actually saythat the doctor is the placebo or can be. so ted kaptchuk wanted to study this, and he did a great studylooking at patients that were getting placebos for an illness, for treatment of an illnessand he told them, "you're getting a placebo,there's nothing in here, inert ingredients, nothing active."they still got better.

most likely, kaptchuk postulated,because they felt tended, nurtured, they felt like they were doing something,they felt like somebody cared. so to say that you can heal yourselfis sort of a misnomer. you know, the body can heal itself. the body has these innatenatural self repair mechanisms, but the scientific dataproves that you need the tending nurturing care of a healthcareprovider, of some sort, of a healer, to facilitate that process. it's not an easy processto go through alone,

so it makes a big difference if somebody else is holdingthat positive belief with you. but the problem is whilethe doctor can be the placebo, the doctor can also be the nocebo. so, what patients need from us,as healthcare providers, they need us to be forces of healing,not forces of fear or pessimism. so every time your doctor tells you,"you have an incurable illness, you're going to have to take thatmedication for the rest of your life," or god forbid,you get cancer and they say,

"you've got a 5% five-year survival rate," it's really no different that whenthat midwife told those three baby girls that they were hexed. it's a form of medical hexingthat's so prevalent. as doctors, we thinkwe're being realistic, you know? we're giving peoplethe kind of information we think they need to know, but we actually can be harming them. instead we need be morelike dr. west. you know?

taking that distilled water,"really mr.wright, i promise, this is going todo it for you." but do we have to count onour doctors to dupe us? do we have to get fake surgeriesand fake drugs, and wind up in clinical trials? this is what ledthe next phase of my research. so in my last tedx talk, l talked about a new wellness model that i developed, called the whole health cairn,

and this came aboutas part of my research, trying to find how else canwe harness this mind's power that's clearly evidenced bythe placebo effect and the nocebo effect, can we do something withoutbeing in a clinical trial? and my hypothesis wasthat in order to heal ourselves, in order to be optimally healthy, we need more than just a good diet,regular exercise program, getting enough sleep, taking yourvitamins, following your doctor's orders. those things all are great,and critical and important.

but i also came to believe thatwe need healthy relationships, a healthy professional life,a healthy creative life, a healthy spiritual life,a healthy sex life, a healthy financial life,a healthy environment. in essence, we need a healthy mind. so i wanted to try to prove this, andi went into the medical literature and the copious data that i found, proving that all of those thingsare essential, really blew my mind. i compiled them all into my upcoming book,

"mind over medicine: scientificproof you can heal yourself". but i want to give you a few highlightsabout what this is all about. so you can see fromthe whole health cairn, that all this facets are built upona foundation stone that i call your inner pilot light. and for me that's the essentialauthentic part of you, that knows what's true for you. that's willing to tell you the truth about maybe what's outof alignment in your life,

what stones in your whole health cairnmight be out of balance. and as you see i've put the body,physical health, on the top of the whole health cairn because it's the most fragile,the most precarious, and the most easy to kindof fall out of balance if other things in your lifearen't going so well. so what i found in the medical datais that relationships matter. people that have a strong social networkhave half the rate of heart disease compared to those who are lonely.

married people are twice as likelyto live long lives than unmarried people. in fact, curing your loneliness may be the most important measure of preventionyou can enact upon your body. more so than quitting smokingor starting to exercise. your spiritual life matters. those who attend religious serviceslive up to fourteen years longer. your professional life matters. you really can work yourself to death.in japan they call it karoshi. death by overwork, and the survivorsof those who die of karoshi,

can actually apply for workman'scomp-like benefits in japan. but it's not just japan, it's actuallyhappening even more in the united states, we just don't get benefits here. so one study found that peoplethat fail to take their vacation, are actually a third more likelyto get heart disease. your attitude really matters. î—appy people live 7 to 10 yearslonger than unhappy people, and optimists are 77% less likelyto get heart disease than pessimists. so how does this happen?

what is happening in the brainthat is making the body change? this is what was fascinating to me. i found that the brain communicateswith all the cells in the body via hormones and neurotransmitters. so, for example, if you havea negative thought, belief or feeling in the brain,your brain triggers this as a threat. something's wrong. if you feel lonely or pessimistic,things are bad at work, you are in a toxic relationship,the amygdala says, "î¤hreat! î¤hreat!"

and it turns on the hypothalamus,that talks to the pituitary gland, that communicates with the adrenal glandand the adrenal gland start spitting out stress hormones like cortisol,norepinephrine, epinephrine. î™t turns on what walter cannonat harvard called the stress response, that triggers the sympatheticnervous system, and puts you into thatfight or flight mode, which is adaptive, it's protective if you are running awayfrom a mountain lion, but in every day life, you're supposedto have that quick stress response if there is a threat and thenit's supposed to switch right off.

this isn't what happensin our regular lives these days. but fortunately there isa counter balancing relaxation response that herbert benson at harvard described. and when this comes about,the stress response turns off, the parasympathetic nervous systemturns on, and healing hormones like oxytocin,dopamine, nitric oxide, endorphins fill the body and batheevery cell in the body. what i found the most amazing about this is that those natural self-repairmechanisms that we all have,

they only flip on whenthe nervous system is relaxed. so when you're having stress responses, all those natural self-repairmechanisms get flipped off. the body is too busy trying to fightor flee, in order to heal itself. so, when you think about this,you have to start to wonder like, how can i possibly start to changethe balance in my own body? so one study showedthat on average we have more than 50 stress responses per day. and if you're lonely, or depressedor pessimistic or unhappy at work

or in a miserable relationship that numberis going to be more than twice as many. now this relaxation responseis what researchers think explains the placebo effect. so when you're going to get supposedlymaybe a new wonder drug - you don't know whether you're gettingthe placebo or not - it triggers that relaxation response, that combination of the mind'spositive belief and the nurturing careof a healthcare provider relaxes the nervous system.

and then all those natural self repairmechanisms can come into play. fortunately though you don't haveto be in a clinical trial to turn on your relaxation responses. there are lots of simplepleasurable activities that turn on the relaxation responses and these have been provenin the medical literature. so you can meditate,you can express yourself creatively, you can get a massage,do yoga or tai chi, you can go out with your friends,you can do work that you love,

you can have sex, you can laugh,exercise, you can play with animals. so i ask you to considerthe whole health cairn in your own life. which stones in your whole health cairnmight be out of balance? each of these stones can be a factor for creating stress responsesor relaxation responses. how might you turn on morerelaxation responses in your body? and most importantly, what does your bodyneed in order to heal? what prescription do you needto write for yourself?

and are you going to be brave enough to take action on the truth of whatyour inner pilot light already knows? i believe our healthcare systemis badly broken, and it's largely becausewe've lost respect for the body's ability to heal itself. the medical establishmenthas gotten arrogant. we've come to thinkthat with all of our modern technology, and all that we've learnedin the past century, that we've mastered nature,and we find it repelling

to think that maybe nature couldbe better than we are sometimes. and yet, spontaneous remissionsfrom incurable diseases are proof that sometimes natureis just better than we are. it's a narcisitic wound for physicians. we don't know what to do with that. it makes us feel helplessand hopeless and useless. but fortunately, we're needed. the physician and all the otherhealthcare providers are absolutely essential to this process.

we need to embrace this. and patients need to changetheir outlooks on this as well. it is not just doctors. we need patients to stop thinkingthat your body is not your business, taking your power and handing itover to other healthcare providers. your body is your business,and your mind has tremendous power to communicate with your body,such that your body can heal itself. so i once had a dream,and in my dream i was standing there, looking at these mountainsides,full of millions of people

that were standing shoulder to shoulder, and they were all facing due north,dressed in all these tribal garbs, beautiful colors coveringthe mountainsides like a quilt. and there was a brightstreaming light on their face and everyone was facing this light, and that's what i think of,when i think of healthcare. i think of all of us, standing up,and facing the light. so please stand with me for a moment. it's going to take all of us.

just because things have gotten baddoesn't mean they can't get better. i believe that just like there areno incurable illnesses there are no incurable systems. but it's going to take all of us, needingto open our heart and our minds, and bring care back to healthcare. so please hold handswith your fellow neighbor and let's just setthe intention right here, that things are going to bedifferent from now on, that we can start this grassroots effortthat it all starts with you.

be the love that you want tosee in healthcare, and i believe miracles can happen. as we do this you're releasing oxytocin,dopamine, you start to heal yourself and as we do so we can heal healthcare. thank you. (applause)