The Power of the Mind

It is quite obvious that healthy people are happier than unhealthy people. What is now becoming increasingly evident through study is that the reverse is also true: happy people are healthier than unhappy people. It appears that happiness, which simply means having happy thoughts most of the time, causes biological changes in the brain that in turn have profound beneficial effects on the body’s physiology.

Let us take a few specific examples, first, of unhappy thoughts. Angry, hostile thoughts bring about rapid heartbeat, a rise in blood pressure, and flushing of the face, among other changes. Anxious thoughts can also speed up the heart rate and raise blood pressure, as well as induce tremor of the hands, cold sweat, a knotted stomach, and a pervasive weakening, as changes in the brain in order to account for such physical manifestations. Severely disturbed thought has long been linked to distortions in brain chemistry. To quote one researcher, "There is no twisted thought without a twisted molecule".

Likewise, happy thoughts of all kinds, loving thoughts, thoughts of peace and tranquillity, of compassion, friendliness, kindness, generosity, affection, warmth, and intimacy each produce a corresponding state of physiology via the flux of neurotransmitters and hormones in the central nervous system and throughout the entire body. The profound physiological changes that happy thoughts induce lead to good health because the neurotransmitters that mediate them in the body have a stimulating effect. If the body’s immune system is weakened by feelings of anger, apathy, enmity, resentment, conflict, and gloom, then happy thought patterns should serve to increase the body’s resistance to disease through a similar, but reversed effect.

At any one time, your health is the sum total of all impulses, positive and negative, emanating from your consciousness. You are what you think! If you are happy, this just means that you have happy thoughts most of the time. If you are depressed, it means that you have sad thoughts most of the time. Into this calculation enter all our other states of minds as well, our daily share of anger, fear, envy, greed, kindness, compassion, benevolence, and love. These are all simply thoughts. When one of them happens to predominate, it leads to a corresponding state of physiology.

The force of habit is practically impossible to stop once its channel has been opened. The conscious mind may tell itself that it can control everyday habits — lose weight when it wants to, quit smoking, accept new beliefs and think unknown thoughts — but the force of habit is like a tidal wave and the conscious mind its precariously perched rider. Habits care very little, for instance, whether we think of it as good or bad. We have all heard the cry of the chain smoker, "I didn’t even want that cigarette", and the dieter’s "I didn’t even feel hungry when I ate that pie". In order to see why habit is so strong, we have to look a little closer at the nature of the mind.

Every habit is a co-operative venture between body and mind. Generally speaking, the mind leads the venture and the body follows as a silent partner in order to materialise the minds lead. This works very well when the habit is something suitable like swinging a tennis racket or playing the violin. The tremendous skill that the body shows in sports or musical performance is made possible by the simple fact that the athlete or musician does not have to think about what he is doing. His faintest intention is translated into incredible co-ordinated responses of mind and body. He is taking supreme advantage of mind-body co-ordination thanks to the force of habit.

The mechanical nature of habit can, however, work for ill. If the mind has a faint intention to gain gratification, but the channels automatically set up for that include smoking, drinking alcohol, or overeating, then the force of habit will carry the body towards disease. The partnership of mind and body is like a balloon: if you squeeze it in one place, it always bulges out somewhere else. In a bad habit, the body gives way as much as it can to accommodate the mind’s desire, for example, allowing the blood pressure to increase, stress hormones to activate improperly the fight-or-flight response, and the heartbeat to increase, but in time the stressed parts of the body grow to fit the bulge, and then there is no more flexibility left. The outcome is chronic high blood pressure, an exhausted hormone system, and a strained heart.

If we want to create health, starting this moment, then we have to start channelling the unconscious mind through habit. Any approach to new habits should follow these guidelines: The habit should be acquired effortlessly over a period of time, it should be guided by positive thoughts, and it should be consciously repeated. but always in a good frame of mind, never forced in as the enemy of a bad habit. Cultivated in this way, new habits condition the whole mind-body system to create health and happiness automatically. I am reminded of those two sentences from Abraham Maslow about very healthy, creative people: "What such a person wants and enjoys is apt to be just what is good for him. His spontaneous reactions are as capable, efficient and right as if they had been thought out in advance." It sounds too good to be true, but it is just habit at work.

Here are some further examples to illustrate how the body responds to the messages from the mind.

The mind is much more than the chemicals, neuropeptides, that help to get messages to the rest of the body.

After all it is not really the adrenaline molecule that makes a mother rush into a burning building to save her child or an endorphin molecule that protects her from feeling the flames. Love makes her rush in, and single-minded determination protects her from pain.

It is generally believed that people who are addicted to alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs have a "chemical addiction", meaning that their cells are hooked on nicotine, alcohol, heroine, etc. But if you look at the level of the body’s chemistry, you find that heroin or nicotine fits into the same receptors on the cell walls that everyone has. An addict does not have receptors that exhibit abnormal cravings.

By analogy, a fat man’s stomach lining isn’t addicted to food — it just accepts what is given to it. The truth seems to be that the cell’s memory for the addictive substance is what is hooked, and it keeps creating distorted cells that reflect its weakness. In other words, an addiction is a distorted memory.

If you take an addict, detoxify his body, and keep him away from alcohol or drugs for several years, all the old cells that used to be "chemically addicted" are totally gone. Yet the memory persists, and if you give it a chance, the memory will latch onto the addictive substance once again.

Tumours that melt like snowballs on a hot stove

Psychologist Bruno Klopfer was treating a man named Wright who had advanced cancer of the lymph nodes. All standard treatments had been exhausted, and Wright appeared to have little time left. His neck, armpits, chest, abdomen and groin were all filled with tumours the size of oranges, and his spleen and liver were so enlarged that two quarts of milky fluid had to be drained out of his chest every day.

But Wright did not want to die. He had heard about an exciting new drug called Krebiozen, and he begged his doctor to let him try it. At first his doctor refused because the drug was only tried on people with a life expectancy of at least three months. But Wright was so unrelenting in his entreaties, his doctor finally gave in. He gave Wright an injection of Krebiozen on Friday, but in his heart of hearts he did not expect Wright to last the weekend. Then the doctor went home.

To his surprise, on the following Monday he found Wright out of bed and walking around. Klopfer reported that his tumours had "melted like snowballs on a hot stove" and were half their original size. This was a far more rapid decrease than even the strongest Xray treatments could have accomplished. Ten days after Wright’s first Krebiozen treatment, he left the hospital and was, as far as his doctors could establish, cancer free. When he had entered the hospital he had needed an oxygen mask to breathe, but when he left he was well enough to fly his own plane at 12,000 feet with no discomfort.

Wright remained well for about two months, but then articles began to appear asserting that Krebiozen actually had no effect on cancer of the lymph nodes. Wright, who was rigidly logical and scientific in his thinking, became very depressed, suffered a relapse, and was readmitted to the hospital. This time his physician decided to try an experiment. He told Wright that Krebiozen was every bit as effective as it had seemed, but that some of the initial supplies of the drug had deteriorated during shipping. He explained, however, that he had a new highly concentrated version of the drug and could treat Wright with this. Of course the physician did not have a new version of the drug and intended to inject Wright with plain water. To create the proper atmosphere he even went through an elaborate procedure before injecting Wright with the placebo.

Again the results were dramatic. Tumour masses melted, chest fluid vanished, and Wright was quickly back on his feet and feeling great. He remained symptom-free for another two months, but then the American Medical Association announced that a nation-wide study of Krebiozen had found the drug worthless in the treatment of cancer. This time Wright’s faith was completely shattered. His cancer blossomed anew and he died two days later.

The message is: When we are fortunate enough to bypass our disbelief and tap the healing forces within us, we can cause tumours to melt away overnight.

Drs Harriet Linton and Robert Langs (1962)

Subjects were told they were going to participate in a study of the effects of LSD, but they were given a placebo instead. Nonetheless, half an hour after taking the placebo, the subjects began to experience the classic symptoms of the actual drug, loss of control, supposed insight into the meaning of existence, and so on. These "placebo trips" lasted several hours.

Harvard Psychologist Richard Alpert (1966)

Alpert met a wizened little holy man in the foothills of the Himalayas on his quest to gain insight into the LSD experience. Because the man was over sixty, Alpert’s first inclination was to give him a gentle dose of 50 or 75 micrograms. But the man was much more interested in one of the 305 microgram pills Alpert had brought with him, a relatively sizeable dose. Reluctantly, Alpert gave him one of the pills. But still the man was not satisfied. With a twinkle in his eye he requested another and then another and placed all 915 micrograms of LSD on his tongue, a massive dose by any standard, and swallowed them.

Aghast, Alpert watched intently, expecting the man to start waving his arms and whooping like a banshee, but instead he behaved as if nothing had happened. He remained that way for the rest of the day, his demeanour as serene and unperturbed as it always was, save for the twinkling glances he occasionally tossed Alpert. The LSD apparently had little or no effect on him. Alpert was so moved by the experience he gave up LSD, changed his name to Ram Dass, and converted to mysticism.

Dr Patrick Quanten MD

December 1996