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    THE MIND BODY CONNECTION, Psychosomatic therapy (psyche = mind; soma
    = body) theorizes that there are psychological and emotional factors involved in
    both the onset and healing of cancer and other diseases.


    THE MIND BODY CONNECTION - Hanne Bom

    "Psychosomatic therapy (psyche = mind; soma = body) theorizes that there
    are psychological and emotional factors involved in both the onset and
    healing of cancer and other diseases.

    One of the most recent studies on psychosomatic cancer therapy comes
    from Germany. Over the past ten years, medical doctor and cancer surgeon
    Ryke-Geerd Hamer has examined 20,000 cancer patients with all types of
    cancer.

    Dr. Hamer wondered why cancer never seems to systematically spread
    directly from one organ to the surrounding tissue. For example, he never
    found cancer of the cervix AND cancer of the uterus in the same woman.
    He also noticed that all his cancer patients seemed to have something in
    common: there had been some kind of psycho emotional conflict prior to
    the onset of their disease, a conflict that had never been fully
    resolved.

    After having examined 20,000 cancer patients with all types of cancer,
    Dr. Hamer has come up with some revolutionary information. X-rays taken
    of the brain by Dr. Hamer showed in all cases a ‘dark shadow’ somewhere
    in the brain. These dark spots would be in exactly the same place in the
    brain for the same types of cancer. There was also a 100% correlation
    between the dark spot in the brain, the location of the cancer in the
    body and the specific type of unresolved conflict.

    On the basis of these findings, Dr. Hamer suggests that when we are in a
    stressful conflict that is not resolved, the emotional reflex center in
    the brain which corresponds to the experienced emotion (e.g : anger,
    frustration, grief) will slowly break down. Each of these emotion
    centers are connected to a specific organ. When a center breaks down, it
    will start sending wrong information to the organ it controls, resulting
    in the formation of deformed cells in the tissues: cancer cells. He
    also suggests that metastases are not the SAME cancer spreading. It is
    the result of new conflicts that may well be brought on by the very
    stress of having cancer or of invasive and painful or nauseating
    therapies.

    Dr. Hamer started including psychotherapy as an important part of the
    healing process and found that when the specific conflict was resolved,
    the cancer immediately stopped growing at a cellular level. The dark
    spot in the brain started to disappear. X-rays of the brain now showed a
    healing edema around the damaged emotional center as the brain tissue
    began to repair the afflicted point. There was once again normal
    communication between brain and body. A similar healing edema could also
    be seen around the now inactive cancer tissue. Eventually, the cancer
    would become encapsulated, discharged or dealt with by the natural
    action of the body. Diseased tissue would disappear and normal tissue
    would then again appear.

    Recent research in Germany, Austria, France, the US and Denmark has
    confirmed Dr. Hamer's findings; that emotional conflicts create cancer,
    and solving the conflicts in question stops the cancer growth.

    Dr. Hamer believes that cancer people are unable to share their
    thoughts, emotions, fears and joys with other people. He calls this
    "psycho-emotional isolation". These people tend to hide away sadness and
    grief behind a brave face, appear ‘nice’ and avoid open conflict. Some
    are not even aware of their emotions, and are therefore not only
    isolated from other people, but also from themselves. If we live our
    life in emotional isolation, our emotional centers will be under
    constant stress. If we then add a major conflict which we are not able
    to resolve, and which we may not even be quite conscious of, then the
    emotional centers of our brain are in danger of breaking down.

    We all experience "emotional-isolation", more or less. We live in a
    society where we want to interact with other people in a way we have
    been brought up to regard as considerate. There are limits to what we
    feel we can say and do. We often even censor what we allow ourselves to
    think and feel. Having to change these lifestyle facts does not
    necessarily mean that we need to go out and hit our neighbor or cry in
    front of our friends. It is a question of how we can change our
    emotional patterns without creating even greater conflicts for
    ourselves.

    It can take time to make even small changes in our habits. The important
    thing is that we can start healing from the moment we have understanding
    of our emotional conflicts so we can start acting, even if this action
    is merely to start talking to somebody—a friend, a partner or a
    professional. In this way, we break the loneliness of our isolation, and
    the pressure is taken off the emotional centers in our brain.

    Cancer patients who choose psychosomatic therapy—whether professionally
    or with a good friend—are different from most other patients. They are
    not 'just' being treated by others, but play an active part in resolving
    how and why the disease occurred. The word 'patient' becomes redundant,
    and they enter into active co-treatment of themselves.

    It is not a question of trying to follow some ideal way of living, based
    on other people's experiences. Each one of us must find our OWN
    solution—a lifestyle that works for US. We become sick in OUR OWN WAY
    –and we must HEAL in our own way."


    Dr. Ryke-Geerd Hamer MD.(a Must Read)

    Note by Healing Cancer Naturally:

    According to leading alternative cancer treatment researcher Lothar Hirneise, forgiveness is a primordial quality to develop for cancer
    patients. Also compare Dr. Bernie Siegel who writes: “I have collected 57 extremely well documented so-called cancer miracles. A cancer
    miracle is when a person didn't die when they absolutely, positively were supposed to. At a certain particular moment in time they decided
    that the anger and the depression were probably not the best way to go, since they had such a little bit of time left, and so they went from
    that to being loving, caring, no longer angry, no longer depressed, and able to talk to the people they loved. These 57 people had the same
    pattern. They gave up, totally, their anger, and they gave up, totally, their depression, by specifically a decision to do so. And at that point
    the tumors started to shrink.”

    [Introduction:] Controlled Statistical Studies of Mental Healing

    For most of the twentieth century, mainstream medical research never addressed a phenomenon that many practicing clinicians routinely
    observed: Attitudes, beliefs, and ideation all play a significant role in health. Since the 1970s, however, this has changed, and the research
    over this relatively short period has produced a gush, not a trickle, of evidence in support of psychosomatic healing. To reduce the job of
    reviewing these studies to a manageable size, I have chosen to focus on cancer and heart disease. Although cancer may be the more
    frightening of the two diseases, heart disease alone kills more Americans than all other diseases combined.(38) I will also cite an account of
    remission from acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS, primarily for the sake of public interest in the disease. However, we will first
    review some of the studies relating to the overall effect of thinking on health, as well as evidence of the effectiveness of imagery practice,
    the best-known mental healing technique.

    I. General Effects of Thinking on Health

    The great Hasidic sage Rebbe Nachman of Breslov (1722 - 1810) once made this generalization about disease and health: "All the illness
    that afflicts people comes only because of a lack of joy.... And joy is the great healer."(39) Dr. Bernie Siegel offers a more contemporary
    perspective in referring to the "contentment factor." Siegel cites a long-term study dealing with the death rate among Harvard graduates, in
    which:

    ”Those who were extremely satisfied with their lives had one-tenth the rate of serious illness and death suffered by their thoroughly
    dissatisfied peers even after the effects of alcohol, tobacco, obesity, and ancestral longevity were statistically eliminated.”(40)

    The two best-known mental and emotional factors that adversely affect health are stress and grief, especially if the latter is accompanied by
    loneliness. In the first half of this century, Walter Cannon discovered that heightened emotional states could stimulate the spleen, an organ
    that was later found to play a major role in the immune system.(41)

    One study showed that medical students have diminished immune system functioning at exam time. Activities of natural killer T-cells and
    levels of interferon were both found do be lower during that period. Students also reported higher incidents of coughs and colds.(42)

    According to Larry Dossey, grief, especially when accompanied by loneliness, can also adversely affect the immune system. In a 1977 study
    of the immune systems of widowed people in Sydney, Australia, researchers found that the bereaved showed significantly less immune
    activity than the control group. Another study, conducted at Ohio State University, found that medical students who had the highest scores
    on tests for loneliness and stress also had the lowest levels of natural killer T-cells.(43)

    Of course, illness itself can lead to the same loneliness that aggravates the disease. In one study, conducted over nine years in Alameda
    County, California, death rates in a group of 7,000 people were correlated with indicators of social interaction, such as church membership,
    marital status, and other indicators of social activity. Death rates were found to be highest among those who had the fewest relationships --
    even when factors such as socioeconomic status, cigarette smoking, and other health-related factors were taken into consideration.
    Isolation was linked to higher death rates from heart disease, cancer, and all other illnesses, as well as suicide and accidental death. Of
    course, the study naturally raises the question of whether the diseases caused the isolation, or vice versa. According to Dossey, the cause
    was the loneliness. Another study, conducted in Tecumseh, Michigan, "confirmed that increased loneliness and absence of social networks
    were the cause and not the result of disease and illness."(44) Dossey is quick to point out that nonetheless the culprit is not the experience
    of being alone per se, but the meaning ascribed to the isolation. Other researchers performed a follow-up of the Alameda County study, in
    which:

    ”Women who had many social contacts but felt isolated had 2.4 times the normal risk of dying from hormone-related cancers (breast,
    uterine, and ovarian). And those women who had few social contacts and felt isolated were five times as likely to die from such cancers.

    Interestingly, social ties did not seem to affect whether men got cancer in general, but among those who developed cancer, death was
    sooner in those who were socially isolated.”(45)

    If, as recent breakthroughs in psychoneuroimmunology suggest, the immune, nervous, and endocrine systems are all highly interrelated,
    then it would follow that tampering with the immune system might have emotional side effects. One study has corroborated this theory:

    ”If the approach to treating cancer involves the immune system, the brain should manifest alterations as well. In support of this hypothesis, it
    was pointed out that scientists are now finding that the administration of interferon (an immune regulator that also inhibits viral cell growth)
    promotes severe depression in AIDS patients.”(46)

    Given some of the studies cited earlier, one has to wonder if the side effects of the cure could actually exacerbate the disease.

    Finally, we cannot ignore the effect of doctor-patient relationships, a subject that has been the focus of three of the most commonly cited
    authors in this essay, Cousins, Dossey, and Siegel. Cousins, arguing that "a very simple effort to improve patient-physician interactions can
    result in significant improvement in a patient's condition," cites a series of four studies of ulcer, hypertension, diabetes, and breast cancer
    patients, conducted by Drs. Sheldon Greenfield and Sherrie Kaplan of the UCLA School of Public Health. In these studies, the control group
    was given only general information on self-observation and care, while the experimental group was given a full, twenty-minute training
    session on how to be more active in their treatment. The researchers found that the increased level of patient control, as well as the greater
    interest shown by physicians towards their patients, both positively correlated with improved health. Cousins infers that:

    ”Research such as Drs. Kaplan and Greenfield's project suggests that a more active patient role helps to foster a greater sense of control
    over illness, better health outcome, more rapid recovery, and greater compliance with treatment. Dr. Rose Maly of the UCLA School of
    Public Health utilized a simple technique to improve patient interactions with their physicians. The study observed corresponding attitudinal,
    behavioral, and health status changes in patients, as well as attitudinal changes in physicians....

    Preliminary results indicate a significant improvement in the functional status of those who experienced the enhanced interaction with their
    physician -- the benefits having their greatest impact on individuals over age sixty.”(47)



    These studies all suggest that physicians should encourage their patients to take a more active role in their treatment, which has two
    important implications. The first is that patients have an opportunity to take a more active role in their own healing by monitoring and
    directing their thinking. The second is that the very sense of being more in control is in itself conducive to better health. Studies dealing with
    heart disease and cancer, to which we now turn, corroborate this theory.
    II. The Effectiveness of Mental Healing Techniques

    As interest in the subject of mental healing grows, a variety of different techniques may evolve. As of today, however, the technique of
    imagery, or visualization, stands out as the most prominent. It actually consists of nothing more than rehearsing the experience you want to
    have in the imagination -- with the express purpose of directing the subconscious mind to bring the experience into reality. Siegel, who used
    visualization extensively with cancer patients, explains how it works with respect to healing in analyzing its effectiveness in training the highly-
    successful athletic teams of the former Soviet bloc:

    ”Visualization takes advantage of what might almost be called a ‘weakness’ of the body: it cannot distinguish between a vivid mental
    experience and an actual physical experience....

    Eastern European trainers often have their students and athletes lie down and listen to calming music Then the athlete visualizes, in full
    color and complete detail, a winning performance. This is repeated until the physical act becomes merely a duplication of a mental act that
    has already been successfully visualized. Soviet research indicates that athletes who spend as much as three-fourths of their time on
    mental training do better than those who place more emphasis on physical preparation.”(48)

    If mental rehearsal can train the body in athletics, it can at least theoretically train it to fight disease. (If this seems farfetched now, our
    upcoming discussion of biofeedback may render it less so.) Dossey cites the following documented success story:

    ”Dr. G. Richard Smith and his colleagues at the University of Arkansas College of Medicine reported what is perhaps the first fully
    documented case of a human being intentionally changing the immune system. It involved a thirty-nine-year-old woman who was able to
    change her positive skin test for varicella zoster (the chicken pox virus) at will -- from positive toward negative, and then toward positive, a
    feat she repeated six months later. She used a rather specific form of imagery, imagining the redness and swelling surrounding the skin test
    getting smaller and smaller, while sending ‘healing energy’ to the area.”(49)

    Dossey elaborates, citing the Achterberg and Lawlis studies and others as evidence of the effectiveness of visualization in altering the
    immune system. Achterberg collaborated with Mark S. Rider in an experiment that measured the effects of visualization in white blood cell
    count. The subjects were divided into two groups. Each group was asked to visualize images of the shape, location, and movement of one
    of two types of white blood cells, neutrophils or lymphocytes. Blood counts were taken both before and after each twenty-minute
    visualization sessions:

    ”Results showed that the neutrophils (but not the lymphocytes) decreased significantly in the neutrophil group, while the lymphocytes (but
    not the neutrophils) decreased significantly in the lymphocyte group. The authors concluded that the highly directed imagery was cell-
    specific; that is, it affected the cells toward which it was intended or directed, and not others.”(50)

    Siegel cites a study in which imagery increased the count of platelets, a third kind of white blood cell.

    ”In 1980 psychologist Alberto Villoldo of San Francisco State College showed that regular meditation and self-healing visualization improved
    white-blood-cell response and improved the efficiency of hormone response to a standard test of physical stress -- immersing one arm in ice
    water. The subjects trained in meditation withstood the pain of the test far better than those who did not meditate, and two-thirds of them
    were able to stop bleeding immediately after a blood test merely by focusing their minds on the vein after the needle was removed.”(51)

    Finally, Siegel cites a 1976 study, conducted by Gurucharan Singh Khalsa, founder of Boston's Kundalini Research Institute, showing that:
    "[R]egular yoga and meditation increased blood levels of three important immune-system hormones by 100 percent."(52)

    The proven effectiveness of imagery in healing the body has two important implications. The first is that it corroborates other evidence that
    thinking can heal. The second is that mental healing is not a process entirely out of reach for most of us. Although people may vary in their
    ability to visualize, most can apply this technique to some degree. Effective mental therapy already exists and is available to just about
    anyone who wants to use it.
    IV. Cancer

    With respect to this dreaded disease, I have divided the topic into two subtopics: the role of the mental in causing cancer and the role of the
    mental in curing it.

    The Role of the Mental in Causing Cancer

    With respect to cancer, many physicians believe that the disease itself is caused by a breakdown in the immune system. Under this theory,
    anything that adversely affects the immune system -- including some kinds of brain activity -- can be carcinogenic. In Bernie Siegel's words:

    ”One of the most widely accepted explanations of cancer, the ‘surveillance’ theory, states that cancer cells are developing in
    our bodies all the time but are normally destroyed by white blood cells before they can develop into dangerous tumors.
    Cancer appears when the immune system becomes suppressed and can no longer deal with this routine threat. It follows that
    whatever upsets the brain's control of the immune system will foster malignancy.”(71)

    This theory could explain why so many substances have been linked to cancer. Anything that interferes with the functioning of the immune
    system can be carcinogenic.(72) A study conducted at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx found that children with cancer
    had had twice as many recent crises as other children, who were similar except for their disease. Another study showed that 31 of 33
    children with leukemia had suffered traumatic losses within two years of the onset of the disease.(73)



    Mental and emotional factors have been tied to cancer in several important ways. Like heart disease, cancer correlates positively with
    stress. Siegel cites two studies. In the 1970s, a study of mice bred to develop breast cancer, the cancer rate varied from 92 percent, for
    mice that were subject to stress, to 7 percent, for those that were not. In another experiment, in which rats injected with tumor cells and then
    given electric shock, 73 percent of the rats that could not escape the shock developed cancer. Of those that could, only 37 percent
    developed the disease, doing slightly better than the rats that received no shocks at all.(74)

    Although it might be argued that stress itself is not due to thinking and beliefs, but to external circumstances, Siegel argues otherwise.
    Referring to a 1961 study by L. E. Hinkle, he concludes that stress comes not from events but in the way in which we interpret them.
    Situations such as poverty, bereavement, and alcoholism in the family, which might seem to be incredibly stressful to the observer, were not
    associated with the illnesses by the patients who did not report them as stressful. Conversely, events one would ordinarily consider to be
    not very stressful can be experienced as traumatic, especially in the case of children, who have been known to commit suicide for having
    received a B on a report card.(75)

    Cousins cites a study by David M. Kissen indicating similar results. In this study of cancer patients, Kissen's research "suggested that an
    individual's emotional response to a life event was more critical than an event itself in the genesis of cancer."(76) This evidence is
    consistent with that found in similar studies cited above, with respect to heart disease.

    Dossey cites one example of a researcher who found that mental factors are heavily involved in cancer -- even though he was trying to
    prove otherwise.

    ”Professor David Spiegel, a psychiatrist and researcher at Stanford University Medical School, set out to refute the idea that mental factors
    were important in the course of diseases. Like many clinicians, he felt that assigning a role to the mind in cancer was not only erroneous but
    potentially destructive as well. (Many believe this idea generates guilt on the part of the cancer patient because it suggests that he or she
    was somehow responsible for causing the disease.) Spiegel followed eighty-six women with breast cancer for a period of ten years. Those
    who received group therapy and lessons in self-hypnosis lived an average of twice as long as those who were given only traditional medical
    treatment. Spiegel described himself as ‘stunned’ at this finding, which contradicted his expectations.”(77)

    One of the more striking discoveries in the research of mental factors in causing cancer is that, "When combined with other psychological
    tests, mental imagery often is more useful than laboratory tests in assessing the patient's prospects." Siegel describes a study suggesting
    this:

    ”Work done by the Simontons, Jeanne Achterberg and G. Frank Lawlis compared the predictive value of psychological factors and blood
    chemistry in 126 patients with extensive cancer. Virtually every psychological test showed a statistical relationship to one or more blood
    components. The patients who did most poorly were those who were very dependent on others -- such as the doctor -- for
    motivation and esteem, who used psychological defenses to deny their condition, and who visualized their bodies as having
    little power to fight the disease. Compared with patients who did well, those whose disease progressed fastest were more
    conformist to sex-role stereotypes and developed images that were more concrete and less creative or symbolic. The
    researchers concluded that ‘blood chemistries offer information only about the current state of the disease, whereas the
    psychological variables offer future insights’ and that ‘the imagery was found to be the most important in predicting
    subsequent disease states.’ By analyzing drawings made by two hundred patients, Achterberg later achieved 95 percent
    accuracy in predicting who would die within two months and who would be in remission.”(78)

    One of the best-known mental predictors of cancer is the "cancer personality type." Cousin cites the work of psychologist Lawrence LeShan,
    an early pioneer in this field:

    ”LeShan..., research psychologist of the Institute of Applied Biology in New York, conducted extensive pioneering work regarding the cancer-
    prone personality that led him to identify several psychological characteristics that seemed to typify cancer patients (including such factors
    as the inability to express aggression and disruption of a parental relationship in early childhood). He concluded that personality factors
    have some bearing on the observed association between traumatic life events (most notably, the loss of a significant emotional relationship)
    and the development of cancer, and he speculated that specific psychological attributes could be linked to particular types and locations of
    cancer.”(79)

    One of the more important traits of the cancer personality type is an inability to express emotions. Siegel, who calls it an
    inability to "be your own person," says:

    ”As Elida Evans observed in her groundbreaking 1926 study of the cancer personality, ‘Development of individuality is a safeguard to life
    and health. It lifts a person out of the collective authority.’ I find in rural or rugged areas the percentage of exceptional patients is higher.
    They are independent, self-reliant people to begin with. Becoming your own person releases your creativity.”(80)

    Cancer patients tend to be "nice" people possessing low self-esteem and an exaggerated desire to please others. Several
    studies have shown that cancer patients can often be identified by their psychological profile. Siegel cites several:

    ”By using a simple psychological test on a large group of women, some of whom had cervical cancer, Arthur Schmale was able to pick out
    36 of the 51 who had malignancies (already diagnosed but unknown to him), by looking for hopelessness and a recent emotional loss.
    Other research groups have since gotten even better results. Marjorie and Claus Bahnson have developed a questionnaire that is 88
    percent accurate in identifying those who turn out to have a biopsy-confirmed cancer. Most of these psychological tests are now more
    accurate than physicians' physical exams....

    Some of the most valuable work has been done by Dr. Caroline Bedell Thomas of Johns Hopkins University Medical School. Beginning in
    1946, she took personality profiles of 1,337 medical students, then surveyed their mental and physical health every year for decades after
    graduation. Her goal was to find psychological antecedents of heart disease, high blood pressure, mental illness, and suicide. She included
    cancer in the study for the sake of comparison, because she originally thought it would have no psychological component. However, the
    data showed a "striking and unexpected" result: the traits of those who developed cancer were almost identical to those of the
    students who later committed suicide. Almost all the cancer patients had throughout their lives been restricted in expressing
    emotion, especially aggressive emotions related to their own needs. She also found that, using only the drawings they made as
    one of the tests, she could predict what parts of their bodies would develop cancer.”(81)

    Compare The “Cancer Personality”.

    Dr. Fawzy Fawzy at the UCLA medical school conducted a study about the role of emotions in the levels of Leu-7 cells, one of the "natural-
    killer" T-cells. The study, which lasted over a year, compared levels of Leu-7 cells of an "experimental group" that had been able to "reduce
    anxiety about their illness and cope with life stresses more effectively" with a control group that had not. Cousins quotes Fawzy's account of
    the results:

    ”The mean change scores showed that the control group's cells had actually decreased while the experimental group showed the desired
    increase in these cells at six weeks. By six months the control group had managed to return to close to baseline while the experimental
    group had continued to increase their Leu-seven cells. This trend continues in many of the other important cell categories.”(82)

    Grief also can have a profound impact on the development of cancer-fighting immune cells. Dossey cites the following study:

    ”Steven J. Schleifer and his colleagues at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital... studied the immune function of fifteen men whose wives had
    terminal breast cancer. Of interest were the T- and B-lymphocytes, the body's two main immune cells. Prior to the death of the wife, the
    researchers found that these cells functioned normally. But beginning shortly after the wife's death, and extending for many months in the
    period of grief, the cells, though normal in number, stopped working. They could not even be made to work when extracted from the blood of
    the men and exposed in test tubes to chemicals that ordinarily ‘turn them on.’"(83)

    Divorce has even worse effects, according to Siegel, because "...it's harder to accept that the relationship is really over."

    ”Indeed, divorced people have higher rates of cancer, heart disease, pneumonia, high blood pressure, and accidental death than married,
    single, or widowed persons. Married men also have one-third the lung-cancer incidence of single men and can smoke three times as much
    with the same cancer incidence as single men.”(84)

    Depression can also suppress immune cell activity, as well as the production of antibodies, which can both aid in the suppression of cancer.
    What is equally important is that some of these deleterious effects can be mitigated with relaxation and creative imagination exercises.
    Cousins cites a series of studies:

    ”Drs. Sandra M. Levy and Ronald B. Herberman of the University of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Cancer Institute observed that depressive
    behavior (fatigue, listlessness, apathy) was associated with diminished natural-killer (NK) cell activity and accelerated tumor spread in
    breast cancer patients. [Cousins then cites the Schlieffer study mentioned above.] To confirm the relationship between severity of
    depression and suppressed immunity, the investigators conducted a series of studies comparing individuals hospitalized for depression with
    those not hospitalized and those hospitalized for other reasons. They concluded that the severity of depression was associated with
    reduction of T and B cells and their activity. This conclusion was strengthened by their observation that relief from depression is paralleled
    by changes in the immune system.

    Drs. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and Ronald Glaser, of Ohio State University, found that highly depressed nonpsychotic psychiatric in-patients
    had significantly poorer DNA (genetic) repair in immune cells exposed to irradiation than did less depressed patients; and that both
    depressed groups fared significantly worse with regard to DNA repair than the psychologically healthy, nonpsychotic group. All group
    differences were sustained through the final measurement point, five hours after irradiations time period in which DNA repair is expected to
    recover to pre-irradiation levels. This finding suggests... that emotional stress may contribute to the incidence of cancer by directly causing
    abnormal cell development or by indirectly diminishing immune surveillance or competence.

    By the same mental processes, however, the immune response can be strengthened or restored. Use of relaxation exercises and creative
    imagination were found to be helpful in a study of cancer patients by Dr. Barry L. Gruber of the Medical Illness Counseling Center in Chevy
    Chase, Maryland, in collaboration with Dr. Nicholas R. Hall of George Washington University and later of the University of South Florida. For
    one year, the patients were asked to imagine the forces in their immune systems being fully engaged in a war against the cancer cells.

    The investigators found that these exercises had the effect of stimulating lymphocytes and increasing the production of antibodies and
    interleukin-2 cells, enhancing NK-cell activity and augmenting the effectiveness of the cytotoxic T cells. The pattern of immune changes
    corresponded to the level of relaxation and imagery. Equally interesting was the fact that the patients clearly showed intense determination
    to overcome their disease.”(85)

    With respect to the same study, Siegel adds the following comments: ”[The exercises also affected] the levels of thymosin-alpha-1, a
    hormone especially important to the auxiliary white cells called T helper cells. Thymosin-alpha-I also helps produce feelings of well-being,
    showing that the immune system can directly affect one's state of mind, as well as vice versa.”(86)

    Cousins elaborates on these studies, with respect to the problem of emotional inhibitions: ”Both Dr. Temoshok's and Dr. Levy's studies
    linked emotional inhibitions to impairment in immune activity. This may explain the link between emotional suppression, such as passivity or
    stoicism, and the progression of cancer.”(87)

    Evidently, the adverse effects on the immune system brought about by depression are worse when the depression is coupled with the lack
    of an emotional outlet. LeShan drew the distinction between the psychological condition of "depression" and that of "despair."

    ”LeShan conducted personality studies of 455 cancer patients and in-depth therapy of 71 "terminal" cases. He found that this condition
    of ‘despair’ (so named to distinguish it from the more commonly recognized form of depression) was reported as predating the disease by
    68 of his 71 cancer patients in therapy, but by only 3 of 88 other clients who did not have cancer.”(88)

    While both depression and despair are unhappy emotional states, despair entails the sense of helplessness that we found was so important
    in the link between stress and heart disease. That sense of helplessness may in fact be mitigated for those who can express emotions.
    Siegel cites two more studies: ”[O]ver thirty years ago... internist D. M. Kissen studied a group of smokers, comparing those who had lung
    cancer with those having other diseases. Based on personality tests, Kissen found the cancer patients had poorer ‘outlets for emotional
    discharge,’ and concluded that, the more repressed a person was, the fewer cigarettes were needed to cause cancer.

    Working with breast-cancer patients, Mogens Jensen of the Yale psychology department showed that ‘defensive-repressors’ die faster than
    patients with a more realistic outlook. These are the smiling ones who don't acknowledge their desperation, who say, ‘I'm fine,’ even though
    you know they have cancer, their spouses have run off, their children are drug addicts, and the house just burned down. Jensen feels this
    behavior ‘disregulates’ and exhausts the immune system because it is confused by the mixed messages.”(89)

    In his conversations with Bill Moyers, Michael Lerner, co-founder of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program, cites a study by Lydia
    Temoshek, whose work was also cited by Cousins earlier, of patients with malignant melanoma: ”Temoshek looked at the difference
    between patients who expressed their feelings and those who didn't, and discovered that the ones who expressed their feelings had more
    immune activity at the site of their lesions. They also had thinner lesions than the people who did not express their feelings.”(90)

    As with heart disease, denial can  also have a healing influence on cancer. According to Dossey, there are definitely times when deluding
    one's self can in fact heal, because it can help maintain a more positive mental attitude. Tactics such as denial, making excuses, and
    comparing one's self to only the worst off among other victims, in order to look good by comparison, all tend to promote healing:

    ”Researcher Keith W. Pettingale and his colleagues at King's College School of Medicine and Dentistry in London studied the psychological
    response of women three months after mastectomy. At a five-year follow-up, they found that the rate of recurrence-free survival was
    significantly higher among patients who had reacted to their cancer either with a fighting spirit or with denial than among those who had
    reacted with stoic acceptance or feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.... After a follow-up period of ten years, the outcome was the
    same: those patients demonstrating a fighting spirit or denial did better and had higher rates of survival....

    Another strategy used by most cancer patients, [psychologist Shelley E.] Taylor found, is to make selective comparisons with other persons
    with the same disease. Women with breast cancer tended to compare themselves with other women with cancer who were doing poorly,
    which enhanced their estimation of their own strengths.... Summing up, Taylor states, ‘The effective individual in the face of threat... seems
    to be one who permits the development of illusions, nurtures those illusions, and is ultimately restored by those illusions.’

    Another device used by the secret helper is excuses.... Research by psychologists C. R. Snyder and Raymond Higgins at the University of
    Kansas has shown that persons who offer themselves plausible excuses have greater self-esteem, better health, and perform better on all
    sorts of cognitive, social, and physical tasks than people who put the blame on themselves when things go wrong.... They help preserve a
    sense of self-worth and personal integrity -- as when we say that we flunked a test because we didn't study hard enough, not because we
    weren't intelligent enough.... Excuses give them time to marshal additional psychological resources for the next challenge.... Snyder and
    Higgins conclude that excuses are far from the ‘simple, silly and ineffective ploys’ most people consider them to be and are, in fact,
    necessary illusions.”(91)

    Dossey may well have exposed a conflict between moral and physical health here.

    If intellectual dishonesty is sometimes helpful, emotional dishonesty is not. People who express their negative emotions tend to do better.
    Being ornery and cantankerous pays more often than not. Siegel, who calls this expression "fighting spirit," says: ”Psychologist Leonard
    Derogatis, in a study of thirty-five women with metastatic breast cancer, found that the long-term survivors had poor relationships with their
    physicians -- as judged by the physicians. They asked a lot of questions and expressed their emotions freely. Likewise, National Cancer
    Institute psychologist Sandra Levy has shown that seriously ill breast-cancer patients who expressed high levels of depression, anxiety, and
    hostility survived longer than those who showed little distress. Levy and other researchers have also found that aggressive ‘bad’ patients
    tend to have more killer T cells, white cells that seek and destroy cancer cells, than docile "good" patients. A group of London
    researchers under Keith Pettingale recently reported a ten-year survival rate of 75 percent among cancer patients who
    reacted to the diagnosis with a ‘fighting spirit,’ compared with a 22-percent survival rate among those who responded with
    ‘stoic acceptance’ or feelings of helplessness or hopelessness.”(92)

    Siegel elaborates on fighting spirit, with respect to the Derogatis study: ”His work stands as excellent scientific support for a group of
    researchers nearly three decades earlier, who were ‘impressed by the polite, apologetic, almost painful acquiescence of patients with
    rapidly progressive disease as contrasted to the more expressive and sometimes bizarre personalities’ of those who lived longer.”(93)

    Cousins cites another study that supports Siegel's contention: ”Dr. G. Nicholas Rogentine, Jr., and colleagues of the National Cancer
    Institute recruited patients who had been successfully treated for malignant melanoma. The patients were asked to rate the amount of
    ‘adjustment’ they required in order to cope with their illness. Participants who reported that they reconciled themselves to their illness were
    more prone to recurrence than those who resisted the idea of adapting to cancer.”(94)

    Anything seems to work better than resignation. Cousins, citing the Temoshok study mentioned earlier, argues that "passive" emotional
    states are the most dangerous: ”[Lydia Temoshok's] structured interview with patients measured emotional, behavioral, physical, and mental
    reactions to events. These measurements revealed that malignant melanoma patients whose attitudes and emotions were active instead of
    passive exhibited better immune function and slower tumor growth.”(95)

    Dossey is more specific. According to his interpretation, the following studies indicate some specific thoughts that are associated with both
    defeatism and suppressed immune system activity: ”When people learn... to be genuinely helpless, they tend chronically to react to their
    problems with the classic triad of ‘I caused it,’ ‘It'll always be this way,’ and ‘This is going to spoil everything else I do.’ This point of view
    seems actually to be channeled into the body. It creates physiological changes that set the stage for bad health. When Seligman and his
    colleagues rated 172 undergraduates for the presence or absence of this explanatory style, they accurately predicted which students would
    be sick the most; the predictions held both one month and one year later. In another study involving 13 patients who had malignant
    melanoma, absence of this style of explanation was a better predictor of survival than even the level of activity of natural killer cells, a type
    of white blood cell crucial in the immune response.”(96)

    In sum, the studies indicate that despair, a profound feeling of sadness coupled with a sense of resignation to conditions, is
    the attitude that is least healthy when attempting to recover from cancer. Secondly, the social style of not expressing one's
    negative emotions, especially if it stems from an exaggerated fear of others' disapproval, seems to describe the personality
    profile of those most likely to get cancer in the first place.


    The Cancer Personality: Its Importance in Healing

    by W. Douglas Brodie, MD.

    Evidence of a relationship between cancer and personality type has existed for centuries. Going back in history to the second century AD,
    Galen, a Greek physician famous for his astute observations of patients and for his accurate descriptions of diseases, noted that women
    with breast cancer frequently had a tendency to be melancholic.

    In dealing with many thousands of cancer patients over the past 28 years, it has been my observation that there are certain personality
    traits which are rather consistently present in the cancer-susceptible individual. These characteristics are as follows:

    1. Being highly conscientious, dutiful, responsible, caring, hard-working, and usually of above average intelligence.

    2. Exhibiting a strong tendency toward carrying other people's burdens and toward taking on extra obligations, often “worrying for others.”

    3. Having a deep-seated need to make others happy, tending to be “people pleasers.” Having a great need for approval.

    4. Often having a history of lack of closeness with one or both parents, sometimes, later in life, resulting in lack of closeness with spouse or
    others who would normally be close.

    5. Harboring long-suppressed toxic emotions, such as anger, resentment and/or hostility. Typically the cancer-susceptible individual
    internalizes such emotions and has great difficulty expressing them.

    6. Reacting adversely to stress, often becoming unable to cope adequately with such stress. Usually experiencing an especially damaging
    event about 2 years before the onset of detectable cancer. The patient is unable to cope with this traumatic event or series of events, which
    comes as a “last straw” on top of years of suppressed reactions to stress.
    [compare Dr. Hamer’s “Iron Rule of Cancer”]

    7. Showing an inability to resolve deep-seated emotional problems and conflicts, usually arising in childhood, often even being unaware of
    their presence.

    Typical of the cancer-susceptible personality, as noted above, is the long-standing tendency to suppress “toxic emotions,” particularly
    anger. Usually starting in childhood, this individual has held in his/her hostility and other unacceptable emotions. More often than not, this
    feature of the affected personality has its origins in feelings of rejection by one or both parents. Whether these feelings or rejection are
    justified or not, it is the perception of rejection that matters, and this results in a lack of closeness with the “rejecting” parent or parents,
    followed later in life by a similar lack of closeness with spouses and others with whom close relationships would normally develop. Those at
    higher risk for cancer tend to develop feelings of loneliness as a result of their having been deprived of affection and acceptance earlier in
    life, even if this is merely their own perception. These people have a tremendous need for approval and acceptance, developing a very high
    sensitivity to the needs of others while suppressing their own emotional needs.

    These good folks become the “caretakers” of the world, showing great compassion and caring for others, and going out of their way to look
    after the needs of others. They are very reluctant to accept help from others, fearing that it may jeopardize their role as caretakers or that
    they might appear to have too much self-concern. Throughout their childhood they have typically been taught “not to be selfish,” and they
    take this to heart as a major lifetime objective. All of this benevolence is highly commendable, of course, in our culture, but must be
    somehow modified in the case of the cancer patient. A distinction needs to be made here between the “care-giving” and the “care-taking”
    personality. There is nothing wrong with care-giving, of course, but the problem arises when the susceptible individual derives his/her entire
    worth, value and identity from his/her role as “caretaker.” If this shift cannot be made, the patient is stuck in this role, and the susceptibility
    to cancer greatly increases.

    As noted above, a consistent feature of those who are susceptible to cancer appears to be that they “suffer in silence,” and bear their
    burdens without complaint. Burdens of their own as well as the burdens of others weigh heavily, often subconsciously as well as
    consciously, upon these people because they, through a lifetime of suppression, internalize their problems, cares and conflicts. The
    carefree extrovert, on the other hand, seems to be far less vulnerable to cancer than the caring introvert described above.

    How one reacts to stress appears to be a major factor in the development of cancer. Most cancer patients have experienced a highly
    stressful event, usually about 2 years prior to the onset of detectable disease. This traumatic event is often beyond the patient's control,
    such as the loss of a loved one, loss of a business, job, home, or some other major disaster. The typical cancer victim has lost the ability to
    cope with these extreme events, because his/her coping mechanism lies in his/her ability to control the environment. When this control is
    lost, the patient has no other way to cope.

    Major stress, as we have seen, causes suppression of the immune system, and does so more overwhelmingly in the cancer-susceptible
    individual than in others. Thus personal tragedies and excessive levels of stress appear to combine with the underlying personality
    described above to bring on the immune deficiency which allows cancer to thrive.

    These observations have given rise to the term psychoneuroimmunology.
    [compare articles on psychoneuroimmunology and immune system]

    In my experience, one of the most difficult and most important hurdles to overcome in cancer patients is how to make major changes in their
    life-styles. Not only is it necessary to make changes in the physical aspects of their lives such as eating habits, but major changes need to
    be made in the way they react to stress. The way they react to stress is due largely to the way they think about life. There can be no lasting
    changes of behavior without first having a change in thinking and in belief systems. It is often extremely difficult for these patients to make
    substantial changes in these ingrained patterns of thought. Many find it too difficult or too disagreeable to make such alterations in their
    settled way of thinking and reacting. Many likewise find it too unpleasant to make changes in the physical aspects of their life-style, even in
    the face of life-threatening illness.

    In my office patients are counseled to address their problems and to make the appropriate adjustments to the best of their ability. A
    psychologist with extensive experience in dealing with these unique problems is readily available to our patients.

    These patients are encouraged to take charge of their own health and to be active participants in their care. They are urged to learn as
    much as possible about the disease and all of the treatment options, including the various conventional modalities.  Re: mammography and
    biopsies  


    Thermographs - and breast cancer death
    Posted by: "Dr. Loretta Lanphier" LorettaLanphier@houston.rr.com  

    Oct 26, 2006 12:24 am (PST)

    We don't get cancer from a lack of toxic chemicals--- in fact, it is safe to
    say that we get cancer BECAUSE of toxic chemicals and drugs along with
    carelessly putting things into the body that do not belong.

    Sometimes the answers to very complex concerns are actually very simple.
    Will there ever be a "cure" for cancer as in going and getting a shot or
    taking a pill and everything being ok within ten days. I highly doubt it.
    We have had cures for cancer for a long, long time. People reverse cancer
    all the time, yet our "system" refuses to even recognize that this can
    happen---it' s all anecdotal. (So how many anecdotal testimonies does it take
    for science to take an honest "look"? And exactly who decides whether to
    take this "look" or not?) Or maybe the person didn't really didn't have
    cancer to begin with---an explanation that is given frequently. All excuses
    that attempt to explain away something that the system has no answers for.

    I must throw in something right here. Someone sort-of mentioned that
    surgery can be a cure-all. The surgeons would love to have us believe that
    but the comment "we got it all" is a lie and they know it. Usually several
    weeks later the treating doctor will highly suggest "preventative chemo".
    We need to get away from the thinking that cancer is a "localized" disease.
    It is not in any form or shape. This is one huge reason that our medical
    community has not found anything that really works.

    When we decide to go back to feeding our body real, living, food and insist
    upon clean water, air, personal products, etc. and work on our toxic
    emotions then we will begin to see results. Dealing with cancer using
    natural methods is also no walk in the park because it takes desire,
    discipline and most of all indefinite determination. The huge chemical
    companies that are so often credited with making our life "easy" have also
    given 1 out of 2 people a possible death sentence. Yes, 1 out of 2 people
    will now, at some time in their life, get a diagnosis of cancer. And we are
    still "racing for the cure" and wearing our "pink ribbons" over 30 years
    later from the declaration of "war" on cancer.

    More diagnosis means more money for the pharmaceutical companies and the
    oncologists. Plus it allows for more "interpretation" and therefore, human
    error or human manipulation. There are a lot of people with stage 3 and 4
    cancers that are saying "no" to chemo/radiation. So that means money is
    being lost. Solution? Let's go for the early diagnosis. I would suggest
    that probably everyone at some time in their life will have a small, tiny
    tumor(s) and in most cases this tumor(s) will take care of itself. But what
    if we have the technology to diagnosis a tumor that is this small and begin
    a course of treatment that may not even be necessary at all but has the
    definite possibility of damaging other organs? And what if this technology
    actually harms the body with added radiation, drugs, etc. And you a
    scheduled for one every 2-3 months to check for "tumor response." What
    about the emotional turmoil that this puts the patient in? What if
    pathologists are continued to be schooled to lean on the side of caution
    when not 100% sure if a specimen is cancerous, especially a very tiny tumor?
    We must realize what this does to the patient. And even with a
    "wait-and-see" type of diagnosis it still puts the person into
    turmoil---unless they are wise enough to seek out treatment that will help
    to bring the body into health. And we call this progress??

    What about the emotional baggage that comes with a cancer diagnosis. This
    staging stuff is baloney! And only matters to conventional treatment as to
    how toxic the treatment will be and how emotional the patient gets so that
    they will panic and do whatever the doc says. Surely there must be a better
    way. Either you have active cancer or you don't. There is no doctor that
    knows when a person's time is to leave this earth and to give people an ETD
    (estimated time of departure) is, in my opinion, malpractice to the hilt.
    We must begin to realize how the emotions affect a person who is ill---from
    cancer or any other degenerative disease. We must realize that we can never
    radiate or drug a person back to health.

    "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." Proverbs 23:7

    Our scientists, doctors, etc. have not given us much to work with in the
    last 40-50 years when it comes to cancer. They keep spending the money,
    racing for the cure, tying pink ribbons everywhere and making darn sure that
    anything that is natural/alternative is "quieted" very quickly. How many
    oncologists get sued because their treatment did not work? How about...none!
    We continue to look for this magic bullet that will make everything go away
    without us having to do or change our lifestyle--- a lifestyle that is toxic
    in every way to the body. We are lazy and literally killing ourselves in
    the name of convenience. We have huge food corporations that are trying the
    smudge the line between what true organic means and what they "want" it to
    mean so they can continue to add their chemicals in order to allow food to
    last longer on the grocery store shelf. We are told that foods that
    actually will benefit the body are harmful and should be outlawed.

    Until we, as a people, wake-up and start taking responsibility for how we
    treat our body and not allowing chemical companies to make us think that all
    these chemicals are ok and really won't hurt you---then maybe we deserve
    what we get. Until we decide that if we can't get clean food in the grocery
    stores then we will grow it ourselves or support our local farmers, until we
    decide to shout about fluoride being added to our water, until we decide
    that chemicals do go through the skin from personal care products, until we
    decide that "fear" is a good way to control the masses...until WE decide
    that we have had "enough" we will keep getting the same 'ole same 'ole when
    it comes to cancer or any other degenerative disease.

    Yes, I am passionate about this because I am a cancer survivor of stage 3
    colon cancer that according to the literature, I was not supposed to
    survive. I have played the game (surgery and 1 month of chemo), being used
    as a guinea pig for a chemo drug that they decided (the next year) was
    killing people because they were giving too much, and watched the politics,
    especially living here in the shadow of MD Anderson. I have nutritional
    clients that walk in my door that look like they have been in a
    concentration camp and their oncologist now wants them to consider a
    clinical trial or go home and get their affairs in order. The doctor has
    given up on them, pronounced upon them a death sentence and now wants to use
    them for further exploitation. They have had every last ounce of hope
    stripped from them, their quality of life is non-existent and their immune
    system is shot. All of this because they are made to think that they will
    be the "one" that chemo/radiation/ surgery will work for.

    A cancer diagnosis produces more fear in the mind than just about anything
    "traumatic" that could happen to a person. In fact, many believe that an
    emotional event 3-10 years before could have even triggered cancer cells to
    proliferate thus beginning the cancer process. So we can imagine what the
    cancer diagnosis does to the cells and then add to that the words "at best
    you have 6 months to 1 year." This is emotional rape to the hilt and yet we
    continue to allow it to happen.

    Even the best of natural/alternative practitioners feel like they must ride
    the fence when it comes to cancer, even some of the MD's that know
    alternative therapies work better and give a much better quality of life.
    It's drug, cut, burn or lose your license. Alternative practitioners are
    not allowed to "treat" or even hint at the fact that the information they
    have "might" help cancer to heal. They cannot hint at or say that certain
    herbs have anti-viral and anti-bacterial properties and in no way can they
    say that a particular herb is useful for cancer treatment. If conventional
    medicine is so effective then "why" do they worry and seek to silence
    alternative therapies--- therapies that do no harm? Is it truly because they
    want the "best" for their patients? I think not. It's pride, ego and when
    there is no competition then they can make all the rules and change them
    when they want. They don't think that you and I are smart enough to decide
    about how we want to take care of our health...or could it be that they are
    actually afraid that one-day someone will be brave enough to take them on
    and actually bring to "light" all the fraud, politics, money, titles,
    positions and literally in-bed situations that occur in the cancer/medical
    industry.

    "During the early part of the 19th century, the United States experienced an
    era known as "free trade in medicine." A historical vignette in the Journal
    of the American Medical Association explains that during the mid-1800s,
    botanics and homeopathy were in great demand.(17) Those alternative health
    practices were a powerful counterforce to regular medicine. Most state
    licensure laws that granted special privileges to physicians were repealed
    because of the widespread consumer demand for botanicals. During the period,
    the United States was one of the healthiest nations, with the world's lowest
    infant mortality rate.(18)"

    (17) Lester S. King, "Medical Sects and Their Influence," Journal of the
    American Medical Association 248 (1982). (18) Lawrence Wilson, "The Case
    against Medical Licensing," in The Dangers of Socialized Medicine, ed. Jacob
    Hornberger and Richard Ebeling (Fairfax, Va.: Future of Freedom Foundation,
    1994), p. 59.

    See complete article:
    http://www.chiro. org/alt_med_ abstracts/ ABSTRACTS/ The_Medical_ Monopoly. shtml

    We are not progressing in our thinking about cancer, but we "think" we are.
    We continue to do the same thing over and over expecting different results.
    That is the definition of insanity. We continue to hear about all of this
    cutting-edge technology but are still getting the same results that we got
    in the '70s. The continual feeding to the media about cancer advancement
    thus resulting in commercials about beginning chemotherapy and making it
    look like a walk in the park are sickening, at best. We are lulled to sleep
    by all this false advertising thinking that if we ever get cancer all will
    be well---chemotherapy ?---no big deal. For two months, every week, I drove
    by the MD Anderson pick-up area at 3:30 in the afternoon and had a close
    look at the patients waiting for their rides. I assure you that it looks
    like something from a Holocaust movie. People sitting on the curb looking
    so frail that if you touched them they would fall, thin children playing in
    the area that have no hair, people in wheelchairs and covered in blankets
    and people holding vomit bags. And we really believe this is part of a
    process that heals??

    I know my post doesn't sound very "scientific" , quoting this doctor or that
    doctor or this clinical trial or that statistic. But doctors are not the
    answer and possibly neither is science. No one has to be a statistic.
    Clinical trials can be skewed as can statistics, survival rates and tumor
    responses. We can "make" anything say what we "want" it to say. It's called
    "the *love* of money... God did not put us on this earth without a means to
    take care of our body. Yes, there are answers but no quick fixes.

    Just, what-if we find out that all this research, money raised, walks and
    runs and chemically/emotionally raping patients proves that in reaching for
    the sky and an ultimate cure, we have everything completely upside down?
    Even my oncologist (who does research at MD Anderson) told me in 2000 that
    within 5 years we would look back on the way that cancer is being treated
    and consider it barbaric. Well...his prophecy has not come about other than
    the proposed vaccine for cervical cancer...but there is truth in that the
    treatment is still barbaric.

    I encourage that the Buyer Beware! Prevention is "always" the best answer
    but there is no money in this solution and it actually means that we must,
    must, must take responsibility for our own health or lack of it. It may be
    inconvenient and may cost money, but just ask any cancer patient if they
    "wished" they would have inconvenienced themselves by using prevention in
    trade-off of having to experience a cancer diagnosis.

    Loretta

    Negative thoughts 'make you ill'
    BBC News 22 September 2003

    Having negative thoughts really could make you more illness-prone, say scientists.

    A study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences links "negative" brain activity with a weakened immune system.
    Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison studied people with high levels of brain activity in a region linked to negative
    thoughts.
    Those with the highest activity levels responded worse to a flu vaccine.
    Scientists already knew that pessimists - people rated as more sensitive to negative events - show more activity in a part of the brain called
    the right pre-frontal cortex.
    More activity in the left pre-frontal cortex is linked to positive emotional responses.

    Happy thoughts

    Dr Richard Davidson, who led the research, studied 52 people aged between 57 and 60.
    Each of them was asked to recall one event which made them feel very happy, and one which left them feeling sad, afraid or angry.
    The electrical activity in these parts of the brain was measured to check whether their left or right pre-frontal cortex was more active.
    Afterwards, each volunteer was given a standard flu vaccine shot.
    Vaccines work by eliciting an immune response which should hopefully persist and help the body tackle a genuine infection threat if it should
    arrive.
    Each research subject was tested over the following six months to gauge the success of the vaccine by measuring the levels of antibodies
    generated by the vaccine.
    Those who had shown the most powerful right pre-frontal cortex activity also had the worst immune reactions.
    The reverse was true for those who had the most powerful reactions in their left pre-frontal cortex, the side associated with happy reactions.
    Dr Davidson said: "Emotions play an important role in modulating bodily systems that influence our health.
    "We turned to the brain to understand the mechanisms by which the mind influences the body."

    Also compare Laughter Is Medicine and Cancer Healing & Your Mind.


    The Nocebo Effect: Placebo's Evil Twin
    By Brian Reid
    Special to The Washington Post
    Tuesday, April 30, 2002; Page HE01

    Ten years ago, researchers stumbled onto a striking finding: Women who believed that they were prone to heart disease were nearly four
    times as likely to die as women with similar risk factors who didn't hold such fatalistic views.

    The higher risk of death, in other words, had nothing to with the usual heart disease culprits -- age, blood pressure, cholesterol, weight.
    Instead, it tracked closely with belief. Think sick, be sick.

    That study is a classic in the annals of research on the "nocebo" phenomenon, the evil twin of the placebo effect. While the placebo effect
    refers to health benefits produced by a treatment that should have no effect, patients experiencing the nocebo effect experience the
    opposite. They presume the worst, health-wise, and that's just what they get.

    "They're convinced that something is going to go wrong, and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy," said Arthur Barsky, a psychiatrist at Boston's
    Brigham and Women's Hospital who published an article earlier this year in the Journal of the American Medical Association beseeching his
    peers to pay closer attention to the nocebo effect. "From a clinical point of view, this is by no means peripheral or irrelevant."

    Barsky's target is drug side effects, which cost the U.S. health system more than $76 billion a year, according to a 1995 University of
    Arizona study. If even a small percentage of those costs are caused by patient expectations of harm, addressing the nocebo effect could
    save a nifty sum.

    But convincing doctors that their patients' problems may be more than biochemical is no simple trick. The nocebo effect is difficult to study,
    and medical training leads doctors to seek a bodily cause for physical ills.

    "Nocebos often cause a physical effect, but it's not a physically produced effect," said Irving Kirsch, a psychologist at the University of
    Connecticut in Storrs who studies the ways that expectations influence what people experience. "What's the cause? In many cases it's an
    unanswered question."

    Looking for Trouble

    The word nocebo, Latin for "I will harm," doesn't represent a new idea -- just one that hasn't caught on widely among clinicians and
    scientists. More than four decades after researchers coined the term, only a few medical journal articles mention it. Outside the medical
    community, being "scared to death" or "worried sick" are expressions that have long been part of the popular lexicon, noted epidemiologist
    Robert Hahn from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

    Is such language just hyperbole? Not to those who accept, for example, the idea of voodoo death -- a hex so powerful that the victim of the
    curse dies of fright. While many in the scientific community may regard voodoo with skepticism, the idea that gut reactions may have
    biological consequences can't be simply dismissed.

    "Surgeons are wary of people who are convinced that they will die," said Herbert Benson, a Harvard professor and the president Mind/Body
    Medical Institute in Boston. "There are examples of studies done on people undergoing surgery who almost want to die to re-contact a loved
    one. Close to 100 percent of people under those circumstances die."

    But the nocebo effect can lead to more subtle outcomes as well.

    Fifteen years ago, researchers at three medical centers undertook a study of aspirin and another blood thinner in heart patients and came
    up with an unexpected result that said little about the heart and much about the brain. At two locations, patients were warned of possible
    gastrointestinal problems, one of the most common side effects of repeated use of aspirin. At the other location, patients received no such
    caution.

    When researchers reviewed the data, they found a striking result: Those warned about the gastrointestinal problems were almost three
    times as likely to have the side effect. Though the evidence of actual stomach damage such as ulcers was the same for all three groups,
    those with the most information about the prospect of minor problems were the most likely to experience the pain.

    Despite the smattering of doctors' anecdotal reports and a few modest clinical studies, research on the phenomenon has not been robust,
    mostly for ethical reasons: Doctors ought not to induce illness in patients who are not sick.

    Changing ethical standards have made it difficult to even repeat some of the classic nocebo experiments. In one century-old effort,
    conducted long before anyone thought up the word nocebo, doctors set an allergy sufferer wheezing by showing an artificial rose, proving
    that at least some aspect of the allergic response is stimulated by visual cues. In a study from the early 1980s, 34 college students were told
    an electric current would be passed through their heads, and the researchers warned that the experience could cause a headache. Though
    not a single volt of current was used, more than two-thirds of the students reported headaches.

    Medical Distrust

    But resistance to in-depth study of the nocebo effect rests on more than ethical reservations, said the CDC's Hahn. Belief, he said, does not
    have a strong place in the anatomy-centered world of modern medicine.

    "The fact is that phenomena that essentially come down to what people believe are conceptually difficult in our medical system," Hahn said.
    "Health is thought to be a biological phenomenon. More psychosomatic elements are hard to deal with."

    Science is wearing away at the wall between mind and body. With the aid of high-tech imaging devices, neurologists are getting better at
    taking pictures of the brain in action. In one blinded study last year, researchers found that patients with Parkinson's disease given a
    placebo released a brain chemical called dopamine, just as the brain exposed to an active drug would do.

    That flood of brain chemicals, it appears, has everything to do with what the mind expects. In most cases, like the Parkinson's study, the
    outcome is positive -- the placebo effect in action. But for some patients -- depressed, wary of medication or worried about drug side effects
    -- getting a prescription filled is an angst-ridden experience. And such patients appear even more likely to exhibit those side effects.

    Barsky has even sketched out a profile of the kind of patient likely to experience the nocebo effect -- worse side effects and poorer
    outcomes -- on a given drug. When Barsky sees a patient with a history of vague, difficult-to-diagnose complaints who is sure that whatever
    therapy is prescribed will do little to battle the problem, he says, those low expectations are inevitably met. The treatments usually fail.

    "Whether you trust your doctor or not probably makes a huge difference in whether you report side effects, but there's almost no data on
    that," Barsky said. He hopes to include information about a person's psychology in an upcoming placebo-controlled clinical trial to see if
    patients with a particular outlook on life fare better or worse than other subjects.

    Far more esoteric factors may also shape both the placebo and nocebo response. A Dutch study, for example, found that most people
    considered red and orange pills to be stimulating, with blue and green-colored pills more likely to have a depressant effect.

    "One of the most important things about a pill is [its] color," said Daniel Moerman, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn
    who has studied the placebo and nocebo effects across different cultures. "That seems to be fairly widespread."

    But the mind is a funny thing, and generic responses to color go just so far in explaining the placebo or nocebo response. Consider this: In
    Italy, Moerman says, blue placebos made excellent sleeping pills for women but had the opposite effect on men.

    The apparent reason? "The Italian national football team's color is azzurri," he said. "Blue."

    Brian Reid is a Washington area freelance writer.
    © 2002 The Washington Post Company

    Also compare Laughter Is Medicine and Cancer Healing & Your Mind.


    ”Secrets of Health”
    From August 1, 2002 Healthy Living Newsletter Volume 1 Number 1

    The "secrets" of living longer and healthier are not really secrets at all. In a large study of Finnish men, those that expressed a high level of
    satisfaction with their lives are more likely to be alive 20 years later than those who are dissatisfied. One of the greatest predictors of
    satisfaction was the ability to form intimate relationships.

    Conversely, dissatisfied men were found to be three times more likely to die of serious diseases such as cancer. Men who drink heavily are
    even more likely to die, while moderate drinking appeared to extend life. Marriage, reasonable exercise, a good social status and not
    smoking all proved to be life-extending.

    Note: The above findings nearly seem self-evident since they appear to mirror facts I assume many will be able to observe in their
    immediate surroundings. There should be a number of similar studies in existence.


    Excerpted from
    Optimists 'live longer'
    BBC News Online

    Optimists have a longer life-span than pessimists, researchers have concluded.
    They found that people with a positive outlook live, on average, 19% longer than those who are miserable.
    More than 1,100 patients attending the Mayo Clinic, in Minnesota, USA, between 1962 and 1965 completed a personality survey, which
    gave them an optimism ranking according to their views of the causes of events in their lives.
    By looking at the patients 30 years later, the researchers discovered that those who had been classified as optimists had a 19% higher
    chance of still being alive than the pessimists, reports the Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
    ...
    Optimists were less likely to suffer depression and helplessness and were less fatalistic about their health chances.
    Commenting on the report, Dr Martin Seligman, of the University of Pennsylvania department of psychology, said: "Now I believe we have
    converging and compelling evidence that optimists and pessimists differ markedly in how long they will live."
    Pessimism was identifiable early and could be stabilised by therapy which changed the individual's thinking about bad events, he said.
    Philip Tata, head of adult psychology at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, in London, said: "Optimism and pessimism are more complex than
    people think. Most people think they are opposite ends of one scale, but you can actually have high levels of both at the same time.
    "A lack of optimism, rather than a negative outlook, can be just as problematic. Having a reason to live rather than just seeing terrible things
    coming down the road at you is important."


    DNA experiments prove direct influence of feelings on DNA activity
    from The Great Mystery Newsletter:

    You will be happy to get the news I have from Gregg Braden www.greggbraden.net, author of The Isaiah Effect and Awakening to the Zero
    Point. I attended one of his all-day intensives on Sunday, October 14, 2001 and what I am going to tell you is only a SMALL portion of the
    information he covered.
    The title of this program was Healing Hearts~Healing Nations: The Science of Peace and the Power of Prayer.
    Braden started off discussing how in the past we lost huge amounts of information from ancient spiritual traditions (when the library at
    Alexandria burned we lost at least 532,000 documents), and that there may be information in those traditions which could help us
    understand some of the mysteries of science. To this end he reported on three very interesting experiments.

    Braden started off as a scientist and engineer, before he began pursuing these larger questions.

    EXPERIMENT #1

    The first experiment he reported was done by Dr. Vladimir Poponin, a quantum biologist. In this experiment, first a container was emptied (i.
    e., a vacuum was created within it), and then the only thing left in it were photons (particles of light).

    They measured the distribution (i.e., the location) of the photons and found they were completely random inside the container. This was the
    expected result. Then some DNA was placed inside the container and the distribution (location) of the photons was remeasured. This time
    the photons were LINED UP in an ORDERED way and aligned with the DNA. In other words the physical DNA had an effect on the non-
    physical photons.

    After that, the DNA was removed from the container, and the distribution of the photons was remeasured again. The photons REMAINED
    ORDERED and lined up where the DNA had been. What are the light particles connected to?

    Gregg Braden says we are forced to accept the possibility that some NEW field of energy, a web of energy, is there and the DNA is
    communicating with the photons through this energy.

    EXPERIMENT #2

    These were experiments done by the military. Leukocytes (white blood cells) were collected for DNA from donors and placed into chambers
    so they could measure electrical changes. In this experiment, the donor was placed in one room and subjected to "emotional stimulation"
    consisting of video clips, which generated different emotions in the donor.

    The DNA was placed in a different room in the same building. Both the donor and his DNA were monitored and as the donor exhibited
    emotional peaks or valleys (measured by electrical responses), the DNA exhibited the IDENTICAL RESPONSES AT THE EXACT SAME
    TIME. There was no lag time, no transmission time. The DNA peaks and valleys EXACTLY MATCHED the peaks and valleys of the donor in
    time.

    The military wanted to see how far away they could separate the donor from his DNA and still get this effect. They stopped testing after they
    separated the DNA and the donor by 50 miles and STILL had the SAME result. No lag time; no transmission time.

    The DNA and the donor had the same identical responses in time. What can this mean?

    Gregg Braden says it means that living cells communicate through a previously unrecognized form of energy. This energy is not affected by
    time and distance. This is a non-local form of energy, an energy that already exists everywhere, all the time.

    EXPERIMENT #3

    The third experiment was done by the Institute of Heart Math and the paper that was about this was titled: Local and Non local Effects of
    Coherent Heart Frequencies on Conformational Changes of DNA. (Disregard the title! The info is incredible.)

    This is the experiment that relates directly to the anthrax situation.

    In this experiment, some human placenta DNA (the most pristine form of DNA) was placed in a container from which they could measure
    changes in the DNA. Twenty-eight vials of DNA were given (one each) to 28 trained researchers. Each researcher had been trained how to
    generate and FEEL feelings, and they each had strong emotions.

    What was discovered was that the DNA CHANGED ITS SHAPE according to the feelings of the researchers:

    • When the researchers FELT gratitude, love and appreciation, the DNA responded by RELAXING and the strands unwound. The length of
    the DNA extended.
    • When the researchers FELT anger, fear, frustration, or stress, the DNA responded by TIGHTENING UP. It became shorter and SWITCHED
    OFF many of our DNA codes! If you've ever felt "shut down" by negative emotions, now you know why your body was equally shut down too.
    The shut down of the DNA codes was reversed and the codes were switched back on again when feelings of love, joy, gratitude and
    appreciation were felt by the researchers.

    This experiment was later followed up by testing HIV positive patients. They discovered that feelings of love, gratitude and appreciation
    created 300,000 TIMES the RESISTANCE they had without those feelings. So here's the answer to what can help you stay well, no matter
    what dreadful virus or bacteria may be floating around. Stay in feelings of joy, love, gratitude and appreciation!
    Compare Gratitude Helps Heal.

    These emotional changes went beyond the effects of electromagnetics. Individuals trained in deep love were able to change the shape of
    their DNA. Braden says this illustrates a new recognized form of energy that connects all of creation.

    This energy appears to be a TIGHTLY WOVEN WEB that connects all matter. Essentially we're able to influence this web of creation
    through our VIBRATION.

    SUMMARY:

    What do the results of these experiments have to do with our present situation? This is the science behind how we can choose a timeline to
    stay safe, no matter what else is happening. As Gregg explains in The Isaiah Effect, basically time is not just linear (past, present and
    future), but it also has depth. The depth of time consists of all the possible prayers and timelines that could ever be prayed or exist.



    Essentially, all our prayers have already been answered. We just activate the one we're living through our FEELINGS. THIS is how we
    create our reality ~ by choosing it with our feelings. Our feelings are activating the timeline via the web of creation, which connects all of the
    energy and matter of the Universe.



    Remember that the law of the Universe is that we attract what we focus on. If you are focused on fearing whatever may come, you are
    sending a strong message to the Universe to send you whatever you fear. Instead if you can get yourself into feelings of joy, love,
    appreciation or gratitude, and focus on bringing more of that into your life, you are going to avoid the negative stuff automatically.

    You will be choosing a different TIMELINE with your feelings.

    You can prevent getting anthrax or any other flu, virus, and so on, by staying in these positive feelings, which maintains an incredibly strong
    immune system.

    So here's your protection for whatever comes: Find something to be happy about every day, and every hour if possible, moment to moment,
    even if only for a few minutes. This is the easiest and best protection you can have. If nothing else, be joyous that the criminals have
    "already been caught" by the Universe!

    Further related information is available at GreatMystery.org.

    The above article was found at www.SouledOut.org who feature among other things “For enlightened, inspired reading about our present
    world crisis: How Can We Permanently End Terrorism?”.


    Why should we forgive people?
    by Andrew Matthews, seashell.com.au

    At some point most of us learned that it is a good idea to forgive people. We learned that it is "holy" or "spiritual".
    But there is a more basic reason to forgive people: when you don't forgive them, it ruins your life!
    Let's say:
    a) you are my boss and you give me the sack, or
    b) you are my girl, and you run off with my buddy.
    So I say, "I'll never forgive you for that!"
    Who suffers? Not you!
    I'm pacing the floor. I've got the knot in my stomach. I'm losing sleep. You are probably out partying!
    Where do we get the idea that if WE don't forgive people, THEY suffer? It's nuts!
    Recent studies at the Public Health Institute in California confirm that hostility and resentment tear down your immune system and double
    your risk of heart attack, cancer and even diabetes.
    Bitterness makes you sick!
    To forgive someone, you don't have to agree with what they did. You just have to want your life to work.
    Is it easy? Usually not. But you don't forgive people for their benefit.
    You do it for your benefit.



    Posted by Casey Research, Aug.8, 2006
    The Chemotherapy Mafia

    On July 20, 1995, the Washington State Medical Quality Assurance Commission raided the office of Glenn Warner, MD, an oncologist with
    unusual views on healing, and revoked his medical license. Allegedly, Warner had cured more than 1,000 patients from terminal cancer—
    not with chemotherapy and radiation but with diet and exercise regimens, certain immunotherapeutic drugs, and other holistic methods.
    When he appealed his case in court, the commission’s attorney, Beverly Goetz, argued that cancer patients were “incapable” and
    “unqualified” to decide whether they received quality care or not. Only experts—like the members of said commission—were capable of
    making that judgment call, she said.

    Unfortunately, this standpoint seems to prevail in the United States these days. Self-determination takes a backseat in favor of state-
    mandated “health care.” A fact that becomes eerily obvious in cancer cases where minors are involved.

    But first, we should ask how valuable chemotherapy really is. There is no doubt that cancer is big business in the U.S. While in 1990, $3.53
    billion was spent on chemotherapy, the number more than doubled to $7.51 billion only four years later. By 2009, so the latest projections,
    cancer therapy products and services will rake in over $27 billion.
    As the unfortunate Glenn Warner put it: “We have a multi-billion- dollar industry that is killing people, right and left, just for financial gain.
    Their idea of research is to see whether two doses of this poison is better than three doses of that poison.”

    Other experts agree.
    Alan C. Nixon, PhD, former president of the American Chemical Society, states, “As a chemist trained to interpret data, it is
    incomprehensible to me that physicians can ignore the clear evidence that chemotherapy does much, much more harm than good.”
    Alan Levin, MD, of the University of California Medical School agrees: “Most cancer patients in this country die of chemotherapy.
    Chemotherapy does not eliminate breast, colon or lung cancers. This fact has been documented for over a decade. Yet doctors still use
    chemotherapy for these tumors. . . Women with breast cancer are likely to die faster with chemo than without it.”
    His opinion is echoed by Ralph Moss, former assistant director of public affairs at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC)
    and author of the book The Cancer Industry: “In the end, there is no proof that chemotherapy actually extends life in the vast majority of
    cases, and this is the great lie about chemotherapy, that somehow there is a correlation between shrinking a tumor and extending the life of
    a patient.”
    Even the General Accounting Office (GAO) found in a 1987 study on the progress of cancer treatment that “For a majority of the cancers
    we examined, the actual improvements have been small or have been overestimated by the published rates. . . Progress has been made,
    but not as great as that reported.”