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 fo |