What is the Mind’s Role in Health and Longevity?

The mind’s significant role in our health and well-being is often overlooked. In the field of complementary medicine, the mind is key to good health. Conventional Western medicine wants us to believe otherwise. For example, pharmaceutical manufacturers know that, in many cases, placebos (inert pills, usually made of rice-flour, that are given to some participants in a drug trial) work almost as well as the drug they are testing. In fact, the “success” of a drug trial is measured by how much better it performs than a placebo, which is usually not much.

Complementary medicine comprises the whole range of nontraditional, alternative health practices. It includes everything from meditation to acupuncture to massage to psychotherapy. Much like conventional medicine, some of it may work and some may not. And some of it may work for some people but not for others.

Finding Correct Information for Your Health

You can readily find all sorts of information about how to manage your health, from the conventional Western side as well as the nontraditional, complementary side. With all this information, you are likely to find a lot of misinformation too. For example, the food and pharmaceutical industries are both trying to get you to consume their products. Both make all kinds of claims about the health benefits of various products, some of which are downright lies.

Dr. Mark Hyman’s book, Food Fix: How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities, and Our Planet—One Bite at a Time, gives a good account of the lengths that food corporations will go to deliver misinformation to the public. Natural or “alternative” health brands make wide, sweeping claims like “This product will restore your health!” or “It will give you glowing skin!” or “It will cure your insomnia!” Slick marketing and false claims convince us that what they say is true.  Like our current political climate, most of what makes it to the airwaves is spin.

More Conventional Medical Doctors are Finding the Mind is Key to Health

Conventional doctors who embrace proactive, preventive health care are becoming more common. The best health practitioners and doctors recognize when a symptom requires Western medical attention or when a complementary method could work just as well—and generally with less risk and less cost. For example, in the UK the NHS (National Health Service) has approved meditation as a valid treatment for hypertension as well as depression.

Before he died a few years ago, Dr. John Sarno had treated back pain and other symptoms with his mind-body approach since the 1970s. He had helped millions of people conquer their problems by realizing that the source of their pain was in their mind and not their body. He particularly identified suppressed anger as the key trigger for these episodes, and recommended awareness, psychotherapy and other “non-physical” routes to healing. The success rate of his work is greater than any other drug-related or surgical method and is hailed by many people. He wrote many books, and all have been bestsellers. As much as conventional Western medicine wants us to believe otherwise, you can’t argue with those successful outcomes.

The Placebo Effect and the Mind

In a fascinating study by the BBC and the University of Oxford called The Placebo Experiment: Can My Brain Cure My Body? all the participants were unknowingly given a placebo instead of a new drug. Forty-five percent of them reported feeling better and experienced more movement. Some had much more movement and resumed activities they couldn’t do before, including one older man who got up from his wheelchair to walk again. Simply by thinking and believing they were being given something that would help them, they got better. The participants also had regular medical check-in appointments with doctors and kept a daily journal of their pain and mobility, so awareness may have been a factor as well.

In Health and Illness, the Mind is Key

A more recent and thorough look in this field is the book Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body by Jo Marchant. Marchant is a hard-core science writer with a background in microbiology. She spent several years exploring avenues of mind-body treatment in her well-documented research. The results surprised even her:

·      There is ample evidence to support mind-over-body cures, pain relief, and prevention.

·      Therapies like meditation that still the mind can work better than drugs.

·      Healing can be encouraged when you are cared for, and care for yourself.

·      And this very big one: our minds influence not only healing but the opposite as well—our minds plays a big role in how we get sick in the first place.

Notably, these treatments and practices work better on some conditions than others. Pain management, chronic fatigue, and digestive problems like IBS tend to have the best outcomes. Many treatments that are considered alternative work well alongside conventional medical treatments for better outcomes. This is one reason I prefer the term complementary instead of alternative.

A cell biologist, Valter Longo has shown that cancer patients following the dietary protocol he recommends in his book, The Longevity Diet, have better chemotherapy outcomes. Care and empathy, both self-care and caring support from a health provider, play a large role in the effectiveness of treatments.

In her book, Cure, Marchant advocates for a closer integration of alternative and conventional medical methods and research. Yet she also warns of the exotic claims of some practitioners. Her research is thorough, well documented, and makes for a fascinating read. Even The Wall Street Journal calls it, “A cautious, scrupulous investigation of how our brain can help heal our bodies.”

In Cure, she says, “We play a role then, in constructing our physical reality [emphasis in original]. And in turn, the health of our physical bodies influences the state of our minds. Inflammation induces fatigue and depression. Low blood sugar levels make us short-tempered. Calming our bodies—by slow breathing for example—improves our mood.”

The Need for More Mind-Body Integration

A challenge lies in the fact that when our mind becomes part of the health equation, things become less clear-cut and measurable. Any improvements can nonetheless be true and can contribute to healing. To embrace this truth requires a fresh look at the way medical providers give treatment as well as a new appreciation for how our bodies work to help us heal. Or, to put it more accurately, how our minds and bodies work together to help us heal.

Cancer patients at the Mayo Clinic regularly rate their quality of life on a scale of one to ten. Mayo researcher Jeff Sloan found that “if you score five or less on this scale, your risk of death from cancer doubles.” That statistic cannot just be a coincidence. It tells me that patients with a good quality of life (those who rank it as six or higher) will live longer, happier lives.

Whether you are a traditional, Western medicine believer or a preventive, lifestyle-based believer willing to try complementary treatments, the results of research like this are clear. The role your mind and your attitude play toward your health and life is a crucial component of health and longevity. Your outlook on life and your attitude toward prevention and treatment play a much bigger part in good health than you may realize.

The mind’s role in our health is one of the biggest areas of modern medicine begging for more research and integration. I personally have had a great deal of success in healing symptoms by being open to “all-cause” diagnosis, i.e. the entirety of my inner life, biological as well as emotional. This area of modern medicine warrants further exploration to better understand the source of ill health as well as healing, and how the mind can help us maintain good health. Books like Cure, the Sarno books, and cutting-edge research are game changers for even the most skeptical of us.