Too funny! Today’s post is from my Georgia friend and colleague, Stormy Becker Falso. See assures me that this story is true! And the lesson she learned about gratitude is helpful. Have a very happy Thanksgiving!
Sometimes funny situations teach great lessons.
I watched Diane Sawyer’s exclusive interview with Gabrielle (“Gabby”) Giffords and her husband Mark Kelley on ABC TV’s 20/20 last night. It was very moving! And it was wonderful to see the progress that Congresswoman Giffords has made since she was shot in the head last January.
Her husband Mark said he believes that optimism is a form of healing and hope a form of love. He said, “You can’t have too much hope“. Sawyer shared how Gabby’s husband Mark and her mother Gloria formed an indomitable alliance of optimism.
Recently, while in an airport waiting for a flight, I heard on CNN a summary of an article by Elizabeth Cohen, Senior Medical Correspondent for CNN, in which it was pointed out that bitterness is bad for our health.
In her article Cohen shares some significant points made by some contributors to a new book entitled, “Embitterment: Societal, psychological, and clinical perspectives.” In short, bitterness interferes with the body’s hormonal and immune systems, leads to higher blood pressure and contributes to heart disease and other illnesses.
A study published in 2000 by the American Psychological Association found that “religious involvement was significantly associated with lower mortality.” Similarly, a study published in The American Journal of Public Health in 1997 found that frequent religious attendance reduced mortality.
Researchers suspect some of this comes from healthier behaviors and more social interaction characteristic of those with religious involvement. But, to their credit, they accept that the research results show a connection between religious involvement and reduced mortality and indicate that more research is needed to understand why.
I recently read an interesting book entitled, “Long For This World – The Strange Science of Immortality” by Jonathan Weiner. Much of the book centers on conversations with Aubrey de Grey who believes that aging is a disease caused by the accumulation of waste at the cellular level, sometimes called the “disposable soma theory”.
Blushing provides a great example, I think, of how consciousness can affect health. An emotional response in thought (e.g. feeling embarrassment) has a direct effect on the body – a change in blood flow seen as blushing in the face. I have found that through prayer, a change in thought resulting from feeling a connection to God, or feeling God’s love, can result in physical healing.
Charles Darwin (courtesy of flickr user shehal)
So I was pleasantly surprised to come across some of Charles Darwin’s writings about blushing in Chapter 13 of his book, The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals (see pages 325-326). Now I’m not getting into any debate here between evolution and creationism. I’m just sharing interesting insights from a well-known and respected naturalist.
Darwin wrote (emphasis added by me), “It is not the simple act of reflecting on our own appearance, but the thinking what others think of us, which excites a blush.
“What is now proved, was once only imagined.” – William Blake
Earlier this month Israeli scientist Daniel Shechtman was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his discovery of a new chemical structure called quasicrystals that researchers considered to be impossible. Initially the scientific community was reluctant to accept his discovery, to the point where he endured mockery and even expulsion from his research team. The Academy said that his discovery “fundamentally altered how chemists conceive of solid matter”. This recognition came with a $1.5 million award.
This news item got me to thinking about “possible” and “impossible”. It seems that we deem things to be impossible until we have evidence to the contrary. Man couldn’t fly, until of course, the Wright brothers proved that we could. It is impossible to run a mile in under 4 minutes – or so we thought, until Roger Bannister did this.
Can prayer improve the health of a distant person?
A study by the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that “prayer for others” was the second most widely used alternative therapy in 2002.
Have you heard of the “Love Study” conducted by The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS)? This study was conducted to see if an effect from thought at a distance could be confirmed. It focused on finding measurable physical effects rather than on healing results.
“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in” — Mitch Albom, novelist and newspaper columnist for the Detroit Free Press, in Tuesdays with Morrie.
One reason love is important is that it may help alleviate pain. According to a study at the Stanford University School of Medicine published online in 2010 at PLoS ONE, love may alleviate pain in the same way narcotic painkillers do.
Pictures of participants’ own romantic partners were displayed to them to reliably evoke self-reported feelings of love. Several earlier animal studies have shown reward-processing regions of the brain to be involved in pain relief. In this study, viewing pictures of a romantic partner activated reward regions of the brain during periods of pain. Activity decreases were observed in pain-processing regions of the brain.
“Athletes themselves have long insisted that mental factors are paramount“. Recently I read this in an interesting 09/19/2011 article in The New York Times by Gina Kolata entitled, “A Little Deception Helps Push Athletes to the Limit”.
Two cyclists training for the Tour De France courtesy of Flickr user Guus Krol
She shares an experiment conducted by Dr. Kevin Thompson, Head of Sport and Exercise Science at Northumbrian University in England, and his assistant Mark Stone. They had cyclists ride stationary bicycles for 4,000 meters (about 2.5 miles). As they cycled they observed a display of themselves next to an avatar (computer-generated rider) that they were told was moving at the pace of their own best time. But the avatars were actually going 1 percent faster than that – faster than the cyclists had ever achieved.
If the placebo effect is the result of an expectation in thought, if we took the placebo out of the equation and retained only the thought, would that still help? If the placebo has no intrinsic medicinal value, isn’t the effect from a placebo already the result of the thought connected with it?
A placebo is a non-medicated pill, or sugar pill, often used to set a benchmark in research to determine the effect of a drug. Patients often experience positive therapeutic effects from a placebo and this is thought to be the result of their thought that it will help them. This is called the “placebo effect”.
I’ve read that larger placebos have been found to be more effective than smaller ones and taking two placebos more effective than one. Also, that placebos were more effective when given to a patient by a doctor than when they were self-administered. All of this even though they have no active ingredient.