Mind Over Matter - Amazing Examples

We often think of our bodies and minds as two distinct entities. It turns out they are much more entwined than we might assume. For the past 200 years, science and medicine have approached the human brain as an entity separate from the human body.

Today, with greater emphasis on preventative healthcare, a new discipline and field of study is emerging that connects the concepts of “mind, body and soul” to determine ultimate wellness.

With stress becoming one of the largest triggers of chronic diseases, we are beginning to see innovative brain applications that are expected to become conventional monitoring gadgets over the next decade. 

There is a growing body of research showing the correlation of brain health and overall well-being. Med tech companies are taking advantage of this emerging field.

Researchers are continually finding evidence that the brain has a distinct power to manipulate the body’s physiology. 

As these 9 examples show, the mind/body connection can work in our favor or detriment, depending on our knowledge of a situation and our ability to control our thoughts.

Brain health is loosely categorized as anything that affects thinking, feeling, playing, working and memory. Today, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can take pictures of the brain to measure, and possibly predict, cognitive decline. How does one sustain brain health or
improve it? 

9 Amazing Examples of Mind Over Matter

1. Multiple Personality Disorder
Multiple personality disorder, or dissociative identity disorder, is a mental condition that’s interesting on many levels. 

Perhaps most intriguing of all is how some sufferers not only exhibit personality and behavior changes as they switch between their different identities, but some also have measurable physiological variations between each persona. 

For instance, one of a patient’s personalities may need eyeglasses and another won’t. Or, one identity might be diabetic and another will have perfect health. In such cases, it isn’t simply a matter of the patients thinking they need eyeglasses or insulin, their bodies actually go through legitimate alterations, such as differences in intraocular pressure or blood sugar levels.

This phenomenon is especially fascinating since no one, including the patients, is claiming mysticism is at work. On the contrary, it is a genuine example of the mind altering the body.

2. Placebo Effect
A placebo is an inert substance or belief which produces real biological effects in humans. It’s so widely accepted as fact that a placebo variable is included in most medical tests as way of proving if, say, a drug works on its own merits or because people “think” it works.

Curiously, researchers have discovered the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger, and some drugs that have been on the market for years, such as Prozac, are now proving less effective than placebos. 

Naturally, this is a major issue for big pharmaceutical companies, which has left many scrambling to conduct neurological studies in an effort to come up with new ways to safeguard their industry from ordinary sugar pills. Incidentally, Big Pharma is currently more profitable than Big Oil,
so there’s quite a bit at stake.

3. Nocebo Effect
While placebos are generally associated with positive outcomes, like curing an illness or getting drunk on O’Douls and having fun (if you consider that positive), the nocebo effect produces negative results,
such as a cancer patient vomiting before chemotherapy starts or someone breaking out in a rash because they thought they touched poison ivy, even though it was merely an ordinary plant.

4. Dreams Cause Real Injuries
There are a lot of stories floating around out there about people who experienced an injury in their dreams and then found real, physical evidence of the wound on their bodies once they awoke. 

For instance, some people have claimed to have been caught in a fire in their dreams and then woke up to find burn marks on their skin. Other common stories involve people being attacked during their dreams and then waking up to find scratch marks somewhere on their bodies. However, most of these stories are found in chat rooms or message boards, so it’s hard to corroborate if they are true.

5. Yogis Nearly Stop Heart Beat
Like the Tibetan monks, Indian Yogis seem to have an unusual talent for manipulating their physiological processes while in deep meditation. 

After hearing stories of yogis spending 28 days underground and surviving, in 1936, a French cardiologist named Therese Brosse traveled to India to see if the yogis truly did have such talents. In her experiments, the yogis reportedly slowed their heart down so slow that it was only detectable via an EKG machine.

6. Sports Visualization
Many athletes claim it helps them perform better when they “play” the game in their minds before ever stepping foot on the field or court. While we might assume doing so is just a mental exercise that enables them to better focus on the game, there might be more concrete changes happening inside the body. 

7. Block Out Pain
Jack Schwarz, a Dutch Jewish writer, also lived in horrific conditions while forced into a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Like so many others, he was beaten, starved, and tortured beyond what most of us can comprehend. 

To cope with his situation, he began the practice of meditation and prayer, which he developed to the point where he could block out the pain of his torment and subsequently withstand his situation.

After his release, Schwarz continued his mind over matter practice and occasionally demonstrated his skills by putting a long sail-maker’s needle through his arm without injury. 

He also displayed his ability to regulate his body’s blood flow by causing the puncture hole in his arm to bleed or stop bleeding at will. Schwarz was studied by researchers at the Menninger Foundation who found that he could indeed control many of his bodily processes with only his mind.

Furthermore, through an electroencephalograph, they determined his brain had different electrical activity as compared to most other test subjects. According to Schwarz, he could also see people’s auras, which allowed him to gauge their physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental conditions.

8. Positivity and Meditation
Undoubtedly it’s difficult to keep a positive attitude when you’re facing a life-threatening disease, but, based on a variety of medical studies, doing so may mean the difference between living and dying.

For example, in 1989, Dr. David Spiegel of Stanford University conducted a study on 86 women with late stage breast cancer. 

Half of those women received standard medical care while the other half were given weekly support sessions in addition to the standard medical care. During the sessions the women shared their feelings, talked with other patients, and generally had a positive outlet where they could cope with their illness. 

At the end of the study, the women in the support group lived twice as long as those not in the group. 

In 1999, a similar study found that cancer patients who have feelings of helplessness and hopelessness have a lower chance of survival.

In recent years, David Seidler, writer of “The King’s Speech,” claimed to have eliminated his cancer through meditation and imagination. 

After battling bladder cancer for years and only two weeks away from surgery, Seidler decided to see if he could get rid of the cancer through his imagination. 

He admittedly thought the idea was a little “woo-woo,” but by that point he figured he had nothing to lose. So, he spent the two weeks leading up to his surgery envisioning a clean, cream-colored, healthy bladder. When Seidler went in for his pre-surgery biopsy, the doctor was stunned to find a distinct lack of cancer. He even sent the biopsy to four different labs for testing. 

While Seidler believes his visualization were behind the cancer’s disappearance, his doctor labeled it a “spontaneous remission.”

9. Boosts Weight Loss

It seems counterintuitive that increasing numbers of people are claiming to put a greater effort into exercising and eating a nutritious diet, yet there are more obese people in the world than ever before. 

Some researchers think positivity is a missing variable in the weight loss equation, and a lack of it is what’s keeping people chubby.

To prove the point that the mind has a major impact on the body, Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer conducted an experiment on a group of predominantly overweight hotel maids who, judging by their daily activity levels, should have been thin. 

Despite essentially exercising all day long through their work, Langer discovered through a survey that 67% of the maids felt they didn’t do any type of exercise. 

Langer predicted the maids’ perceptions were hampering their weight loss, so she took half the maids aside and, in addition to taking their physical measurements, explained that through their cleaning work they were exceeding the surgeon general’s definition of an active lifestyle. The other half of the maids were given no information.

A month later, Langer’s team returned to the hotel and reevaluated the maids. 

They found an overall decrease in systolic blood pressure, weight, and waist-to-hip ratio in the educated group. The other group had no significant physical changes. 

While some suspect the mere discussion of exercise somehow altered the women’s behavior, Langer said there was no indication any of the maids modified their routines, and she feels the results were due simply to a change in mindset.

Reference:

Listverse written by S. Grant
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