Thought Provoking Question #15

The Fire Behind the Effect: Positive Thinking, Placebos, and Spirituality! 

And all the winds go sighing,  
For sweet things dying. 

                                                       Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)  
                                         English Poet, Lyricist,  
                  A Dirge 

The concept "self-fulfilling prophecy," like the expression "Catch-22," is an important part of the American lexicon. So too are other intangible concepts such as "positive thinking," the "power of prayer," and the "force of placebos." Over the last decade important research has emerged that clearly demonstrates how we think, what we believe, and how we respond to medical interventions can make a difference in not only the quality of our lives, but in whether we flourish or even survive at all. This has important implications for how we live and love, how we maintain our relationships, and how we care for those and ourselves we love. A long good life may not just be a question of how good our genes are, or how good the cards are that life deals us, but rather how well we play the hand we're dealt.  

Researchers at Harvard University wondered if people's association of the aging process being a negative experience might in fact increase the changes of "fulfilling that prophecy." In a cleverly designed experiment they flashed negative and positive thoughts on a computer screen to volunteers over age 60. These images were flashed just long enough for participants to see them, but not really read them. The series of images included negatives like senile and incompetent, and positives like alert and wise. What the findings found was that negative portrayals of aging seemed to actually bring about negative behaviors associated with aging, such as loss of memory, forgetfulness, etc. On the other hand, positive associations seemed to bring about better performance. To test their new theory, researchers gave standard memory tests to subjects who received just negative images and just positive images. Sure enough those receiving positive reinforcement scored higher and those receiving negative reinforcement scored lower. This study is just one of many that have emerged over the years clearly demonstrating that positive thinking makes a difference in our well-being. 

Another concept is the "placebo effect." This sugar-pill effect is best explained as the improvement patients receive from dummy drugs or clinically useless treatments purely because of a belief the treatments will work. Classic research out of San Diego State University and the University of Michigan has shown that people with many types of illnesses get better 70% of the time, even when they receive these dummy treatments. Researchers studied nearly 7,000 patients who had received one of five different treatments that were accepted in the 50s but found to be totally useless in the 60s and 70s. The outcome was excellent to good in over 70% of the cases. The point seems to be a patient will believe mightily in a treatment if they believe it works. The power of the authority figure--the physician--suggesting the treatment is very important as well. Clearly the placebo effect can be a powerful healer. However, so is the "nocebo effect," that ability of negative beliefs and expectations to cause harm. Voodoo, charms and other black magic have long been documented to hurt, maim, and kill. A controversial British study showed people who thought they were being administered a chemotherapy drug, became nauseous, had vomiting spells, and one-third lost their hair---all symptoms associated with actually having taken chemotherapy medications.  

I remember the first book I ever read which looked at the power of spirituality and medicine. It was Love, Medicine and Miracles by Bernie Siegel, MD. I opened the book in disbelief. I mean how could the imprecision of spirituality offer anything useful to the precision of medicine. Was I wrong! A decade later after Siegel's book, the data is coming forth in a big way.  

I remember praying once that the red light in my car's rear view mirror was not a cop pulling me over for speeding, but rather just a police car trying to pass me to get to some real emergency. I was wrong. I was also going 70. Neither God nor prayer, it seems, is very useful in trivial matters or at sporting events, according to a Newsweek Poll on prayer. The poll found that 54% of Americans pray on a daily basis, and 29% say they pray more than once a day, and 51% think God doesn't answer prayers to win sporting events. I think speeding is a sporting event, isn't it? But God does seem to intervene in important situations. Dr. David Larson, MD formerly of the National Institutes of Health, reviewed over 200 studies that examined the power of prayer in one fashion or another and concluded that in the majority of cases, faith was beneficial. Harvard Divinity School Professor Emeritus Gordon Kaufman thinks God is more part of the ecological system where scientific laws govern the course of events. He thinks having a personal God to pray to doesn't make much sense. He prefers to think of God as creativity rather than the creator. It therefore makes more sense to Kaufman to meditate rather than pray---to seek out understanding about why we make the mistakes we do, have the faults we do, and why we've taken wrong turns in our life. Whatever the shade of belief many experts believe science and faith have common ground.  

So what does this all meta physical talk tell us? Whether it is positive thinking, placebos, or spirituality, we have within us and without us the power to change and alter our personal course of history. If life is in the cards, then the edge is how well we learn the game, play the cards, and know when to hold.  

[This article is by Dr. J. Davis Mannino and originally appeared in the newspaper We The People, All Rights Reserved by the author.]