Gratitude

“Without gratitude, you may focus only on what’s lacking in your life, rather than what you appreciate. Gratitude keeps you optimistic, and evidence shows that optimism improves your health.”

—Lissa Rankin, M.D.

Who’s the Boss of Your Body? How to practice radical self-healing.

Who´s the Boss of your Body? by by Lissa Rankin, M.D.

Recommended book: Mind Over Medicine: The Awesome Power Of The Mind To Heal The Body

http://lissarankin.com/tag/mind-over-medicine


I just finished my upcoming book Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof You Can Heal Yourself (Hay House, 2013), but I’m still researching the topic that has fascinated me for the past four years. I just started readingConsciousness & Healing: Integral Approaches To Mind-Body Medicine, by my friend and IONS president Marilyn Schlitz and Tina Amorok.

Here’s some juicy stuff I found:

In 1986, Henry Bennett studied 94 surgical patients scheduled for spinal surgery, who were taught how to use their minds to move blood away from the site of the surgery. Those who did this lost 500 cubic centimeters of blood, compared to 900 cubic centimeters of blood in those who didn’t.
In 1994, Lewis Mehl studied 100 pregnant women with breech babies. Under hypnotherapy, these women were encouraged to trust their bodies and nature to restore their babies to the proper head-down position. 81% of the babies of those hypnotized reverted to head-down, compared to 48% of those not hypnotized.
In 1998, Jon Kabat-Zinn led a study of patients receiving phototherapy for moderate to severe psoriasis while listening to meditation guidance and instructions on visualizing ultraviolet light slowing the division of skin cells. Those who did the visualizations reached the halfway clearing point 50% faster than the control group that got only phototherapy without the meditation and visualization.

Biochemical medicine cannot explain what happens in these instances. Is the mind supercharging the patients with happy hormones like endorphins and oxytocin, while reducing levels of harmful hormones like cortisol and adrenaline? Are blood cells following orders from the mind in some way? Can babies hear a mother’s thoughts? Are immune cells rushing to the aid of diseased skin cells at the call of the meditation guidance?

In other studies, women visualizing themselves warming their breasts in the sun can increase their breast size.

People allergic to poison ivy do not break out when they are rubbed with poison ivy but told it is elm leaves, but they do break out when rubbed with elm leaves and told it is poison ivy.

Patients with “incurable” congenital ichthyosiform erythrodermis, commonly called “fish skin disease,” with which patients get scale-like hardening of the skin modern medicine can’t treat, can clear up to 80% of the disorder under hynotic suggestion.

What is the link between consciousness, health, and healing?

Inquiring minds like mine want to know!

We know that 18-75% of the time, patients in clinical trials respond to placebo treatment as if they are getting the real drug. As Harris Dienststfrey wrote in his essay in Consciousness & Healing, “I hope this is clear. There is as yet no bottom to the well of the mind’s capacity to do in the body (some bodies) what any newly invented drug can do. The problem the drug is treating does not matter. The mind is expansive enough to treat the problem. Put it this way: The mind so far can do (for some people) what all the pharmaceutical labs of the world together haven't been able to do.”

Doesn’t it blow your mind?

It blows mine, so I keep digging. Somewhere, amidst all this clinical data, lies the truth that we have been ignoring for decades. Somewhere, buried in statistics and medical journals, lies the answer to what really makes us sick and what really predisposes us to illness.

Stay tuned. I’m feisty, stubborn, and on a mission. Make sure you’re on my mailing list to get free updates so you can stay in the loop as I continue to explore the root causes of illness and how we can harness the mind to heal ourselves.

In awe of the mind,

Lissa

Lissa Rankin, MD: Creator of the health and wellness communities LissaRankin.com and OwningPink.com, author of Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof You Can Heal Yourself (Hay House, 2013), TEDx speaker, and Health Care Evolutionary. Join her newsletter list for free guidance on healing yourself, and check her out on Twitter and Facebook.





We’ve been led to believe that when we get sick, it’s our genetics. Or it’s just bad luck—and doctors alone hold the keys to optimal health. For years, Lissa Rankin, M.D., believed the same. But when her own health started to suffer, and she turned to Western medical treatments, she found that they not only failed to help; they made her worse. So she decided to take matters into her own hands.
Through her research, Dr. Rankin discovered that the health care she had been taught to practice was missing something crucial: a recognition of the body’s innate ability to self-repair and an appreciation for how we can control these self-healing mechanisms with the power of the mind. In an attempt to better understand this phenomenon, she explored peer-reviewed medical literature and found evidence that the medical establishment had been proving that the body can heal itself for over 50 years.
Using extraordinary cases of spontaneous healing, Dr. Rankin shows how thoughts, feelings, and beliefs can alter the body’s physiology. She lays out the scientific data proving that loneliness, pessimism, depression, fear, and anxiety damage the body, while intimate relationships, gratitude, meditation, sex, and authentic self-expression flip on the body’s self-healing processes.
In the final section of the book, you’ll be introduced to a radical new wellness model based on Dr. Rankin’s scientific findings. Her unique six-step program will help you uncover where things might be out of whack in your life—spiritually, creatively, environmentally, nutritionally, and in your professional and personal relationships—so that you can create a customized treatment plan aimed at bolstering these health-promoting pieces of your life. You’ll learn how to listen to your body’s “whispers” before they turn to life-threatening “screams” that can be prevented with proper self-care, and you’ll learn how to trust your inner guidance when making decisions about your health and your life.
By the time you finish Mind Over Medicine, you’ll have made your own Diagnosis, written your own Prescription, and created a clear action plan designed to help you make your body ripe for miracles.

Preventing Mental Illness Is No Fantasy

Preventing Mental Illness Is No Fantasy

Dilip Jeste, M.D.

Do “prevention” and “psychiatry” even belong in the same sentence? Clearly, there is no immunization against mental illnesses. However, appropriate health promotion, elimination of high-risk factors, and well-tailored interventions can lead to substantial reductions in mental health disability. In fact, mounting evidence suggests that prevention in psychiatry is both practical and cost-effective.

Better sanitation, vaccines, improved perinatal care, and other medical advances introduced during the last century have dramatically improved the quality of life and eradicated many devastating medical diseases. Today similar long-term and intersectoral preventive measures are needed in the arena of mental health. Mental illnesses are still imposing an enormous psychological, social, and economic burden on society and are associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Even a cursory look at the statistics is eye opening: 1 in 4 Americans will develop a psychiatric disorder during his or her lifespan. Further efforts to expand the spectrum of prevention in psychiatry would be highly beneficial for patients, communities, and societies.

Psychiatrists have been alleviating the symptoms of depression, schizophrenia, and other diseases and trying to minimize the risk of complications, such as disability, physical illness, and suicide. However, the question is whether we can prevent mental illnesses from developing in the first place, or at least prevent their clinical manifestations so they remain dormant throughout life. Admittedly, this would be an ambitious undertaking, as most psychiatric disorders are multi-determined. For instance, depression might have causal pathways ranging from genetic predisposition to social factors to the use of certain depressogenic drugs. Some of these causes are currently preventable, others are not. Yet protecting individuals from developing a clinical illness, even in the presence of the underlying risk factor, is not a futuristic fantasy. An excellent example is a debilitating intellectual disability and seizure disorder associated with phenylketonuria (PKU). Patients who are diagnosed early and maintain a strict special diet for PKU can have a normal lifespan with normal mental development.

In 2009, the Institute of Medicine issued a remarkable report titled “Preventing Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders Among Young People: Progress and Possibilities.” It showed how behavioral health could learn from public health in endorsing a population health perspective. It gave examples of evidence-based kernels and “behavioral vaccines” that have been found to reduce mental, emotional, and behavioral problems at the community level. Thus, simple strategies such as positive notes from home, group public feedback with group rewards, reduction in TV viewing and video game use at home, and cooperative games on the playground have been shown to reduce aggression at school, even among very high-risk children or adolescents.

In 2011, Carl Bell and I published a volume on prevention in psychiatry from a lifespan perspective (Prevention in Mental Health: Lifespan Perspective, W.B. Saunders Co.). Our goal was to discuss how prevention is not restricted to children and youth, but also can be practiced in adulthood, including old age. Depression has been studied most extensively from this viewpoint, and several types of preventive interventions have been shown to be effective. Thus, the likelihood of adolescent depression can be reduced in the offspring of parents with a history of the disease through measures such as individually targeted psychotherapy, strategies for improving self-esteem, and encouraging quality relationships with caring adults. Similarly, early screening for depression and intensive support and counseling can reduce the risk of postpartum depression in mothers.

Finally, there is a growing body of research on preventing development of depression that commonly follows myocardial infarction, cardiac bypass surgery, and strokes. Other malleable risk factors for depression include physical disability, sleep problems, social isolation, and a lack of stimulating environment or activities. Interventions aimed at altering such factors or their consequences can be successful in preventing the onset of depression across the lifespan.

Another line of research suggests that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) presents an opportunity for preventive measures. Counseling victims of natural disasters, wars, or other tragic events can prove beneficial in substantially lowering the risk of developing PTSD throughout the lifespan.

Fostering positive psychosocial traits, such as optimism, resilience, self-efficacy, and spirituality, has been shown to be effective in promoting mental health and preventing psychopathology.

People who are optimistic about the future, who are resilient after stressful events, and who are confident in their abilities to manage day-to-day affairs tend to experience better cognitive and emotional health following negative life events, even in older age. In addition, the burgeoning fields of genetics and genomics hold a promise that, in the near future, prevention in psychiatry will be even more effective. With better understanding of psychiatric genetics, we might be able to identify genetic risk factors for a number of mental illnesses. We could then improve screenings and develop biological and psychosocial/behavioral treatments that would positively impact the expression of relevant genes.

While more research on various aspects of psychiatric prevention is obviously needed, applying current knowledge in clinical practice can contribute to reducing a number of the psychiatric disabilities. Well-designed and implemented preventive strategies should lead to significant reduction in the burden of many psychiatric diseases. Preventive psychiatry is not an oxymoron!

 http://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/newsarticle.aspx?articleid=1356729