Home | Natural Family Living | Big Life Issues | Animal- Human- Angel |
Culture of Love | Solar Culture | Spirituality | Emotion |
This is a reproduction of a 15 March 2016 article by Nick Parkins in Kindred Spirit Magazine. The article no longer appears to exist online but has been reproduced here as it is felt to be very educational. ______________ Contact Bruce About PWP Links ______________ |
Nocebo Unmasked How can we invoke the placebo effect in our everyday lives and engage the power of positive thinking when we have a negativity-bias? asks Nick Parkins Your beliefs act like filters on a camera, changing how you see the world. And your biology adapts to those beliefs.
Bruce H. Lipton, PhD, The Biology of Belief, 2005 book A placebo is administered in medicine as a control treatment; a chemically inert ‘medication’ or fake operation or procedure that is routinely observed to offer clinical benefits in line with a patient’s expectation. ‘Between one and two-thirds of all healing is down to the placebo effect,’ rather than therapies, drugs or surgery, according to renowned author and stem cell biologist Bruce Lipton: ‘The placebo is just a sugar-pill – the patient is healed by the power of positive thinking; the belief they’ll get better.’ Many in the medical profession are aware of this effect and yet few wish to consider its implications for self-healing. Modern medicine is influenced by giant pharmaceutical companies that have chosen to ignore its potential. This cartel manipulates the medical industry and controls medical schools, says Lipton. ‘Step outside their standard practices and chances are you’ll lose your licence.’ This negative bias is very real and serves to harbour a dangerous nemesis. The nocebo is arguably as powerful and emerges from the unconscious (re: subconscious) shadows nurtured by negative programming. Winfried Hauser is a professor of psychosomatic medicine at the Klinikum Saarbrücken in Germany. Those physicians that do respect the nocebo, says Hauser, face an ethical dilemma. ‘They are required not just to inform patients of the potential complications of treatment, but also to minimize the likelihood of these complications arising through the potential nocebo effect.’ Lipton agrees. In fact, in the worst-case world of the nocebo, he argues, it is often death by suggestion; the power and function of negative thoughts can, and often do, prove fatal. ‘The belief you have a terminal illness can actually kill you,’ says Lipton. Clearly a sense of feeling powerless, engendered in us by socially pre-programmed beliefs, is a toxic state of mind. And demonstrates how personal perceptions, conditioned by a surrounding culture, can influence physiological processes as we shall see. Environmental Effect on Cells Let’s look under the microscope. Each of the 50 trillion human cells that make up the body is influenced by its culture. In fact studies increasingly show that gene expression is not pre-determined and rather activates or deactivates only in response to its environment. ‘I found that by placing cells in culture dishes with conditions that support muscle growth, the muscle cells evolved and would end up as giant contractile muscles,’ Lipton explains. ‘However I found that by changing the environment, I could change the fate of cells. ‘When I began with the same muscle precursors, in an altered environment, they would actually start to form bone cells. And by changing the conditions again, those cells became adipose or fat cells. The results of these experiments were very exciting because while every one of the cells was genetically identical, the fate of the cells was controlled by the [energetic] environment in which they were placed.’ We see that environments direct the fate of our cells and, as a consequence, the fate of ourselves. And how what is found interwoven into the fabric of life has the power to heal or destroy. That our genes can no sooner determine our health than a light bulb can choose to shed light on the dark. Our genetic code as software, and its environment, a click of the mouse. The narrative to date however has told a different story. Genes control life. It is nature that asserts its control over nurture and not the other way round. We are effectively removed from the loop. Bystanders at our body’s behest. In Lipton’s world it is different. We wear the genes, our genes don’t wear us. In this reality we lay the lie that our physical destiny is somehow a fait accompli. So what if Lipton is right? What if the fate of a cell is controlled by the environment in which it is placed? What does this mean in practice? We are, each of us, at least biologically, that cell up-scaled 50 trillion times – all subject to energetic influences from our thoughts and feelings that, in turn, are subject to our culture. His idea suggests that cellular changes are more than a figment of mind. Linda E. Carlson is a psychosocial researcher and lead investigator from the Tom Baker Cancer Centre, Alberta. In a recent study, Carlson and a team of scientists from the University of Calgary noticed significant variations in telomere length between patient groups that meditated and those that did not. Telomeres, the caps at the end of DNA strands that protect our chromosomes, are thought to offer protection against cellular ageing and disease. ‘We already know that psychosocial interventions like mindfulness meditation will help you feel better mentally,’ states Carlson, ‘but now for the first time we have evidence that they can also influence key aspects of your biology’. The fact that any difference in telomere length at all was seen over the three-month study period was surprising, according to Carlson. ‘Further research is needed to better quantify these potential health benefits, but this is an exciting discovery that provides encouraging news.’ This implies that a mind-body connection exists. And that our thoughts and intentions have a causal effect and are greater in substance than simply the upchuck of mental digestion that material scientists would have us believe. In fact hypnotherapy works on a similar energetic principle, and is shown in studies to affect unconscious biological processes. Knowing this, let us adopt for a moment the conventional blueprint that DNA dictates our destiny and that each of us is merely locked in for the ride. Were this so, is there any incentive to take the controls? To express our true potential? You can sense a creeping impotence; a helplessness that our ultimate fate is not what we make, but perhaps that’s the idea. Perception Bias This may explain the psychologists who insist that 70 percent of our thoughts are negative and/or redundant. In fact the brain’s affinity to weigh and respond to negative information is known. This perception bias, which is heightened when primed by negative news, may imbalance a person’s outlook and subsequent mental and biological response. But are we naturally wired this way? Paul Gilbert is a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Derby. He explains how the mind, when engaged negatively, can become highly sensitive and quick to react to perceived threats. This is a disturbing thought. It is after all how our world is themed, and if Gilbert is right, how it shapes us. His theory exposes the constant fear perpetrated by 24/7 media feeds that bombard the psyche with dire climate predictions, shootings, be-headings, and incendiary threats from war and terror. So too the many classically accepted unconscious norms of conduct and behaviour that, when taken for granted, only foster mistrust and ferment social division. Take for instance competition. Darwin’s survival of the fittest model when fused with top-down imperialist controls justifies a dog-eat-dog existence; one that underpins and plays an intrinsic part in brutalising cultures. The unconscious mind then is constantly primed and forever on edge. Common symptoms that result, such as anxiety, depression and aggression, Gilbert says, are so often treated as mental illness when in simple fact they describe the unconscious response to an inevitable sense of powerlessness gained from harsh uncaring environments. This feature is so ingrained that many of us no longer view any expression or thought that supports this mindset as odd or unnatural. As such, the unconscious mind and the nature of negative thoughts we tune in to ‘as natural’ go unchallenged. We dismiss by reflex the power of the mind; as it relates to positive thinking and, most ironic, the negative controls we allow to play out. And fail to recognise the symptom or indeed the solution; because we are blind to the problem. The result is often an unconscious apathy. It’s the way of the world, right? Nothing I can do. This of course is simply an expression of powerlessness, or what we perceive as our inability to enact change. For instance, says Lipton, ‘when we get sick, we are told that we must go to the doctor because the doctor is the authority concerning health.’ It is not surprising then that, with the placebo concussed, the nocebo feeds and invariably thrives. We are conditioned to accept our fate, often unconsciously; to believe ourselves powerless; as victims of bodily forces beyond our control. Which as it turns out is easily done. Thanks to our terms and conditions of language. After all, our unconscious mind cannot be conscious; it is by definition unaware. And so we commit to the folly; we label, package and box it away for this very reason; that we are not conscious of it. The negative programs to which we are tied however are real. And unconscious. Fortunately they are not beyond our conscious grasp or control. After all what is insight, if not what is conscious one moment and unconscious the next? These are relative terms that relate to a point of awareness at a given point in time. Nick Parkins About the author: Nick Parkins has a master’s in philosophy of the mind and likes to live outside the box. You can email Nick at nickparkins@hotmail.co.uk [Twitter] [N.B. This is a reproduction of a 15 March 2016 article by Nick Parkins in Kindred Spirit Magazine. Some minor edits have been made. The article no longer appears to exist online but has been reproduced here as it is felt to be very educational.] |
Also see:- Placebo Effect Placebo Effect & CAM Placebo Quotes |
Top of Page | Contact Bruce |