Mind, Beliefs, and Healing 2

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Placebo is one of the most powerful effects in all of medicine, and accounts for somewhere between 35% and 55% of the effects of all therapeutic interventions, whether medical, psychological, or surgical. A famous study at Johns Hopkins showed that men with angina pectoris (chest pain from heart disease) undergoing a sham heart operation not only had 80% less pain, they also demonstrated 70% improvement in the strength of their heart function -- exactly the same effects they got from the "real" heart operation! Dozens of studies have shown that over half the effectiveness of any pain reliever, including morphine, is due to placebo effect. Placebos can even reverse the normal pharmacologic effects of medications, and work even when the patient knows they are receiving placebo.

Even more importantly, studies have shown that when doctors administer placebos, but think they have administered an effective medicine, the patient frequently responds as if they have received the effective medicine. The reverse is also true, with doctors giving medicine they believe to be placebo, and the patients having reduced effects in response.

The Mind, Beliefs, and Healing

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I’m a medical doctor and acupuncturist who has always been fascinated with the role of belief and the mind in stimulating or hindering healing.

I once saw a young medical student who wanted to know if hypnosis would help cure the dozens of warts he had developed on his hands. I told him it might, and taught him how to create a self-hypnotic state and visualize the warts disappearing. He was skeptical about the approach, used the self-hypnosis very rarely and continued to have warts. About a year later he asked if he could spend some time with me in my office, observing my practice. I agreed, with one stipulation – that he do some research for me in the medical library. He agreed, and I asked him to get me all the scientific papers he could find on healing warts with hypnosis and suggestion. Two weeks later he came to the office with a stack of articles three inches thick, most of them reporting positive results. He somewhat sheepishly told me that he had reviewed the articles and was surprised that there was real scientific evidence behind what I had taught him. He also reported that over 50% of his warts had disappeared after reading the articles.

Belief is a powerful factor in healing. People frequently heal when they believe they have received a healing treatment, whether the treatment has any objective effects or not. When people heal from rituals and prayer, we call it faith healing, and when people heal in response to fake medications or procedures, we call it "placebo effect". In both instances, it works through the power of belief, which then triggers physiologic responses.