Mind-Body Health and Healing. Andrew Goliszek
in the brain, one of which is CRF-1 found in structure of class B GPCR corticotrophin-releasing factor receptor 1.” The team soon hopes to develop drugs that can block CRF-1 and blunt the release of chemicals responsible for stress reactions.1
A network of nerves above the hypothalamus, the limbic system is often referred to as the emotional brain. It has a large number of sensory receptors and the greatest concentration of the brain’s opiate receptors. The rush or feeling of euphoria one gets after taking an opiate such as heroin or morphine is caused by the binding of such drugs to these opiate receptors.
The limbic system controls and regulates emotions such as fear, rage, love, hate, sexual arousal, aggression, pleasure, and pain. Located here are the so-called punishment and reward centers, believed to be important in learning and in triggering the motivational systems behind behavior that seeks to avoid pain and pursue pleasure. Different areas of this system elicit different responses. Some years ago, I worked with a research scientist who was investigating how tobacco additives could be used to stimulate the areas of the limbic system that produce pleasure responses.
One part of the limbic system important in learning and memory is the hippocampus. Whenever we learn something new, structural changes occur that allow us to remember. New evidence from Alzheimer’s patients shows that there is considerable atrophy of the hippocampus, which would explain the loss of memory and the inability to recognize even recent experiences. Neuroplasticity is essentially lost, and the brain can no longer file away information.
It’s also believed that the limbic system is the part of the brain most involved with violent behavior. For example, as part of a classic medical experiment, a woman had an electrode inserted in one section of her limbic system and received a mild current. She immediately became angry and violent. When the current was switched off, she again became pleasant and cooperative. There’s agreement among neuroscientists that disruption of nerve impulses within the limbic system may be responsible for at least some cases of violent behavior.
Like all other areas of the brain, the limbic system is affected by a number of external signals from the environment, as well as by internal signals we send to ourselves because of the way we think and how we perceive events. No organ is more prone to suggestions than is the brain; and no organ in the human body is more responsive to how the body responds to those suggestions. Fighting a cold or eliminating a tumor often depends in part on the positive signals we send, which in turn unleash a wave of chemicals that trigger the massive immune response that stops disease in its tracks.
In research studies, nearly one-third of patients given nothing more than a placebo—often a sugar pill or a distilled water and salt solution—improve their condition. Why? Obviously something powerful takes place in the brain of the patient. As Dr. Robert DeLap, then head of the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Offices of Drug Evaluation explained in the Jan/Feb 2000 issue of the FDA publication The Healing Power of Placebos, “Expectation is a powerful thing. The more you believe you’re going to benefit from a treatment, the more likely it is that you will experience a benefit.” This is exactly why placebos are used when testing a new drug’s medical benefit. If patients on the new drug fare significantly better than those taking a placebo, the study helps support the conclusion that the medicine is responsible for improvements in patients’ condition and not the power of positive thinking.
For centuries, unorthodox treatments have produced astounding improvements in health that could not be explained in traditional terms. During the last few decades, researchers have been studying how the placebo effect triggers the mind to regulate and control the body. In 1955, a groundbreaking paper “The Powerful Placebo” demonstrated that 32 percent of patients responded to placebos. Ten years later, breakthrough studies demonstrated that placebos sped up pulse rate, increased blood pressure, and improved reaction speeds when participants were told they had taken a stimulant, but had the opposite effects when participants were told they had taken a sleep-inducing drug.
It’s hard for many people to accept the notion that just thinking about curing a disease will often be enough to actually do it; that we can respond as well to an inert pill as we can to an actual drug. But according to Dr. Michael Jospe, a professor at the California School of Professional Psychology, who has studied the placebo effect for more than twenty years, our belief system gives us more healing power than we realize. Jospe points out that all normal people experience physiological reactions to anticipation and stress that help them cope and survive. Each time you experience something and react to it, you learn from it and condition yourself to react before the event even occurs. So the relationship between a thought and a negative reaction is something we experience daily.
That goes for positive associations as well. Also, in the Jan/Feb 2000 issue of the FDA publication The Healing Power of Placebos, Dr. Jospe adds, “The placebo effect is part of the human potential to react positively to a healer. You can reduce a patient’s distress by doing something that might not be medically effective.” He gives the example of children and adhesive bandages. If the adhesive bandage you put on a child’s wound has stars or cartoons on it, it can actually make the child feel better by its soothing effect, though there’s no medical reason it should make the child feel any better than a plain adhesive bandage. The positive reaction of the child to the images on the bandage seems to make the difference.
In some cases, the placebo may be as good as the actual treatment. One study found that placebos do as well as antidepressants in the majority of patients treated. Other studies have shown that multicolored placebo pills work best overall, green placebos produce better results in anxious or phobic patients, red or orange ones perform better as stimulants, blue ones as sedatives, and yellow ones for depression.2 Barring some of our new miracle drugs, there are few medications today that have the power of our body’s own chemicals.
Amazingly, placebos are also organ-specific. They work exactly the way the actual drug is supposed to work on precisely the body part or organ they’re intended to affect. So a placebo taken for joint pain will alleviate the pain in that particular joint, and one taken for a digestive problem will work on the stomach or intestines. One of the best examples of this was illustrated in a Canadian prostate study where more than half the men who had benign enlargement of their prostates were given placebo pills and reported significant relief from their symptoms, including faster urine flow. Researchers theorized that their patients’ positive expectations of the drug’s benefits caused therapeutic smooth muscle relaxation by decreasing nerve activity to the bladder, prostate, and urethra. In another major placebo study (reported in the Jan/Feb 2000 issue of the FDA publication, The Healing Power of Placebos), two-thirds of subjects given a pill they were told would produce severe stomach activity quickly experienced strong stomach churning.
Does the placebo effect work on everyone? No. The answer may lie in individual differences in personality and attitude. Patients who visualize positive outcomes, eliminate stress, and participate in their own healing are the most successful. Those who dwell on the negative and believe that there’s no hope experience the “nocebo effect,” a negative reaction that depresses the immune system and makes one even more vulnerable to disease. The placebo effect helps prove that having a positive attitude and the will to get better triggers the release of brain chemicals needed for spontaneous healing.
How exactly does the interplay of psychological and physiological mechanisms trigger a healing process that can be as effective as most medicines we take? Today’s brain imaging techniques lend support to the theory that thoughts and beliefs not only affect one’s psychological state, but also cause the body to undergo actual biological changes. Together, the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems stimulate the release of chemicals that, during emotional responses, sets the healing process in motion.
When you think about it, the human body is an immensely complex system of molecules, which stimulates nerve connections that respond to our mental suggestions. So