Is there scientific proof we can heal ourselves? | Lissa Rankin | TEDxAmericanRiviera

New age gurus suggest that we can heal ourselves by simply changing our minds, but is this concept grounded in cold, hard science? Lissa Rankin, MD explores the scientific literature, reviewing case studies of spontaneous remission, as well as placebo and nocebo effect data, to prove that our thoughts powerfully affect our physiology when we believe we can get well.



Can the mind really heal the body?

And if so, is there
any scientific evidence

to convince
skeptical physicians like me?

These are the questions that fueled
the last few years of my research

and what I discovered is that
the scientific community,

the medical establishment,
has being proving for over 50 years,

that the mind can heal the body.

We call it the "placebo effect".

And we've been trying
to outsmart it for decades.

(Laughter)

The placebo effect is a thorn in the side
of the medical establishment.

It's an inconvenient truth,
that gets in between,

trying to bring new treatments, new
surgeries into the medical establishment.

So it's a problem!
Supposedly.

But I actually think,
this is really good news!

The placebo effect is excellent news!

Because it's concrete evidence

that the body holds within it
innate self repair mechanisms

that can make unthinkable
things happen to the body.

So, if you find this surprising,

if you have a hard time believing
that the body can heal itself,

you need look no further than
The Spontaneous Remission Project,

a database compiled
by the Institute of Noetic Sciences

of over 3500 case studies
in the medical literature

of patients who have gotten better
from seemingly "incurable" illnesses.

You think there's such
a thing as an incurable illness?

I swear, if you go look at this database,
it will blow your mind.

Everything is in there.

Stage 4 cancers that disappeared
without treatment.

HIV positive patients,
that became HIV negative.

Heart disease, kidney failure,
diabetes, high blood pressure,

thyroid disease,
autoimmune diseases, gone.

A great example of this
in the medical literature,

is a case study from 1957 of Mr. Wright
who had advanced lymphosarcoma.

So, things weren't going well for
Mr. Wright, time was really running out.

He had tumors the size of oranges in his
armpits, neck, chest, abdomen.

His liver and spleen were enlarged,

and his lungs were filling up with
two quarts of milky fluid every day

that have to be drained
in order for him to breathe.

But Mr. Wright wasn't giving up hope.

He had heard about
this wonder drug called Krebiozen,

and he was begging his doctor,

"Come on, just give me some of that
Krebiozen, it's all going to be good."

Now, unfortunately the Krebiozen was
only available on a research protocol

and the protocol required that the doctor
be able to make an assessment

that says that this guy has
at least three months to live.

And his doctor,
Dr. West just couldn't do that.

But Mr. Wright was tenacious
and he didn't give up.

He kept badgering his doctor,

until finally his doctor was like,
"OK, fine I'll give you the Krebiozen."

So he dosed him up on a Friday,

not expecting that Mr. Wright
would make it through the weekend.

But to his utter shock, when Dr. West
came in to do rounds on Monday,

Mr. Wright was up,
walking around the wards,

and his tumors had shrunk
to half of their original size.

They had melted like
snowballs on a hot stove.

And ten days after getting
the Krebiozen, they were gone.

So Mr. Wright was up
rocking and rolling like crazy

and Krebiozen is the miracle drug
he believed it to be, for two months,

until the initial reports
came out about Krebiozen

that said that it didn't really look like
Krebiozen was working so well.

Mr. Wright fell into a deep depression
and his cancer came back.

This time Dr. West decided to get sneaky,
and he told his patient, that,

"You know that Krebiozen that you got,
that was a tainted version, not so good.

But I got us some ultrapure
highly concentrated Krebiozen,

This stuff's got it going on."

He then injected Mr. Wright
with nothing but distilled water.

And once again, the tumors disappeared,
the fluid in his lungs went away.

Mr. Wright was up rocking and rolling
for another two months.

And then the American Medical Association
blew it, by publishing on a nationwide study

that prooved definitively that
Krebiozen was worthless.

Two days later, Mr. Wright
after hearing this news died.

Soon after that,
I came across another study

in the medical literature
that was the stuff of fairy tales.

Three baby girls were born,
delivered by a midwife,

on Friday the 13th in the Okefenokee
Swamp, near the Georgia-Florida border.

And the midwife pronounced
that these three babies,

born on such a faithful day,
were all hexed.

The first, she said, would die
before her 16th birthday.

The second, before her 21st.

The third, before her 23rd birthday.

And as it turned out, the first girl died
the day before her 16th birthday,

the second died the day
before her 21st birthday,

and the third girl, who knew what
had happened to the other two,

got wind of that, and the day
before her 23rd birthday,

she showed at the hospital
hyperventilating,

begging them,
to make sure she survived.

She wound up dying that night.

These two case studies are great
examples from the medical literature

of the placebo effect, and
its opposite, the nocebo effect.

When Mr. Wright got that distilled
water and his tumors melted away,

that's a great example
of the placebo effect.

When you get a seemingly
inert treatment

and yet something is happening
physiologically in the body,

such that the disease goes away.

The nocebo effect is the opposite.

So the three hexed girls are
an example of the nocebo effect.

When the minds believed that something
bad is going to happen in the body

then it comes to manifest.

So the scientific literature
that medical journals

like the New England
Journal of Medicine

and the Journal of the American
Medical Association,

these scientific journals are
full of evidence that the placebo effect,

and the nocebo effect
are incredibly powerful.

We've known this since the 1950s,

and we've seen countless case studies

that showed that in almost
everything you study,

if you give people
a fake treatment, a sugar pill

a saline injection, or most effectively,
a fake surgery,

(Laughter)
-- yeah, really --

18-80% of the time, people get better.

And it's not just in the mind, that's
what I thought in the beginning,

like "Oh! They're just feeling better,
they're thinking better."

But is not. It's actually in their physiology.
This is measurable.

You can actually see
what happens to the body.

So for example patients getting placebos

were found to have
ulcers that healed,

colons that became less inflamed,
bronchia that dilated

warts that disappeared, cells
looked different under the microscope.

It's provable, it's happening in the body,

even though it's initiated by the mind.

So, when you look at these,
some of the studies are just amazing.

I love the Rogain studies.

You get a bunch of bald men,
you give them placebos.

They grow hair!
(Laughter)

The opposite is also true,
so if you give people a placebo

and you tell them it's chemotherapy,

they vomit, and they lose their hair.

So this is really happening in the body.

My question was,

Is it just the mind's positive belief
that's making this happen?

Not according to Harvard
researcher Ted Kaptchuk.

According to him, he thinks
that the most essential part

is actually the nurturing care
of a health care provider,

more so even than
the mind's positive belief

that some of the studies actually say
that the doctor is the placebo or can be.

So Ted Kaptchuk wanted to study this,

and he did a great study
looking at patients

that were getting
placebos for an illness,

for treatment of an illness
and he told them,

"You're getting a placebo,
there's nothing in here,

inert ingredients, nothing active."
They still got better.

Most likely, Kaptchuk postulated,
because they felt tended, nurtured,

they felt like they were doing something,
they felt like somebody cared.

So to say that you can heal yourself
is sort of a misnomer.

You know, the body can heal itself.

The body has this innate
natural self repair mechanisms,

but the scientific data
proves that you need

the tending nurturing care of a healthcare
provider, of some sort of a healer,

to facilitate that process.

It's not an easy process
to go through alone,

so it makes a big difference

if somebody else is holding
that positive belief with you.

But the problem is while
the doctor can be the placebo,

the doctor can also be the nocebo.

So, what patients need from us,
as healthcare providers,

they need us to be forces of healing,
not forces of fear or pessimism.

So every time your doctor tells you,
"You have an incurable illness,

you're going to have to take that
medication for the rest of your life,"

Or God forbid,
you get cancer and they say,

"You've got a five year survival rate"

It's really no different that when
that midwife told those three baby girls

that they were hexed.

It's a form of medical hexing
that's so prevalent.

As doctors, we think
we're being realistic, you know?

We're giving people the kind of information
we think they need to know,

but we actually can be harming them.

Instead we need be more
like Dr. West. You know?

Picking that distilled water,
"Really Mr.Wright,

I promise, this is going to
do it for you."

But do we have to count on
our doctors to dupe us?

Do we have to get fake surgeries and
fake drugs, and wind up in clinical trials.

This is what led
the next phase of my research.

So in my last TEDx talk,
l talked about

a new wellness model
that I developed,

called the whole healthcare,

and this came about
as part of my research,

trying to find how else can
we harness this mind's power

that's clearly evidenced by the
placebo effect and the nocebo effect,

can we do something without
being in a clinical trial?

And my hypothesis was that
in order to heal ourselves,

in order to be optimally healthy,

we need more than just a good diet,
regular exercise program,

getting enough sleep, taking your
vitamins, following your doctors orders.

Those things all are great,
and critical and important.

But I also came to believe that
we need healthy relationships,

a healthy professional life,
a healthy creative life,

a healthy spiritual life,
a healthy sex life,

a healthy financial life,
a healthy environment.

In essence, we need a healthy mind.

So I wanted to try to prove this, and
I went into the medical literature

and the copious data that I found,

proving that all of those things
are essential, really blew my mind.

I compiled them all into my upcoming book,

"Mind Over Medicine: Scientific
proof you can heal yourself".

But I want to give you a few highlights
about what this is all about.

So you can see from
the whole health cairn,

that all this facets are built upon
a foundation stone

that I call your inner pilot light.

And for me that's the essential
authentic part of you,

that knows what's true for you.

That's willing to tell you the truth about
maybe what's out of alignment in your life,

what stones in your whole health cairn
might be out of balance.

And as you see I've put the body,
physical health,

on the top of the whole health cairn

because it's the most fragile,
the most precarious,

and the most easy to kind
of fall out of balance

if other things in your life
aren't going so well.

So what I found in the medical data
is that relationships matter.

People that have a strong social network
have half the rate of heart disease

compared to those who are lonely.

Married people are twice as likely
to live long lives than unmarried people.

In fact, curing your loneliness maybe

the most important measure of prevention
you can enact upon your body.

More so than quitting smoking
or starting to exercise.

Your spiritual life matters.

Those who attend religious services
live up to fourteen years longer.

Your professional life matters.

You really can work yourself to death.
In Japan they call it karoshi.

Death by overwork, and the survivors
of those who die of karoshi,

can actually apply for workmen's
complaint benefits in Japan.

But it's not just Japan, it's actually
happening even more in the United States,

we just don't get benefits here.

So one study found that people
that fail to take their vacation,

are actually a third more likely
to get heart disease.

Τhe attitude really matters.

Ηappy people live 7 to 10 years
longer than unhappy people,

and optimists are 77% less likely
to get heart disease than pessimists.

So how does this happen?

What is happening in the brain
that is making the body change?

This is what's fascinating to me.

I found that the brain communicates
with all the cells in the body

via hormones and neurotransmitters.

So, for example, if you have
a negative thought, belief

or feeling in the brain,
your brain triggers this as a threat.

Something's wrong.

If you feel lonely or pessimistic,
things are bad at work,

you are in a toxic relationship,
the amygdala says, "Τhreat! Τhreat!"

and it turns on the hypothalamus,
that talks to the pituitary gland,

that communicates with the adrenal gland
and the adrenal gland start spitting out

stress hormones like cortisol,
norepinephrine, epinephrine.

Ιt turns on what Walter Kenneth
at Harvard calls the stress response,

that triggers the sympathetic
nervous system,

and puts you into that
fight or flight mode, which is adaptive,

it's protective if you are running away
from a mountain lion,

but in every day life, you're supposed
to have that quick stress response

if there is a threat and then
it's supposed to switch right off.

This isn't what happens
in our regular lives these days.

But fortunately there is a counter balance
in relaxation response

that Herbert Benson at Harvard described.

And when this comes about,
the stress response turns off,

the parasympathetic nervous system
turns on,

and healing hormones like oxytocin,
dopamine, nitric oxide, endorphins

fill the body and bathe
every cell in the body.

What I found the most amazing about this

is that those natural self repair
mechanisms that we all have

they only flip on when
the nervous system is relaxed.

So when you're having
stress responses,

all those natural self repair
mechanisms get flipped off.

The body is too busy trying to fight
or flee, in order to heal itself.

So, when you think about this,
you have to start to wonder like,

How can I possibly start to change
the balance in my own body?

So one study showed
that on average we have

more than 50 stress responses per day.

And if you're lonely, or depressed
or pessimistic or unhappy at work

or in a miserable relationship that number
is going to be more than twice as many.

Now this relaxation response
is what researchers think

explains the placebo effect.

So when you're going to get supposedly
maybe a new wonder drug,

-- you don't know whether you're getting
the placebo or not --

it triggers that relaxation response,

that combination of the mind's
positive belief

and the nurturing care
of a healthcare provider

relaxes the nervous system.

And then all those natural self repair
mechanisms can come into play.

Fortunately though you don't have
to be in a clinical trial

to turn on your relaxation responses.

There are lots of simple
pleasurable activities

that turn on the relaxation responses

and these have been proven
in the medical literature.

So you can meditate,
you can express yourself creatively,

you can get a massage,
do yoga or tai chi,

you can go out with your friends,
you can do work that you love,

you can have sex, you can laugh,
exercise, you can play with animals.

So I ask you to consider
the Whole Health Cairn in your own life.

Which stones in your Whole Health Cairn
might be out of balance?

Each of these stones can be a factor

for creating stress responses
or relaxation responses.

How might you turn on more
relaxation responses in your body?

And most importantly,

what does your body
need in order to heal?

What prescription do you need
to write for yourself?

And are you going to be brave enough

to take action on the truth of what
your inner pilot light already knows?

I believe our healthcare system
is badly broken,

and it's largely because we've lost respect
for the body's ability to heal itself.

The medical establishment
has gotten arrogant.

We've come to think that
with all of our modern technology,

and all that we've learnt
in the past century,

that we've mastered nature,
and we find it repelling

to think that maybe nature could
be better than we are sometimes.

And yet, spontaneous remissions
from incurable diseases are proof

that sometimes nature
is just better than we are.

It's a narcisitic wound for physicians.

We don't know what to do with that.

It makes us feel helpless
and hopeless and useless.

But fortunately, we're needed.

The physician and all the other
healthcare providers

are absolutely essential to this process.

We need to embrace this.

And patients need to change
their outlooks on this as well.

It is not just doctors.

We need patients to stop thinking that
your body is not your business,

taking your power and handing it
over to other healthcare providers.

Your body is your business, and
your mind has tremendous power

to communicate with your body,
such that your body can heal itself.

So I once had a dream, and
in my dream I was standing there,

looking at these mountain sides,
full of millions of people

that were standing
shoulder to shoulder,

and they were all facing due north,
dressed in all this tribal garbs,

beautiful colors covering
the mountain sides like a quilt.

And there was a bright
streaming light on their face

and everyone was facing this light,

and that's what I think of,
when I think of healthcare.

I think of all of us, standing up,
and facing the light.

So please stand with me for a moment.

It's going to take all of us.

Just because things have gotten bad
doesn't mean they can't get better.

I believe that just like there are
no incurable illnesses

there are no incurable systems.

But it's going to take all of us, needing
to open our heart and our minds,

and bring care back to healthcare.

So please hold hands
with your fellow neighbor

and let's just set
the intention right here,

that things are going to be
different from now on,

that we can start this grass roots effort
that it all starts with you.

Be the love that you want to
see in healthcare,

and I believe miracles can happen.

As we do this you're releasing oxytocin,
dopamine, you start to heal yourself

and as we do so we can heal healthcare.

Thank you.

(Applause)