WORRYING YOURSELF SICK?

We all have heard the expression “he/she worried him/herself sick.” The question is, can we really think or worry ourselves sick? Awareness of the mind-body connection is by no means new. Until approximately 300 years ago, virtually every system of medicine throughout the world treated the mind and body as a whole. But during the 17th century, the Western world started to see the mind and body as two distinct entities. In this view, the body was kind of like a machine, complete with replaceable, independent parts, with no connection whatsoever to the mind, or what has commonly been known as “Newtonian medicine”.

This Western viewpoint had definite benefits, acting as the foundation for advances in surgery, trauma care, pharmaceuticals, and other areas of allopathic medicine. However, it also greatly reduced scientific inquiry into humans' emotional, spiritual and energetic life, and downplayed our innate ability to heal. In the 20th century, this view gradually started to change. Researchers began to study the mind-body connection and scientifically demonstrated complex links between the body and mind.

So, if this is true, why is Western medicine still disregarding the mind most of the time and placing all the emphasis on the body when diagnosing? Almost a century after the discovery of Quantum Physics (QP), which says that matter does not exist and that everything is energy, a vibration, why is medicine still using the Newtonian approach, which basically treats the body as a machine or as the sum of its parts? Why hasn’t today’s biology and medicine embraced Quantum Physics’ laws and discarded this Newtonian archaic approach?

Although it makes no sense whatsoever that after almost a century of this milestone discovery (QP), medicine in general today is still using an over 250 years old approach by treating the human body as a machine instead of recognizing the power of the mind and the fact that we are just pure energy, where nothing is disconnected, nothing works by itself, and nothing can go wrong on its own. The majority of today’s doctors are still not looking at the root or cause of the problems but at a simple cure to the problem being faced at the moment, which in most cases ends up to be a temporary patch that may or may not provide temporary relief and that may or may not cause other dysfunctions or side effects. This is what is called today a lazy medicine.

When you add to all this the pressure that managed care has put on medicine and on doctors and the fact that being profitable is more important than your or my health and that medicine is not run by doctors or care providers anymore but by the 500-pound gorilla, the pharmaceutical industry, which has changed (and influenced) how medicine is taught at colleges and universities, how doctors deliver treatments and drugs, how public institutions that regulate them are managed and the standards that they release and enforce, and how our political system has fallen under the big pockets of these large corporations, then we have a formula for disaster, and we are caught right in the middle of the storm.

When we talk about the mind-body connection in medicine, we need to talk about the “placebo”, and its opposite the “nocebo,” effect. The placebo, which comes from the Latin phrase meaning "I shall please," is a harmless pill, medicine, or procedure prescribed more for the psychological benefit of the patient than for any physiological effect. In fact, it has proven scientifically that around one third of the patients (30%) treated by doctors or drugs get well by themselves and not by the treatment or the drugs. In other words, one third of the patients get well by their own will, by the power of their own mind.

So, if we can get better by our own will, we, therefore, should also be able to do the opposite, get sick by our own will, or what is commonly known as the “nocebo” effect. The nocebo, which comes from the Latin phrase meaning "I shall harm," effect is said to occur when negative expectations of the patient regarding a treatment (pill, medicine or procedure) cause the treatment to have a more negative effect than it otherwise would have.

Negative thoughts are very powerful, and they are even more powerful, when they are expressed verbally (40 to 70 times more powerful than positive thoughts, studies say). When you believe that eating something is going to make you sick, that your runny nose is a sign of a cold, that a pain in a certain part of your body is a sign of cancer, etc., you are setting yourself up to manifest those thoughts in your body in the long run. If you add to that the fact that you are an overthinker, over worrier, over sensitive, a person that carries a lot of anxiety or is prone to depression, or a person that carries tumultuous feelings associated with past experiences, then you are a possible candidate to get sick or to make or worry yourself sick.

The fact is that our mind is powerful! We all know that, but what we do not know and nobody really knows is how powerful our mind is. That’s the present and future challenge for the scientific community. We have been down played, wrongly educated and advised, and put in a cage of limitations all our lives. By doing this, we have grown up and believed that we are not worthy, that we are imperfect, that we cannot do things or achieve certain goals, that we are limited, and that we are just a material being bound by what our sensory organs can perceive. Although this is very convenient for us to become worker bees in the machinery made up for others to profit greatly from, it is not convenient for us as individuals and not true! Our minds and bodies are exceptional machines with infinite power to perform, create, love and heal. Our mind is not only connected to the body but is also the bridge to connect to everything else in the universe! We are in reality a micro universe in the middle of many macro universes. Each of us is a product of what we think and feel. We are a simple manifestation of our own thoughts and emotions. So, if you want to change your life, your health, your wealth, or anything else, just change the way you think and feel. You may not have control of what happens outside, but you definitely can decide what happens inside of you!

Author: Maurice Correa
Website: pathtoone.com