“If I told patients to raise their blood levels of immune globulins or killer T-cells, no one would know how. But if I can teach them to love themselves and others fully, the same change happens automatically. The truth is: Love heals.” Bernie Siegel, M.D., Love, Medicine and Miracles
If it’s true that love heals …. that we have an untapped reservoir of inner healing potential …. that’s being validated by a wealth of new science …. then why are we in the midst of a huge health care crisis? It’s because the research emerging from fields such as epigenetics, neuroscience, and neurocardiology …. research that truly empowers the individual …. is being ignored in favor of more costly, dangerous, and profitable drug and surgical interventions …. that support huge corporate interests.
What epigenetics and the other new sciences are validating that the drug companies don’t want you to know:
- The most powerful influence over your biochemistry …. what programs your brain to program your biochemistry …. is buried emotional conflict.
- All that ‘emotional stuff’ that’s been swept under the rug is programming our biology to create illness. That’s what the new science is telling us. Maybe it’s out of sight or out of mind …. but it’s not out of the body.
- Of course diet and nutrition are very important factors that we want to include in an effective healing program …. but it’s the buried emotion that’s exerting the most powerful biological programming over your health.
When you’re fully informed and armed with effective tools for change new possibilities for creating health and happiness emerge. ‘Self-Regulation’ skills are an excellent way for you to ‘reprogram’ your emotional experience, your brain, your biochemistry …. and ultimately your health.
This overview emphasizes the powerful impact that beliefs and emotions, both conscious and especially unconscious, have on our health. You’ll be reminded that emotional experience triggers biological programs that lead us either towards healing or illness. When programs are running that support healing, supplying the body with the appropriate diet and nutrition will encourage the healing process. On the other hand, when emotional states trigger programs that foster the creation of illness, no amount of supportive diet or nutrition is likely to override that programming.
What follows is a sampling of the new science, much of which was culled from Dawson Church’s The Genie in Your Genes, that validates the powerful impact your mind and emotions have over your health. This is to remind you that the power to heal is within you …. and that this inner capacity is indisputably confirmed by research.
- Bruce Lipton, Ph.D. is a cell biologist who authored the bestselling book, The Biology of Belief. His book summarizes the new biology that’s confirming the link between gene expression and belief. Essentially, what we feel and what we believe (unconsciously) are the primary determinants of gene expression and the biochemistry that results.
- META-Medicine consulting has its roots in the work of the German physician, Dr. Ryke Geerd Hamer. What distinguishes his work from other systems that suggest a correlation between suppressed emotion and illness (such as Louise Hay) is his use of Computed Tomography (CT) scans of the brain to confirm the link between emotional experience, brain relays, and body tissues and organs. His scans were used to document the consistency with which specific disease processes are triggered by the same emotional shock. Emotional shock is visualized in the CT scan as a circular ring.
- Through thousands of case studies Dr. Hamer found that patients sharing the same intense emotional shocks and unresolved conflicts, also shared the same disease patterns, and the same CT scan markings. We use the mind-body maps discovered by Dr. Hamer, his colleague Dr. Claude Sabbah, and others involved in this work to identify the likely conflicts that are related to individual disease states. In my experience a CT scan is no longer a necessary or desirable part of the META-Medicine consulting process.
- A 2004 meta-analysis by Segerstrom and Miller at the University of Kentucky examined 30 years of research involving over 300 empirical articles and concluded that 85% of primary care physician visits was due to the results of unconscious stress. The stress response is triggered, and then chronically activated, by the emotional insults, traumas, and unresolved conflicts that we’ve buried over the course of our lives. Chronically hidden emotion upsets the natural balance of your autonomic nervous system, disturbing your body’s natural ability to maintain and repair itself, making you even more vulnerable to the effects of poor diet, environmental toxins, and microbes.
- Manhattan Orthopedist John Sarno,, M.D. has written a number of popular books about pain and its relationship to the psyche. His research and clinical experience support the notion that a significant number of painful conditions, ranging from carpal tunnel syndrome to fibromyalgia, are best treated by addressing buried emotions. His rationale is that the psyche is attempting to protect us from overwhelming or unacceptable emotions by distracting us with physical pain. When put into practice this realization allowed him to achieve a success rate of 85% when treating patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Dr. Sarno’s most recent book, The Divided Mind: The Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders offers compelling evidence for the therapeutic benefit of treating the mind and emotions when addressing a wide variety of chronic illnesses.
- An enlightening Kaiser Permanente study involving over 70,000 individuals showed that childhood emotional trauma was a significant factor in the development of chronic disease later in life. This type of information is showing us that for the most part, illness results from unresolved emotional stressors and conflicts and that effective treatment must address these buried issues.
- Here is a brief summary of research conducted at the Institute of HeartMath demonstrating the powerful influence that our emotions have in regulating our biochemistry.
- In a group study conducted over a 30 day period participants instructed in the HeartMath techniques were on average able to double their serum levels of DHEA (the anti-aging hormone) and reduce cortisol (the stress hormone) levels by 23%. These hormone changes are evidence of glandular repair and system wide healing.
- IgA (immunoglobulin A) is an immune system antibody and one of the body’s first lines of defense against colds, flu and infections of the respiratory and urinary tracts. In a group study it was found that one five-minute episode of mentally and emotionally recalling an experience of anger caused an immediate short-term rise in IgA, followed by a depletion that was so severe it took the body more than six hours to restore normal production of IgA. What this study showed is that even a single episode of recalling an experience of anger and frustration can depress your immune system for almost an entire day.
- This same IgA study also showed that one five-minute episode of mentally and emotionally experiencing the emotions of care and compassion caused a much larger, immediate rise in IgA–an average of 34%–followed by a return to normal (baseline). However, the IgA levels then gradually climbed above baseline throughout the next six hours. Learning to manage the moment and increase the ratio of your positive attitudes and feelings can improve your quality of life and well-being.
- Other studies also show that feelings of happiness and joy increase white blood cell counts needed for healing and defend against invading pathogens, including cancer and virus-infected cells.
- HeartMath experiments have shown that measurable molecular changes in the DNA molecule can result from human desires, intention and emotions.
- A summary of studies on The Placebo Effect
- A 2002 article in the New England Journal of Medicine reported on a knee surgery study performed at Baylor University by Bruce Mosley, M.D. The study was to determine which of two types of orthoscopic knee surgery for osteoarthritic knees was best. Three groups of test subjects were created, one for each of the two different types of surgery and a third group, a control group that received only an incision on their knees, which led them to believe they had been recipients of reparative surgery as well. The surprising results of this study were that the control group that had only believed they had received the surgery did as well in terms of pain relief and increased range of motion as those receiving actual surgery. There are 650,000 knee surgeries every year in the U.S., like the two forms tested in this study …. that total over three billion dollars annually.
- A recent drug trial found that 24% of depressed patients got better taking an herb, St. John’s Wort. Those taking Zoloft did marginally better at 25%. The star of the study that produced a 32% improvement was the placebo.
- In 2006, the U.S. federal government released the results of two large-scale studies of anti-depressant drugs. They found that the tests, “failed to show that the drugs were safer or more effective than a placebo.”
- Irving Kristol, Ph.D., a psychologist at the University of Connecticut, who analyzed the results of drug studies for depression found that at least three quarters of the entire effect of antidepressants is due to the placebo effect.
- Prozac had to go through ten clinical trials to accomplish four trials with a marginally better cure rate than a placebo. Currently drug companies can conduct many trials before meeting the FDA requirement of two trials that show that the drug is marginally more effective than a placebo
- While placebos have no side effects, the same cannot be said for prescription drugs. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, some 250,000 people die each year from the negative effects of properly prescribed drugs, unnecessary surgeries, infections they pick up in hospitals, and other iatrogenic (doctor caused) illnesses, making iatrogenic illness the third largest cause of death in the U.S. just behind cancer and heart disease. According to a meticulous and recent analysis of data from a spectrum of U.S. government agencies, when all other factors (such as medical errors) are included, the number rises to 783,966, making doctors, drugs, and hospitals the leading cause of death in the United States.
Hope these mind-body factoids were interesting …. if not encouraging. Ideally this information serves as welcome encouragement to stay regular with your self-regulating practices …. and to take back your power to heal.
Dr. Templin offers online courses and consultations, and sees patients personally in his office in Lakeland, Florida. You can learn more about his course Bio-Energetic Focusing: A Revolutionary Medical Model for Self-Healing! here.
Steven Templin, D.O.M., Dipl. Ac., is a Doctor of Oriental Medicine, specializing in MindBody Medicine. He is a certified META-Medicine Health Coach and nationally certified acupuncturist. He shares the underlying science and more importantly, the practical tools for resolving the unconscious energetic and emotional roots of illness. In his online course Bio-Energetic Focusing: A Revolutionary Medical Model for Self-Healing! he provides training in Self-Regulation skills, that include Bio-Energetic Focusing, HeartMath and Energy Psychology techniques, Energy Medicine modalities, and Gastrointestinal repair for enhanced immunity, mood, and mental clarity. Dr. Templin is in private practice in Lakeland, Florida, at the Natural Medicine Center of Lakeland.
