Does overcoming the disease depend on our psyche, our positive thinking, or only on modern medicine? There are healing powers in every human being. We know they can help. What is the mechanism of their action? Is self-medication possible?

How do people extend their lives? Can everyone do it? Can we use these skills consciously? The answers to these questions would be a step towards immortality, so many appropriate experiments have been done and today we have partially understood what the healing powers of the organism are. By the way, it also turned out that the skillsself-healingare possessed not only by humans, but also by animals!

Self-medication is possible when the patient has hope

A psychologist threw a rat into a vat, the edges of which were smooth as glass. The rat swam around in the icy water, trying to get out, but soon found himself trapped with no way out. After 15 minutes, he began to sink. It was lying on the bottom, almost dead when it was fished out. Another rat was then thrown into the water. This one also began to sink after a quarter of an hour. Then he was given a board to climb onto. The rat crawled out onto "dry ground" and shook himself. After a moment of rest, he was thrown back into the same vat. And then an extraordinary thing happened: this time the rat swam for more than 60 hours without a break, until the organism was completely exhausted! It was as if he was kept alive by the hope that someone would give him a last resort again.

What is this hope? The researchers initially thought that a rat trapped begins to sink because it is being killed by stress - its heart cannot stand the fear. However, it turned out to be untrue - the animal's heart was beating slower and slower, as if the rat had given up, he concluded that there was no point in fighting further. This resignation was responsible for the fact that the animal was drowning. When hope arose, the animal continued to fight. It has an analogue in people's lives. For example, older people placed against their will in a care home die much faster than those who have consented to stay voluntarily. The former develop a feeling of helplessness (as in rats thrown into a vat with cold water). When older people were given a say in how they live in retirement homes - for example, they could make decisionsabout arranging their room, meal times, meeting times with friends, etc. - they lived longer than when they had nothing to say. A sense of influence on important areas of their own life, hope for the better tomorrow, waiting for a joyful event (e.g. a holiday) releases the energy that makes the body fightdiseasemore efficiently and not give up (like a rat waiting for a board). Even if this sense of having influence is only illusory, it improves the well-being and condition of the body. Faith makes miracles! As one doctor jokingly stated, "If a patient really wants to heal and believes he can get better, medicine is powerless." There are more of these hidden self-healing forces in man.

Important

Death must wait

If we examine the frequency of natural (from old age) dying of people in different months of the year, it turns out that it is not even. In our northern hemisphere, people most often die in winter (especially in January and February), and the fewest deaths occur during the summer (June and July). This variability is related, on the one hand, to the harsher winter aura, higher morbidity at lower temperatures, etc. On the other hand, however, it has been found that there is something strange going on with mortality during the holidays. Just before Christmas, the number of deaths drops significantly and mysteriously, and increases after Christmas. It looks as if old people were extending their lives to wait for the holidays, and then let "nature do its job". The decline in mortality is certainly related to psychology and not to weather factors or other objective changes in the environment!

When examining mortality in China, where important religious holidays fall in a period other than ours, the effect of "waiting for holidays" can also be observed! This research can be regarded as a hard proof that people can prolong life, inhibit the development of the disease only through free will. The effect of "waiting for Christmas" probably has a wider scope - it appears when someone wants to wait for a birthday, meeting with a long-lost family member, etc.

Healing placebo effect

Sometimes some treatments or tablets help the patient not because they contain some healing substance, but because they trigger the belief that they are beneficial. The effectplacebo- because we are talking about it - is confirmed by numerous experiences.

Researchers have found that when people take medications and expect them to provide relief, the brain releases endorphins, which trigger physiological states that are beneficial to the body.

Sick people were asked to agree toexperimental treatment. They were divided into two groups so that they did not differ in the severity of the disease and prognosis. One group was given large bitter tablets (supposedly a new wonder drug) that did not really contain any active healing agents. The second group was given tablets with the same composition but which looked like candies. It turned out that patients who took large white pills (typical medicine) recovered faster than those who took the "colored candy". The white tablet triggered the belief that the healing process had begun and that it actually started.

The placebo effect can be triggered by various factors and circumstances. We also know him from everyday life. For example, for a child, when her finger is harmlessly cut, her mother puts the plaster on, then the little one calms down and says: "It doesn't hurt anymore." When a child hits himself, the parents blow on the wounded area to ease the suffering. Among primitive cultures, there are various magical rituals that "cast out evil spirits" and restore he alth. The therapeutic effect of the placebo has a physiological explanation.

Every third Pole uses home treatments, and 90 percent. takes over-the-counter medications

About every third Pole who develops symptoms uses home treatments. Self-medication - which involves the safe and rational use of over-the-counter medications for a few days until symptoms resolve - can support the he alth care system and even reduce lines to doctors. The CBOS research shows that such drugs are taken by almost 90 percent. Poles.

Source: biznes.newseria.pl

The power of authority

However, in order for the regular powder to cause the placebo effect and become a "medicine", certain conditions must be met. One is that the "healing" substance should be prescribed by an authority figure. In the old days, the role of such an authority, having contact with gods or supernatural powers, was played by shamans, healers, sorcerers, fortune-tellers, etc. placebo. In our times, famous doctors are surrounded by the halo of authority, but also famous hypnotists, charismatic priests, etc. Treatments and medications prescribed by these people almost automatically gain healing power, even if they do not have it themselves.

Patient involvement necessary for self-treatment to take effect

An important condition for the "magic cures" to work is to involve the patient in the healing process. If he cares about recovery, if he accepts toil and suffering for it,To get better, the decision itself and the associated costs (financial, effort and discomfort) increase the chance of activating the body's self-healing powers.

In one experiment, people who suffer from a fear of snakes (ofidiophobia) were asked if they would like to undergo therapy. Those who agreed were first let into the room with the aquarium with snakes. The distance they kept from the aquarium was discreetly measured as a measure of the strength of their phobias. Then all of them were subjected to various types of therapies. After they were finished, they measured again how close they got to the aquarium with the snakes. It turned out that some people have almost completely lost their phobias. The most amazing thing was that it was those who cured the most effort to heal, even if it was just push-ups (people were convinced that it was a method of reducing anxiety through exercise). The more push-ups a person did, the less fear they felt afterwards. It was also amazing that if people were not asked for consent to participate in the therapy, but were subjected to the same treatment procedures (e.g. they were ordered to do push-ups or were psychoanalyzed), the anxiety did not decrease. These effects may seem incomprehensible. However, psychology can explain them.

What heals is the patient's involvement and the costs (including emotional costs) that he incurs during treatment, provided that he undertook these efforts and costs voluntarily. This voluntary decision activates a conscious and unconscious motivation to change, the mind then uses all the means at its disposal to really help itself.

This has been proven in experiments. In one, people who had volunteered for "psychological experiments" were asked to agree to bear the shock of the current. The second group was simply told that they would be electrocuted for experimental purposes, they were not asked to give their prior consent to this ( although of course no coercion was applied, anyone could withdraw from the experiment at any time). Both groups experienced electric shocks of the same strength. It turned out, however, that those who voluntarily agreed to endure them said they felt less pain than the other group. But it is not everything! Objective measures of pain (eg, EEG) confirmed that they actually experienced less pain. This improvement in well-being was caused by the simple procedure of making the subjects believe that they had freely agreed to the pain. The patient's involvement in the healing process is therefore of great importance for recovery.

Positive thinking - the basis of self-healing

In one experiment, asthmatics were prescribed inhalers in which a medicine to reduce breathlessness was mixed with vanilla flavor. During an attack of dyspnea, the patient inhaled the medicine and at the same time felt a pleasant smell. Later, when patients were given an inhaler containing only vanilla-scented water, the bronchi reacted as if they had been given the medicine - the breathlessness subsided. The combination of the drug with the scent gave vanilla a healing power! This amazing effect has been confirmed many times. The strangest thing, however, is that certain thoughts can become healing stimuli.

People who create pleasant, constructive images become he althier. Those who remember failures, misfortunes and misfortunes endlessly, additionally make themselves sick.

Researchers have found that you can therefore improve your he alth by regularly creating images (visualizations). This method is based on the fact that the patient learns to imagine that he is recovering, that a beneficial substance (e.g. silver water) flows through his body and cleans him of all toxins and diseases.

The state of relaxation that activates then and the image of recovery actually inhibit the development of the disease. All the procedures in question do not, of course, exclude the usual pharmacological treatment. However, in the psyche there are powerful forces that can contribute to the emergence and persistence of diseases as well as their disappearance. If we know these forces and are able to use them - we do not give in to disease.

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Category:

Psychology