Thinking Yourself Sick. Is That Possible?

Health and illness are today seen as a complex balance in the interaction between body and mind, between the organism and its thoughts. Little by little we have developed a reductionist view that has made less important the influence that the subjective world has on our bodies, and therefore on illness and health.  This while our thoughts are actually very powerful. Not only can you think yourself sick, but you can think yourself better. 

Conventional medicine is gradually becoming more aware of its own limits. The twentieth century was characterized by a paradigm in which the idea of ​​the body as a machine predominated. From this point of view, the organism was seen as a device made up of several parts and disease represented a dysfunction in one of these parts, both functionally and structurally.

However, thanks to these advances in medicine, it has also become possible to demonstrate that this internal dimension has a very strong influence on the state of one’s health, whether directly or indirectly. This influence becomes even more noticeable when you consider how healthy or sick a person thinks they are. That’s why I mentioned before that, in my opinion, thoughts are indeed capable of making us sick and killing us, but that thoughts can also heal us.

Pharmacological Medicine and the Medicine of Thought

Bruce Lipton, a doctor of cellular biology and author of several books, has delved deeply into the subject of health and disease and the influence our thoughts have on these processes. And his discoveries and conclusions are really very interesting.

Lipton points out that pharmacological medicine is actually a big failure. He says this because chemical drugs, each and every one of them, cause side effects that are even more negative than the disease they are supposed to fight. In fact, he states that most of these drugs can be deadly with prolonged use.

He also indicates that the natural environment of body cells consists of blood and that changes in our blood are determined by the nervous system. At the same time, the natural environment of the nervous system consists of thoughts and feelings. Based on this, Lipton is convinced that it is our thoughts and feelings that ultimately make us sick and, as a result, also constitute the resources that can help us to heal.

The Power Thoughts Have Over the Body

It’s not just Bruce Lipton who thinks so. There are plenty of other researchers who attribute a lot of power to our thoughts in the process of disease and healing. Even the most knowledgeable doctors in pharmacology know that when a person is seriously ill, the chances of recovery are greater if they are in a supportive environment, surrounded by affection and trust.

This is not esoteric knowledge, nor an effect produced by the extraordinary. The explanation for the power our thoughts have over our bodies is also simply a matter of chemistry. When a person is confronted with a pleasant presence or can enjoy a positive stimulus, his brain secretes dopamine, oxytocin and a range of other substances that have a healthy effect on his body cells. The opposite occurs when there is a negative stimulus, which arouses fear, anger or other destructive emotions.

The organism takes on a mammoth task every day: producing trillions of new cells to replace the cells that have died. In addition, it must protect itself against the thousands of pathogens that endanger its health. If your body feels like it has to fight against very negative environmental stimuli day in and day out, it will spend all its energy on this and it will put aside other functions such as growth and protection. The result: you get sick more easily.

Between suggestion and energy

The placebo effect has already been studied in various contexts and the results of these studies have shed a lot of light on the influence that placebos have on our body perception. In fact, there are several drugs available today that are only slightly better than placebos. These placebos are undeniable proof that the influence our thoughts have – in the case of a placebo, our expectations – can be enormously powerful: you believe it will heal you and automatically your symptoms will begin to subside.

Quantum physics has emphasized the importance of energy, which is the final composition of matter. Everything and everyone is, in its most primitive form, energy. That is why the development of new drugs has focused more on balancing energy instead of chemically modifying the body. This is based on the idea that the processes of disease are set in motion by energetic imbalances.

These imbalances are the result of being programmed to think negatively, something that begins in childhood. You may have already convinced yourself on a conscious level that you need to change the way you think, but something deep inside is still holding you back. So it is not your conscious thoughts that need to be changed, but that unconscious programming that we carry with us from an early age. This is how you can bring about changes that improve your mental health, and therefore your physical health.

Editor’s Note: This article is in no way intended to undermine the importance of pharmacology when it comes to fighting diseases such as cancer; we can even say that pharmacology is extremely essential. What we do want to make clear is that our mental health and physiological well-being are two elements that both have a strong influence on a person’s treatment, and that this influence can be changed to improve or worsen the diagnosis.

Images Courtesy of Marcel Caram