The Mind-Body Connection

Google "mind-body connection" and you'll get more than 4.7 million hits covering everything from affective response to yoga. Too funky a reference, try "integrative medicine," or"psychoneuroimmunology."

Belief that the mind contributes to illness and wellness has existed least as long as there has been recorded history. "Writing near the time of the birth of Christ, the Stoic Lucius Seneca allowed that "it is part of the cure to wish to be cured." (Felten)

In 1981, neurobiologist David Felten and researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine "...discovered a hard-wire connection between the human body's immune system and the central nervous system under control of the brain." (Felten). This finding gave substance to earlier research at the Rochester University Medical Center by pychologist Prof. Robert Ader (1974) who in rat studies, demonstrated the capacity of the rat-brain to shut down the immune system.

More than twenty years later there is still resistance from the traditional medical community to so-called "alternative medicine" based on the mind-body connection. The general response seems to be, "I doubt that it will help, but it probably won't hurt you either, so go ahead if you think it will help."

There is an interesting twist, probably unintended, within that comment. According to proponents of alternative medicine involving the mind-body connection, "...if you think it will help" is precisely when it will help. The opposite is true too, if you think it won't help, it won't. This is essentially the same premise on which Viktor Frankl's theory described in his Man's Search for Meaning (1956), is based, as well as the many books about the importance of "hope" for surviving cancer (see "books" sidebar).

In 2007, during my 50th University of Pennsylvania undergraduate reunion, I attended one of many seminars offered to alums. This one was at the Medical School, home of the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute. During the presentation on new trends in cancer treatment, the following "story" was told;

The patient, an older man, was in the final stages of cancer, within days, weeks at most, of dying. The doctors didn't want to admit him to a clinical trail that had received very favorable initial reports, but the patient and his family insisted until finally he was admitted. Within days, his tumors began to shrink, and within months there was no evident disease. Shortly, thereafter, a more detailed research study of the drug effects was published showing the initial optimism was not justified and the new drug was no better than the standard treatment. After being made aware of the new data, the patient's tumors returned within days and the patient died with a few weeks.

Apocryphal? Possibly, even probably, but not uncommon of the kind of anecdotal evidence widely available and used to justify further research and to support a variety of mind-body practices.

Next post: Self-healing through Guided Imagery