In her book, “Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself”, Dr Lissa Rankin M.D., lays out many remarkable examples of how the mind can affect the body. Dr Rankin, a Western-trained physician and obstetrics and gynaecology doctor from California, pored over hundreds of peer-reviewed studies from medical journals to find proof for her theory the mind can cure the body. She shares some of the extraordinary cases that she came across. “A woman whose cancer shrank away to nothingness during radiation. Only afterward did the doctors discover that the radiation machine was busted. She hadn’t actually received one lick of radiation, but she believed she had.”
Your mind can be a great ally in your healing. In one incident, a woman who truly believed the cancer treatment was going to help her condition found her cancer was gone after radiation. Only later did the doctors realize the radiation machine was broken, yet the woman was healed of her cancer because she completely believed she was going to heal.
In her book, she cites a study in which a group of patients were given a saline solution which they were told could be chemotherapy. Despite the fact it was only salt water, 30 per cent of the patients lost their hair. She also mentions the case of a psychiatric patient with a split personality who is diabetic when she is in one personality and not when she is in the other to the point where her blood sugar readings change dramatically. These also include a patient who suffered from severe nausea and vomiting – whom was given a drug she was told would undoubtedly cure her. Within a few minutes, she recovered entirely despite the fact that the doctors had lied to her – she had actually been given a drug known not to prevent nausea, but to cause it.
Through her research, Dr Rankin discovered that patients who are given placebos do not just feel better – they can actually become clinically better. She writes: “I had been thoroughly indoctrinated into the dogmatic principles of evidence-based medicine, which I worship like the Bible. I refused to trust anything I couldn’t prove with a randomised, controlled clinical trial. “Plus, also having been raised by my father, a very conventional physician who made fun of anything New Age, I was as hard-nosed, closed-minded, and cynical as they come.”
However, as her experience of medicine grew, her views started to change. She wrote, “Even the most closed –minded doctors witness patients who get well when, by every scientific rationale, they shouldn’t.” “When we witness such things, we can’t help questioning everything we hold dear in modern medicine. We start to wonder if there is something more mystical at play.” She went on, “But what if we’ve got it all wrong? What if, by denying the fact that the body is naturally wired to heal itself and the mind operates this self-healing system, we’re actually sabotaging ourselves?”
“Yet another woman broke her neck. After being taken to a hospital and getting X-rays that confirmed that she had broken her neck in two places, she opted to refuse medical intervention and saw a faith healer instead, despite her doctors’ vehement objections. Without any medical treatment, she was out jogging a month later.” “A woman with stage 4 ovarian cancer “just knew” she wasn’t going to die, and, after rallying the support of the people who love her, is still alive ten years later. “A man with blocked coronary arteries diagnosed after a heart attack was told he would die within a year if he didn’t have heart surgery. After refusing surgery, he lived 20 more years and died – not from heart disease – at 92.
Another example from her book, Dr Lissa Rankin cites a man who had a heart attack and found to have severe blocked coronary arteries. He was warned by the doctors that if he didn’t have a heart surgery, he would die within a year. He refused the heart surgery, and yet lived on for 20 more years, and died from something other than heart disease.
“As I heard these stories, I couldn’t ignore the gnawing voice within me. Surely, these people couldn’t all be liars. But if they weren’t lying, the only explanation was something beyond what I had learned in conventional medicine.” “I couldn’t help wondering if, perhaps, by not at least considering the possibility that patients might have some control over healing themselves, I was being an irresponsible doctor and violating the sacred Hippocratic Oath. Surely, if I were a good doctor, I would be willing to open my mind in service to the patients I cared for.”
In her book, she encourages readers to improve their health not by taking medications, but by addressing psychological and lifestyle factors that are causing their illnesses. Dr Rankin worked as a doctor until she became frustrated that she saw so many patients who were clearly ill and suffering, but who continually returned negative test results. She says she was seeing 40 patients a day and knew she was not helping them by diagnosing them ‘well’ from test results despite seeing they were chronically fatigued, anxious and in pain.
By the time she was 32 she had been through two divorces, was on 3 medications for high blood pressure, and had just been diagnosed with pre-cancerous cells in her cervix. She was disillusioned with her job and fed up of wearing all the ‘masks’ of professional doctor, perfect wife and new mother. She then experienced her ‘perfect storm’. Within 2 weeks of giving birth to her daughter, Dr Rankin’s 16-year old dog died, her brother was admitted to surgery with acute liver failure, her husband cut two of his fingers off with a table saw, and her father died of a brain tumor.
“They say when your life falls apart, you either grow or you grow a tumor. Fortunately for me I decided to grow,” she said. As a result, she left her job and now she works as an author and inspirational speaker preaching that patients have self – healing powers and that they can solve their own health problems.
Lissa Rankin, MD writes about the many remarkable examples of how the mind can affect the body in her book, “Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself”. Dr Rankin, a Western-trained physician and obstetrics and gynaecology doctor from California, pored over hundreds of peer-reviewed studies from medical journals to find proof for her theory that the mind can cure the body.
She writes: “There’s proof that you can radically alter your body’s physiology just by changing your mind. There’s also proof that you can make yourself sick when your mind thinks unhealthy thoughts. And it’s not just mental. It’s physiological.” Another patient detailed in the Journal of Clinical Investigation suffered from severe nausea and vomiting. Instruments measured the contractions in her stomach, indicating a chaotic pattern that matched her diagnosis.
Then she was offered a new, magical, extremely potent drug, which her doctors promised would undoubtedly cure her nausea. Within a few minutes, her nausea vanished, and the instruments measured a normal pattern. But the doctors had lied. Instead of receiving a potent new drug, that she had been dosed with ipecac, a substance known not to prevent nausea, but to induce it. Researchers in San Diego examined the death records of almost 30,000 Chinese-Americans and compared them to over 400,000 randomly selected white people.
What they found was that Chinese-Americans, but not whites, die significantly earlier than normal (by as much as five years) if they have a combination of disease and birth year that Chinese astrology and Chinese medicine consider ill-fated. The researchers found that the more strongly the Chinese-Americans attached themselves to Chinese traditions, the earlier they died. When they examined the data, they concluded that the reduction in life expectancy could not be explained by genetic factors, lifestyle choices or behavior of the patient, the skill of the doctor, or any other variable.
Why did the Chinese-Americans die younger? The researchers concluded that they died younger not because they had Chinese genes, but because they had Chinese beliefs. They believed they would die younger because the stars had hexed them. And negative beliefs manifested as a shorter life. One fascinating case study described a psychiatric patient with a split personality. As one personality, the patient was not diabetic and her blood glucose levels were normal.
However, the moment she became her alter ego, she believed she was diabetic, and she literally became diabetic. Her entire physiology shifted. Her blood sugars rose, and from all medical evidence, she was, in fact, diabetic. When her personality flipped back, her blood sugars returned to normal. The degree of social support you experience even affects the likelihood of cure if you do wind up sick. A University of California, at San Francisco study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology investigated the social networks of nearly 3,000 nurses with breast cancer. This study found that the women who had been socially isolated before their breast cancer diagnosis had a 66 per cent higher risk of mortality from any cause and a twofold risk of breast cancer mortality. The nurses who went through cancer alone were found to be four times more likely to die from their disease than those with ten or more friends supporting their journey.
In a research done, Chinese Americans were found to die much earlier than the white Americans. When investigated to find out the reason why, the researchers concluded they died younger not because they had Chinese genes, but because they had Chinese beliefs. They believed they would die younger because the stars had hexed them. And their negative belief also manifested as a shorter life.
Dr Rankin also writes about a patient with lymphosarcoma who recovered miraculously when given a drug he believed would save him despite the fact that all of the later evidence suggested the drug was ineffective. But Mr Wright desperately wanted to live, and he hung his hope on a promising new drug called Krebiozen. He begged his doctor to treat him with the new drug, but the drug was only being offered in clinical trials to people who were believed to have at least three months left to live. Mr Wright was too sick to qualify.
But he didn’t give up. Knowing the drug existed and believing the drug would be his miracle cure, he pestered his doc until Dr West reluctantly gave in and injected him with Krebiozen. Dr West performed the procedure on a Friday, but deep down, he didn’t believe Mr Wright would last the weekend. To his utter shock, the following Monday, Dr West found his patient walking around out of bed.
According to Dr Klopfer, Mr Wright’s ‘tumour masses had melted like snowballs on a hot stove’ and were half their original size. 10 days after the first dose of Krebiozen, Mr Wright left the hospital, apparently cancer-free. Then the scientific literature began reporting that Krebiozen didn’t seem to be effective. When Mr Wright, whom trusted what he read in the literature, fell into a deep depression, and his cancer came back.
This time, Dr West, who genuinely wanted to help save his patient, decided to get sneaky. He also told Mr Wright some of the initial supplies of the drugs had deteriorated during shipping, making them less effective, however, that he also had scored a new batch of highly concentrated, ultra-pure Krebiozen, which he could give him. (Of course, this was a bald-faced lie.) Dr West then injected Mr Wright with distilled water.
The tumours melted away, the fluid in his chest disappeared, and Mr Wright was feeling great again for another two months. Then the American Medical Association blew it by announcing a nationwide study of Krebiozen proved the drug utterly worthless. This time, Mr Wright lost all faith in his treatment. His cancer came right back, and he died two days later.
Preview Lissa Rankin: Mind Over Medicine
