There's a healing power right under our noses.If given the right stimulus and environment, the body can heal itself.
In fact, after practicing medicine for over 3 decades, I've come to understand that this may be one of humankind's most powerful ally in fighting illness. Your body is designed to fix itself. It's designed to heal. We just need to support it so it can do its work properly.
Certainly, medical interventions have helped people in many ways and saved lives. But when it comes down to it, our bodies contain chemical and engineering wonders no pharmaceutical or medical device company has yet to match.
The challenge is finding the right way to harness this healing power.
Spontaneous Healing Is A Documented Scientific Fact
From torn ACL injuries to cancer, science has documented literally thousands of cases of people who healed themselves without the intervention of surgery or pharmaceuticals. In 1993, the Institute of Noetic Sciences published a book compiling 3500 cases of people curing themselves from seemingly incurable diseases, like stage 4 cancer, without the help of medical intervention.[1]
Many conventional doctors call these cases anomalies. Often medical researchers warn these cases of spontaneous healing should not be studied lest they give people false hope for healing without medical intervention.
But a growing minority of doctors and medical researchers are demanding these cases be given the respect and attention they deserve. Increasingly health experts are wondering what we can learn from these situations. And how they may offer better options for our patients.
For example, in 2012, researchers documented 12 cases of athletes who had suffered torn ACL’s and recovered without any intervention. In all of these cases, surgery had been planned but delayed for various reasons.
According to the study authors, the conventional wisdom is that no one can heal a torn ACL without surgery. Yet these patients not only recovered but have resumed their full athletic activities.[2]
In her book, Radical Remission, cancer researcher Dr. Kelly Turner interviewed 100 cancer survivors and documented 1000 cases of spontaneous remission from cancer. She estimates that for every documented case of spontaneous healing there are 100 that go undocumented. Turner reports on her website she was shocked no one in the medical world was researching spontaneous remissions. And consequently she felt compelled to research this and publish what she found.[3]
As Thomas Jessey wrote in a 2011 article on spontaneous remission from cancer published in the Journal of Natural Science, Biology and Medicine, “In our relentless efforts to go beyond nature to fight cancer, we often overlook the facts nature provides to heal our maladies.”[4]
Healing Yourself Requires Action
Certainly, these documented cases underscore what I’ve seen in my own practice. People have a tremendous ability to heal themselves. However, I should be clear . . . even though these cases are usually called spontaneous, there’s nothing spontaneous about them.
Dr. Turner reported in each case she studied, the person took an active role in their health.
You can’t simply sit back and wait for your body to take over and fix itself. No, in each and every case, people stop doing things that are harming their health. And they start doing things that support the body’s optimum performance.
Turner also reported, each of the cancer survivors she interviewed tapped into the emotional and spiritual aspects of healing. They all:
- Invested in their social wellbeing;
- Had faith and belief in their body’s healing ability.
- Had a strong sense of purpose and a reason to live;
- Trusted their intuition; and finallyrn- Maintained a healthy emotional state by releasing negative emotions and nurturing positive ones.
- And they took certain nutritional steps to support their body's healing process [5]
Dr. Turner is right. The power of the mind is one of the most neglected tools for healing when it comes to conventional medicine.
When you combine the power of the mind with making shifts in your lifestyle like diet and exercise, you can activate this powerful force for good. And it will do more to change your health than any surgery or drug ever can.
The body wants to be whole. It wants to work right. And it's designed to fix itself. It's up to us to give it the right environment to work the way it was engineered to work. When you do this, you unleash something no doctor can ever match.
Sources:
[1] Hirschberg C et al. Spontaneous Remission: An Annotated Bibliography. Institute of Noetic Sciences, 1993.
[2] Costa-Paz M et al. Spontaneous healing in complete ACL ruptures: a clinical and MRI study. Clin Orthop Relat Res. 2012 Apr;470(4):979-85.
[3] Turner K. Radical Remission: 9 Key Factors That Can Make A Real Difference. Harper One, 2014.
[4] Jessy T. Immunity over inability: The spontaneous regression of cancer. J Nat Sci Biol Med. 2011 Jan-Jun; 2(1): 43–49.
[5] Turner K. Radical Remissions.