Health Care and The Mind

You may have heard about the California study that randomly selected a group of teachers and assigned randomly selected students to them. They told both the teachers and the students that they were selected from the top 10% of their respective groups and that everyone expected out-standing results from this combination of elite teachers and elite students. Guess what? By the end of the school year, they did achieve outstanding marks, and only then were they told that they had been randomly selected, and on balance, were just average performers in their respective groups.

We all know the story about the little train that could – he could because he believed he could. Henry Ford put this same idea rather succinctly: “If you think you can or if you think you can’t, you’re right.” As most people know, much has been written about the power of belief, intent, expectation, and thought in creating reality. Basically, the authors are all saying that we create our reality by what we think and believe. Sound familiar? Law of Attraction maybe?

Recently, I finished a book by Bruce Lipton, Ph.D. entitled: The Biology of Belief. Lipton is a former cell biologist and medical school professor who came to the conclusion that the health or illness of cells is determined by what we think and believe. As well as using science to explain what mystics (Christ, Buddha, etc.) have been telling us for millennia, he clearly describes how genes do not cause disease. He points out that genes may have the potential for a particular disease but whether or not that disease catches hold is the result of our thoughts and beliefs.

The good news about this is that we now know we are not the victims we once thought we were, when for instance, we’d say things like: “I got cancer because it’s in the family and I inherited my parents’ genes.” Lipton allows the point that being in a particular family may be the cause of a disease, but he points out that the environment in which one grows up within a family, is where the thoughts and beliefs begin. One of his chapters is entitled: “It’s The Environment, Stupid.”

Besides Lipton, there are many medical researchers who have come to the same conclusion. However, none of this has found its way into any medical school curriculum. The closest the medical profession seems to come to this idea is that it acknowledges the placebo effect, where the belief that a pill is beneficial produces a beneficial effect, often to the same extent as the real drug against which it has been tested, and without the adverse side effects. Most Physicians know that a patient’s blood pressure will rise significantly if taken in a clinic by someone wearing a white coat or a doctor’s uniform. It’s interesting, that with things like this in everyday evidence right under their noses, these very bright people don’t take the mind into account when attempting to restore health.

It’s remarkable as well, that current medical practice is still based on the Newtonian model of reality that deals with matter, and cause and effect. For example, do this, you get that; take this pill, you get that effect, when for the past 75 years or more, science has been applying and validating the findings of Quantum Physics. Quantum Physics has validated such things as: thought moves matter, distance and location don’t matter, things can move faster that light, we are all one energy, etc.

So, why isn’t the mind included in medical studies and practice? These aren’t ignorant or stupid people and the science is clear. I can only think of two possible reasons: 1) The people running the medical profession have somehow lost sight of their original purpose or else they don’t want to change, or 2) The pharmaceutical industry feels threatened by the prospects of a declining demand for pills. Which do you think it is 1), 2), or both? Hint: Follow the money.

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