A sixth grade boy had a mental health interview with me for medical reasons. Read my answers.

Sometimes I can’t believe it’s been twelve years since Mind over medicine Hit the home of the New York Times Bestseller from the gate of publication and five years I had the opportunity to completely rewrite the revised edition in 2020. (Purchase the revised edition here.) My life has gone on, I’ve written five more books since then, we’ve survived a global catastrophe, and this book continues to sell like crazy, thanks to someone you love getting a scary gift, usually alongside my partner Jeff Rediger’s Book He healed and my friend Kelly Turner’s Book Great forgiveness. (Thanks to those of you who continue to buy and recommend my book!)

Then sometimes I get these reminders about how that book actually changes how many people think about medicine, how spirituality affects your health, and how spirituality affects health. Like when professors from medical schools get to ask me if they can have permission to use the The whole cairn A model of wellness in their medical care. Or when I found out that the Canadian health care system had already cut the health system to bring the concepts of Mind over medicine And every health cairn in the Canadian public health clinic. Or when I was asked to teach surgeons at Kaiser how to pray with their spiritually inclined patients before surgery.

So I was excited when I received an email from a sixth-grader at Richmond Montessori School in Richmond, VA, who is conducting an independent research project on mental health. He wanted to ask me some questions about Placebos and Nockebos, and I was touched that my work could influence the next generation of thought leaders. Just as I am building my career on the shoulders of the medicines of the mental body like Rachel Naomi, it is the hope that today’s children can take anything that is sold in health rather than all the medicines of doctors and complete hospitals.

I thought some of you might be curious to read my answers.

1

When I talk about it Mind over medicineI’m not saying that the mind can cure everything or that people should blame themselves for being sick or think positive instead of going to the doctor. What I am i am That is to say that our thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and nervous system, which includes not only your brain but the senses of your entire body) greatly influence the body’s self-correcting mechanisms.

Your body is renewed through natural healing processes – immune function, hormonal balance, wound repair, cellular regeneration. These systems work best when the nervous system feels safe. Practices that bring us to that structure of a free night, connected to the community “The parasytharthetic state, whether that is through meditation, love, understanding, a positive therapeutic relationship, such as a trusting doctor or counselor, or hope, can set the healing abilities of the body.

So “mind over medicine” really means medicine: a partnership between what your doctor can give you and what your inner healer can do. I do not recommend ignoring your doctor’s orders. I just believe that we should pay attention to our thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and nervous system as much as we do what we eat, whether we exercise or not.

2. How to do / to do Mind over medicine Help the world around us?

When people understand that the mind, nervous system, and body are connected, we expand the way we think about health and healing. We stop seeing ourselves as just discoverable through medical intervention and begin to be active participants in our own well-being.

This helps the world because:

• It empowers people to cultivate healthy lifestyles, relationships and emotional habits.
• It encourages people to seek healing for their difficulties as part of a comprehensive medical treatment plan.
• It reduces stress, which is one of the main drivers of modern illness.
• It encourages doctors and scientists to study compassion, communication, and hope as true healing tools.
• It promotes a more humane, holistic approach to health care.

In other words, it brings great personality, compassion, strength, and personal agency into medicine, and that works for everyone.

3. Do people still use Placebos in medicine? Why or why not?

In clinical research, PlaceBOs are used all the time. Investigators rely on placebo-controlled trials to determine whether a medical intervention or drug works better than a sugar pill, saline injection, or sham surgery. Without Prebes, we cannot separate the biochemical effect of the drug from the power of expectation and belief.

In daily medical practice, doctors don’t give out “pills that don’t come in,” because that would be fake and irrational, and the trust and confidence between doctors and patients is the same. In the 1990s, Harvard once led a multidisciplinary conference on Petbos. The proceedings of this Conference were published by Anne Harrington in the book The Placebo Effect, which is widely read.

One of the studies they discussed, which I found, revolved around whether nurses should be given permission to inject ICU patients with saline when they say they are in pain from pain medication, because it can suppress their breathing. Pain is one of the responding conditions of placebo. Many types of pain get better when someone wears a white coat that controls a placebo that the patient believes is meant to help their pain.

The justified teachers debated this study period and decided that no, nurses should not give saline injections and pretend to give pain medication. I fought that one, because it seems so kind to do so. But medical systems often do what can help patients. I wrote a whole chapter inside Mind over medicine Regarding the possible clinical use of the placebo effect, but it hurts to cut because the book was too long.

What we can do Take advantage of certain traditions of medicine – white coats, compassionate conversations, complete explanations, the impression that your Doctor really cares, these traditions are like all Placebo-like drugs. They do not deceive; They simply combine natural-physical-sensory natural therapies and help us increase health outcomes through healing properties. While good faith in the healing department seems to have something to do with it, the therapeutic relationship is perhaps one of the most powerful areas of the placebo effect.

It’s interesting that we now know that Open-Label Placebos, Placebos that have been given in complete confidence – where the doctor says “I’m going to give you a placebo pill that I really believe will help you” – can still work. That tells us the answer to healing is not about manipulating people; It’s about activating meaning, trust, and the body’s own repair machinery.

4. What are the most important events in all placebo and nocebo research?

A few milestones stand out:

• 1955 – Henry Beecher’s famous paper, “the powerful placebo.”
  This was the first scientific observation that belief can affect healing, based on observations from World War II.
• 1970s-1980s – Discovery of endorphins and endogenous opioids. Researchers discovered that placebos work in part because the brain releases its own natural painkillers.
• 1980s PsychoneuroimMOlogMOlogHUNELOGEEL (PNI) discovered and popularized in Candace Pert’s Book Nerve molecules
• 1990s – Breakthroughs with NEOURAIMIG. MRI AND PET SCANS show that Placebos change actual brain activity, not just “thought.”
• 2000s-present – the rise of nocebo research.

We learned that fear, mistrust, and negative expectations can produce real symptoms, meaning the mind can hurt and heal. For example, when people are given a list of possible side effects of a drug or vaccine, they tend to develop those side effects, whether they are given a sugar pill or a saline injection.

In recent years – Sule-Label Placebo studies, many of which were carried out by Acupuncturist and Harvard Cheender TET Kaptchuk, who has removed the program of Parcebo tupties and medicine (pips) at Harvard. People get better even if they take a placebo. This is one of the most revolutionary discoveries in modern psychiatry.

5. How has it changed over time? If not, why?

Physically, the placebo itself, be it a pill, an injection, or a culture, hasn’t changed much. What has changed is our understanding of the placebo response.

Now we know:

• They are not “aggressive” people.
• It is something that can be measured mentally.
• It includes brain chemistry, immune function, hormones and the nervous system.
• It varies according to culture, medical traditions, and the doctor-patient relationship.

So the placebo itself is primitive. Snake oil has been around long before real drugs have been developed that have been proven to work better than Petbos. But our awareness of how powerful it is is greatly increased.

6. Does the type of placebo affect the outcome?

Of course. The “amazing” the placebo, the stronger the effect. Research shows:

• Injections produce stronger placebo responses than pills.
• Larger pills work better than smaller pills.
• Colored pills work differently depending on the color (eg blue is commanding, red is reinforcing).
• Two pills work better than one.
• SHAM surgery (sham surgery) produces some of the most powerful placebo effects ever recorded, as best demonstrated by Bruce Moseley, the Houston Orthopedic Government who is about to appear only as those who receive a complete arthroscopic procedure.

This does not mean that people think about progress. It means the culture itself influences the brain and nervous system, like the reality of prayer, meditation, or being cared for with love.

7. Finding a placebo tone?

The word “placebo” was first used in medicine in the 1700s, but the effect itself was discovered gradually. The first major scientific documents were during World War II, when anesthesiologist Henry Beecher ran out of morphine and watched the pain of soldiers after they collapsed with saline. But people have been experiencing placebo responses for thousands of years, long before we developed this language. Healing rituals, shamanic ceremonies, prayer, and community care all tap into the same physical pathways.

8. How long does it take for a placebo response to occur?

It can be surprisingly fast. Research shows that ParDBOS can produce measurable changes in minutes (pain relief, blood shifts), hours (changes in hormone levels or inflammatory markers), where belief and expectation are built over time). Time depends on the situation, the person, and the context. But the body responds with meaning and anticipation much faster than most people realize.

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