The question is: What can you do to battle sickness once modern medicine has reached its limits?
The answer is a controversial one. Some say that your outlook may make a difference in how your body responds to illness. And while some believers swear by this concept, others feel that it’s an old wives’ tale.
At the end of the day, it’s your opinion that counts. But if you’re looking for alternative ways to improve health, this research may be helpful in your pursuit. Here’s are five ways that your outlook may make a difference in the way of sickness.
- Positive thinking
Can positive thinking help you beat an illness? The answer just may be yes.
According to Psych Central, the reason why a positive attitude transcends to faster recovery isn’t really known. But it’s said to promote both coping skills and faster recovery time for many conditions like surgery, cancer, heart disease and even HIV/AIDS.
Researchers think that positive thinking may create a direct link between the mind and the immune system. According to Psych Central, one study analyzed how this concept affects law students. In the students’ first year of law school, they were polled about their views on their first year. Mid-semester, confident students displayed “more and better functioning immune cells than the worried students.”
Negative thinking may have opposite effects. Researchers attribute this to a link between pessimism and stress hormones. So negative thinking may have an effect on how your body responds to your thoughts.
Plus, positive thinking transcends to how we approach life in general. If we’re happy, we’re going to treat ourselves with respect and a loving attitude. But if we’re negative, we may treat ourselves badly.
- Laughter
If you want to recover from sickness, give laughing a try. According to the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, laughter therapy is very real.
The use of laughter for good health is not new. In fact, experts say that this concept was seen centuries ago, first arising in the 13th century. Then, in the 20th century, a man named Norman Cousins studied the concept after battling pain himself.
And guess what? He said it worked. According to the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, “Cousins claims to have cured himself with a self-invented regimen of laughter and vitamins.” In a book about the concept, he attributed funny movies to his recovery.
Since then, this concept has been studied time and time again. And study subjects who engage in laughter-promoting situations find they have less pain. Stress hormone levels fall, and the immune system is said to kick into gear. This is why many health experts promote laughter therapy as a part of recovery from illness in addition to conventional medical treatments.
So go ahead, laugh. Cue up your favorite flick and let the giggles begin. Or hook up with a humorous friend and tell stories about funny life events. When you do this, your body will respond in beneficial ways. And best of all, your outlook will improve.
- Religion and Spirituality
According to Live Science, religion may soothe anxiety. However, the referenced study regarding this approach transcends to an actual belief in God as opposed to general spirituality. (This doesn’t mean that spirituality isn’t just as effective. This is just true of what Live Science reports in this particular instance.)
In the study, brain waves of subjects were measured. Scientists were looking for a “distress response while participants made mistakes on a test.” The findings were fascinating. Subjects who had engaged in religious thoughts responded in a calmer way to mistakes than those who hadn’t prepared religiously. In fact, when people engaged in religious thinking, the brain actually had a different response. Subjects were more resilient and less anxious.
“Eighty-five percent of the world has some sort of religious beliefs,” Michael Inzlicht of the University of Toronto-Scarborough, who co-wrote the study, tells Live Science. “I think it behooves us as psychologists to study why people have these beliefs; exploring what functions, if any, they may serve…Thinking about religion makes you calm under fire. It makes you less distressed when you’ve made an error.”
That said, atheists showed a different response. But researchers say this isn’t a reason for concern. “We think this can occur with any meaning system that provides structure and helps people understand their world,” Inzlicht adds.
According to Live Science, the study was published in Psychological Science, which is a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
- Traditional Chinese Medicine
- Awareness
Conventional medicine is an essential part of recovery from illness, but traditional Chinese medicine might help, too.
According to Dimensions of Culture, traditional Chinese medicine revolves around the concept that “all of creation is born from the marriage of two polar principles, Yin and Yang.” The examples they use are earth and heaven, day and night, cold and hot, and even body and mind. When connected, these opposites are said to create harmony.
“The yin and yang symbol is helpful in representing this concept. Harmony means health, good weather, and good fortune, while disharmony leads to disease, disaster, and bad luck,” reports Dimensions of Culture. “The strategy of Chinese medicine is to restore harmony. Each human is seen as a world in miniature, and every person has a unique terrain to be mapped, a resilient yet sensitive ecology to be maintained.”
Experts equate this concept to a gardener irrigating his or her garden and using compost to promote healthy plants.
If you’ve heard of Dr. Bernie Siegel, you know that he’s a huge promoter of the link between outlook and recovery from illness, and part of this concept is how we view illness in general.
“We do not seek meaning, serenity or answers when our life is stable and peaceful,” Siegel says. “We accept our good fortune and don’t question our beliefs. But when life blesses us with afflictions, diseases, death, or loss, the search begins.”
This is why Siegel uses workshops to create awareness. “Pain is the unwanted gift that defines and protects us. You would literally lose parts of your body and ultimately your life if you were numb to all experiences. Yet our society promotes numbness in so many ways.”