let's take a look at this mind-body connection you all know of Pavlov's
experiments where he conditioned the dog whereby the mere ringing of a bell
caused the dog to salivate the ringing of the Bell caused the mind to change
its state in the dog and the change of state caused the dog to salivate so
right here you have the mind and the body connection we also see that
people's appearances change based on their state of mind and that is why you
look at somebody and say why are you looking so down today the person's
thought processes have impacted the appearance are you saying oh you seem so
jolly today so again the thought has a connection with the mind if that is the
case why should there not be a similar strong and deep connection between the
mind and the bodily organs doctors know of the placebo effect there was a study
conducted in 1950 by dr. Stuart wave he used ipecac ipecac is a drug that causes
vomiting he conducted this study on ladies who were pregnant now naturally
in the first few months of pregnancy there is the tendency to vomit and to
measure this tendency he made them swallow little balloons so that the
contraction which causes the vomiting could be actually measured now when
patients came to him complaining of symptoms of vomiting dr. Stewart gave
them a peacock and sure enough the vomiting increased
then he said now I have got a wonder drug that has just come out it has just
been tested it has a miraculous control over Rama ting and I'm going to give
this to you and when he will do it to them their symptoms of vomiting would
vanish for the night next morning again they would reappear so when I read this
since I am not trained in the medical profession I said let me research this
what causes vomiting and according to the notes it is primarily caused by the
brain the brain receives varieties of signals but it is the vomit center in
the brain that causes vomiting and hence very naturally there is the strong
connection between the state of the mind and the tendency to vomit so the placebo
effect the same ipecac when administered with this message that it's a Wong at
controlling drug caused the symptoms to vanish if any of you has studied
management like I did you may have heard of the Hawthorne effect do you know what
is the Hawthorne effect you know in production management about a century
ago when they were endeavoring to increase the production volume in
factory lines so they would make an adjustment supposing we do this for the
workers what will happen and they found when they mean to change the
productivity increased when they made the reverse change the productivity
still increased and again they made a third reverse change the productivity
still increased then they wondered why is this happening and they discovered
what is happening is that the workers are experiencing care somebody is
thinking about them somebody is caring for them it is that feeling that is
making them produce more so similarly what is God
the placebo effect sometimes works as remembered wellness placebo effect is
sometimes demeaning if you say you know you got cured by the placebo effect that
person says you mean it was all in the mind but this can be renamed as
remembered wellness what is remembered wellness we all remember the state of
wellness and sometimes consciously or subconsciously we replicate that state
that is why some of you doctors may have come across this phenomenon a patient is
experiencing acute symptoms of viral throat infection and then he or she goes
to the doctor and the doctor says show me and the symptoms have disappeared now
the mere fact that the person is going to meet the doctor tells the person
subconscious that now I will be getting all right and the remembered wellness
takes place so this connection of the state of mind with the body has a big
consequence for the medical profession how much do you reassure your patient I
came across a study where before the operation the anesthetist behaved badly
with the patient saying I don't know if you'll get all right or not and I'll do
my best but I don't not so sure and none of the other staff were aware that an
experiment was being conducted everything else was going on perfectly
and the second group of patients the anesthetist behaved very nicely and very
reassuringly with that later on it was discovered that
with whom the anesthetist had behaved well recovered in 2.7 days earlier than
the first group so again it is displaying the connection between the
mind and the body so there's remembered wellness and the
other side of it is remembered illness you remember a sickly state and you can
fall sick one study that was conducted in 1981 in Kiribati which was previously
called Gilbert Island here the spinal tap was researched now spinal
tap is you put an injection in the spine and extract a bit of the spinal fluid so
sometimes it leads to headaches now they discovered that one out of eleven people
experience headaches after the spinal tap and this particular sample Griff it
was ingrained in their look we are doing this procedure on you and there's a very
high chance that you could get a headache now they found that seven out
of fifteen people got headaches so this was the reverse of remembered wellness
it is remembered illness a very common phenomenon is the white collar
hypertension the patient has perfect blood pressure at home but when she
visits the doctor she finds the blood pressure has increased so again this is
remembered illness mind making the body sick an extreme example of this is given
by dr. Herbert Benson who was one of the pioneers in mind body research and his
book the relaxation response so he talks about Aboriginal tribes in Australia
some of them have this custom of the doctor of the dry morning people so the
tribals believe that if the witch doctor cans certain spells and burns me I have
no hope there is no way I can live so he says look what happens when the witch
doctor gets annoyed and takes the bone and starts waving it around at someone
lifting the other hand skyward and chanting something that person's
expression changes completely that person thinks now I am done with there
is absolutely no hope the expression changes in a few minutes
that person is suffocating holding the neck and a few more minutes the person
has fallen to the ground and has unfortunate and grotesque as it may seem
in a few hours the person has passed away the intellect has decided and there
is no hope you just cannot live that this is the mind and the body connection