I was introduced to this concept in the 1980’s by Dr. Bernie Siegel’s book, Love, Medicine and Miracles. He reviews some of literature that links stress with disease and also relates many stories of patients with terminal cancer who beat the disease. He formed a non-profit group, ECaP (Exceptional Cancer Patients). These miracles happened in the presence of widespread disease without any hope of survival. Although this has been witnessed for decades, he asked the question, “Why?” It is not just a lucky occurrence. Remarkable healing stories – Dr. Bernie Siegel

The destructive power of anger

The same principles hold true for the healing that occurs in the DOC process. It is not a series of steps that you undertake and you are free of pain. It is a framework that organizes your thinking and clears the air so you can figure out your own next steps. Somewhere in the midst of quieting down, my patients unconsciously connect with the core of who they are and allow themselves to heal.

Being trapped causes frustration and anger. Anger disconnects you in almost every direction and adversely alters your body’s chemistry so all of your cells (organs) are bathed in stress chemicals. Some things that trap us are:

• Our thoughts
• Anxiety
• Unpleasant work environment
• Abusive home situation
• Uncomfortable/ painful physical sensations
• Too little money
• Not being able to meet basic daily obligations – always behind
• Random medical treatments

Most of these problems are not solvable, so as your legitimate frustrations continue, so will the chemical assault on your body. You cannot connect with your body’s capacity to heal in this adverse physiological environment. You can   train yourself to alter this primitive survival response.

Placebo

Placebo is a term that has been incorrectly presented to both doctors and patients. It is felt that if a patient responds to a placebo, then there clearly must not be a problem. Really? It has been shown and continues to be demonstrated that almost every medical treatment has a significant placebo component – even in the presence of the active ingredient of the drug. Also, the more invasive the treatment the more powerful the placebo effect. In other words, an injection is stronger than a pill, and a surgical procedure has even a greater placebo effect.

The percent of people that respond to a given treatment with a placebo effect ranges from 20 to 50% and it is consistent. I am not aware of any study that shows that the placebo effect is absent. Harnessing and  this placebo effect is what you desire. It is specific, powerful and does not have side effects or risks. There is nothing more impressive than having your immune system rally and wipe out a given cancer. All that doctors can do is to kill cells with drugs and radiation and hopefully the cancer cells are destroyed first. Occasionally surgery can completely remove it, but never in these terminal cases. The newer generation of treatments is focused more on targeting only the cancer cells.

The warts on my hands

I had a remarkable experience with my body’s healing powers in my 20’s. You can read about it in detail but after suffering with five to ten warts on both of my hands for over 10 years this disappeared forever within a week after a dermatologist told me to rub fresh Aloe Vera leaves over them. Then he told me that he thought it was a long-shot but it would work, “Because I think it is just a placebo.” I was extremely upset and angry and I can still feel what happened inside me that day. I remember feeling that “I am done with this” and I felt a deep shift occur in the middle of my body. I rubbed the Aloe Vera on my warts for a couple of times and then threw the stems out. Two weeks later I had new hands. I cannot adequately encapsulate this experience in words. It has been shown that even when patients know they are receiving a placebo it is still often effective. (2)

The drug of choice

Placebo is the drug of choice for any disease state, including chronic pain. You must get out of your own way and allow your body heal. Connecting to your own healing capacity does not carry risks or cause harm.

Unfortunately, many medical procedures do have significant risks and cause damage, even when there are no complications. I had to directly or indirectly deal with almost all of them including, stroke, blindness, paralysis and death. Addressing bad outcomes was one of  the most difficult aspects of being a surgeon. This is especially true when you wonder if you could have possibly avoided the procedure, or did my patient really understand the implications of his or her decision? There are conflicting reports but it appears that there are over 150,000 deaths annually from medical errors, which would make it the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer.

One mechanism of action of placebo is that it engages the same brain mechanisms that release the body’s endorphins (natural pain killers) and ‎cannabinoids (active ingredient in marijuana). Interestingly, researchers can block the pain-killing placebo effect with a drug that blocks narcotics called naloxone.

Treatments without risk

A 2012 study recently came to my attention where lidocaine patches for LBP were compared with just the patches. It is extremely interesting in that 50% of the patients responded in both groups. Does the paper show that patients really did not have pain? “No!” It demonstrates that the healing response is stimulated by the patch. Does that mean we should be prescribing patches without the lidocaine? “No!” The risk of Lidocaine on the patch is essentially zero and adds minimal cost. A 50% response rate is excellent. (1)

It doesn’t even matter if the patients know that the “drug” is a placebo. Another “open label” placebo medication study showed a large reduction in chronic low back pain compared to the usual treatment. The mechanism of action of this effect is unclear and it does not require deception to be effective. Somehow the act of taking the pill stimulates the body’s capacity to heal. (2)

When patients heal at some point during the DOC process there is no way of knowing what aspect of it was effective and it doesn’t matter. You have connected with your body’s ability to heal and without a downside.

Heal yourself

Understand that each and every person has the capacity to access his or her own body’s ability to heal. We have observed that the vast majority of patients who engage will not only improve but thrive. Unfortunately, the anger that fires up so many symptoms is also the obstacle that blocks engagement. The major factor that portends a good outcome is willingness to be open to new ideas and then pursue them. Or, as one successful patient pointed out, “It requires a suspension of disbelief.”

1. Hashmi, JA, et al. Lidocaine patch (5%) is not more potent then placebo in treating chronic back pain when tested in a randomized double blind placebo controlled brain imaging study. Molecular Pain (2012); 8:29-30.
2. Carvalho C, et al. Open-label placebo treatment in chronic low back pain: a randomized controlled trial. Pain (2016); vol 0: 1-7.

The post Harnessing the Body’s Healing Power first appeared on Back in Control.

The post Harnessing the Body’s Healing Power appeared first on Back in Control.

I was taught from the beginning of my medical training that if a person responded to a sugar pill that meant he or she was faking it. Although this viewpoint has been refuted in multiple studies there is a still a lingering impression that something is not quite right about this kind of patient. That assumption is not only incorrect but every one of us has the capacity to respond (hopefully).  A placebo effect is the harnessing of the body’s healing power and it is the most powerful “drug” that exists. Here is an article he wrote, illustrating its power, that I wanted to share with you.

Connecting People to Healing by BERNIE SIEGEL, MD

Many years ago one of our children brought home a canvas he had decorated in his school art class. He had filled the entire canvas with the word, “ words”. As a surgeon what immediately struck me was that you can kill or cure with a sword, or scalpel. But that you could also kill or cure with words when wordswordswords  become swordswordswords. Physicians are not taught how to communicate with patients and due to their fear of being sued tell people all of the adverse side effects of therapy and never mention the benefits. Every time I hear a TV commercial mentioning how the pill being advertised can kill you I wonder why anyone would try it.

“Doing Well”

I began to realize how important a patient’s beliefs were from my experience and their experience and not their diagnosis. In a sense it is summed up by Dr. Milton Erickson writing in a patient’s chart and then excusing himself and stepping out of the office for a minute. When the patient peaked at the chart she saw, “Doing well” written there. How therapeutic.

I also learned to ask people how they would describe what they were experiencing versus their diagnosis. Then I would ask how and what in their lives fit those words if they were negative words. The words they would share, like pressure describing her pain, or failure her cancer experience led me to helping them eliminate the pressure in their life and what made them feel like a failure.

Inadvertent Hypnosis

One day, prior to performing minor surgery in my office, the patient and I got into an intense and interesting discussion. I picked up the scalpel while we were talking and made an incision. I noticed my nurse waving frantically at me. When she caught my attention she pointed at the syringe containing the local anesthetic which I had not used. I asked the patient how he was feeling and he was fine so I completed the surgery and then told him we were both hypnotized and that I had not used any local anesthetic to numb the area of surgery. Major surgery has been done under hypnosis and I have used hypnotherapists in the operating room too.

The OR environment

As I learned the power of words I began to pay more attention to what was said in the operating room. Simple things like changing an injection from feeling like a bee sting to a mosquito bite. When an anesthesiologist talked to the patient about their “going out” I would ask the patient, “When was the last time you went out on a date.” I also played music in the O.R. decades ago and was considered an explosion hazard but when everyone felt better the staff stopped complaining. Today we have studies verifying the benefits of music in shortening the time of the surgery, requiring fewer drugs and patients experiencing less pain.

During surgery I would ask my patients not to bleed and divert the blood away from the area of surgery. I was not a normal surgeon but no one is against success so if it worked it became hospital policy for which I received no credit. Before they awakened from surgery I would say, “You will wake up comfortable, thirsty and hungry.” I had to change that to “but you won’t finish what is on your plate” when my patients all began to gain weight. I couldn’t get the administrators to use the TV in patients’ rooms to prepare them for surgery with guided imagery.

But what really opened my mind to the power of words was my experience as a pediatric surgeon. To reassure children that they would not be in pain while they were undergoing surgery I would tell them while in the emergency room, “You will go to sleep when you go into the operating room.” I was shocked to have children fall asleep while they were being wheeled into the O.R. on their stretcher. One boy flipped over and went to sleep as we entered the O.R. When I turned him over for his appendectomy he awakened and said, “You told me I would go to sleep and I sleep on my stomach.” We reached a compromise.

Then I began deceiving more kids into health by rubbing them with an alcohol sponge, prior to drawing blood, and saying this will numb your skin. A third had total anesthesia while the others all had a less emotional experience and told me it didn’t work. I apologized and blamed the defective alcohol sponge.

Responding to a Known Placebo

Labeling vitamin pills, with the parent’s cooperation, reduced side effects of chemotherapy and other treatments. We relabeled the vitamins as anti-nausea, or hair growing or pain pills and the kids responded because of the faith they had in their authority figures. One woman I know was feeling nauseated after her chemo. She asked her daughter to get her a Compazine pill since she wasn’t wearing her glasses. Her daughter gave her the pill and she felt fine. Hours later, while wearing her glasses, she asked for another pill. When she saw it she told her daughter, “That’s not my Compazine that’s my anti-coagulant Coumadin.” “Well Mom it worked fine the last time I gave it you.”  They both were impressed and enjoyed the experience.

No Side Effects

The most dramatic experience I learned about came from my experience as well as medical errors due to technical mistakes. One of my patients had no side effects to radiation and the radiation therapist thought his machine was malfunctioning until he saw my name in her chart and then realized, “This is one of Siegel’s crazy patients.” When he asked her why she had no side effects she said, “I get out of the way and let it go to my tumor.”

The Radiation Machine is Broken

The examples which I found to be more impressive were when people who thought they were receiving chemotherapy were not due to an error preparing the medication and people who thought they were being radiated were not due to no radioactive material being replaced after the machine was repaired. The doctors involved felt terrible. The radiation therapy doctor said to me he had not treated anyone for a month and just discovered the problem when the radiation therapy machine underwent its monthly inspection.

I told him he didn’t realize what he was telling me. He repeated how terrible he felt. I said, “You’d have to be an idiot to not know you weren’t treating anyone. So you obviously had people experiencing side effects and shrinking tumors.” His eyes bulged and he said, “Oh my God you’re right.”

So believe in the mind-body unity and words. Our body responds to our beliefs and I’d rather lie therapeutically to a patient than give them a list of side effects of a treatment and induce all of them because of what they hear from an authority figure. When I did have to share some negative side effects I would add that they don’t happen to everyone; like everyone isn’t allergic to peanuts.

Let me close with some of my favorite stories and I don’t make any of them up.

The Power of a Hug

The cousin of my father in law’s nurse’s aide was told she was terminal with leukemia and it was a waste of time to go to receive chemotherapy which would only make her feel worse. When the aide heard this she called her cousin in North Carolina and told her to come up here because, “Doctor Siegel makes people well all the time.” She arrives and I am told about it so I admitted her to the hospital.  I sat on her bed and explained leukemia was not something I could treat but that I would ask an oncologist friend to come and see her. Then I gave her a big hug and went to call the oncologist. The oncologists I used had learned about Siegel’s crazy patients and had no problem working with them.

My oncologist friend told me he agreed with her doctor about the likely outcome but would give her treatment to make her feel there was hope. His letters to me began with, doing well, and ended with, in complete remission. She went home to drive her doctor nuts. What I heard later was that she told her cousin, “When Doctor Siegel hugged me I knew I would get well.” I also know patients who left their troubles to God and had their cancer disappear. That is called self-induced healing and not a spontaneous remission. So learn from exceptional patients about survival behavior. Ask them why they didn’t die rather than saying what doctors tend to say, “You are doing very well. Whatever you’re doing keep it up.”  Then they learn nothing from their patient. Personality characteristics and survival are inseparable.

You are vomiting after chemotherapy and your husband puts bags in the car so that you can throw up into the bag on the way home. One day you are feeling nauseated and ask your husband for a bag. He hands it to you; you open it and find a dozen roses from your husband. You never vomit again after receiving chemotherapy.

Last but not least remind patients of their potential. Our Creator has built survival mechanisms into all living things so we can heal wounds, alter our genes and overcome various diseases. Love your life and your body and amazing things can happen. As Ernest Holmes said, “What if Jesus was the only normal person who ever lived?” Our Creator has built survival mechanisms into all living things so we can heal wounds, alter our genes and overcome various diseases. Love your life and your body and amazing things can happen. We have the potential guilt into us. We just need to show up for practice, have faith and not fear failing. As Ernest Holmes said, “What if Jesus was the only normal person who ever lived?”

Relax

As I learned about the power of words they became my therapeutic tools. With paradox and humor, I was able to readjust people’s thoughts and feelings.

A woman I was about to operate on was in total panic before her surgery. I spent a long time trying to calm her down but nothing I said or did made a difference. So I stopped trying and wheeled her into the operating room where with a look of fear on her face she said, “Thank God all these wonderful people will be taking care of me.” I knew agreeing with her wouldn’t accomplish anything so I said, “I know these people. Ii have worked with them for years. They are not wonderful people.”  For a second she looked bewildered but then burst out laughing as did everyone in the O.R. and we all became family and fear cannot exist in the presence of love and laughter.

“I Am Never Going to Talk to You Again”

I was the police surgeon in New Haven, Connecticut for many years. One day a policeman I knew called my office. When I picked up the phone he said, “Doctor Siegel I am going to commit suicide.” I answered, “Jimmy if you commit suicide I will never talk to you again.” He hung up the phone and 15 minutes later was in my office mad as hell, shouting that he was holding a gun in his mouth and how insensitive and uncaring I was. I said, “Jimmy did you notice you’re not dead.” Then he laughed and realized I had decided to say that and it had worked. We became buddies after that.

You have a choice

I will relate stories in future posts from my own experience observing people harness their own healing potential – or not from serious diseases. I also am a witness to several patients every week who have gone pain free. That is why it is so difficult for me to watch so many patients choose to remain in pain. It is a choice. I have also watched people will themselves to death. There are over one million pain receptors per square inch in your body. There is no separation of your nervous system and body. It is simply a single unit.

The post Remarkable Healing Stories – Dr. Bernie Siegel first appeared on Back in Control.

The post Remarkable Healing Stories – Dr. Bernie Siegel appeared first on Back in Control.