Dr David Hamilton Home Page

Our Beliefs Make Chemistry
(www.drdavidhamilton.com)

I spoke at a Mind-Body-Spirit Fair in Derby recently. Wandering around some of the stalls before my talks got me thinking. Some people have asked me if I thought most of the therapies on offer at these fairs are rubbish, just all in the mind. I sometimes reply, ‘What would it matter if they were?’

People go to fairs like these and they feel good when they get treatments, when they talk with stall holders, and when they hear talks.

It wouldn’t matter if the benefits of the therapies on offer were just placebo (For the record, they’re not). If they work for people, then great.

There’s going to come a time in Medicine where it is widely accepted that the mind plays a really important role in, well, just about everything. If a patient believes that something will be good for them, then should it not be encouraged providing it can’t do any harm?
I remember someone even say to me once that visualizing ourselves getting better from an illness is rubbish, that’s its just all in the mind. Of course it is. Is that not the point?
If you believe that a therapy is good for you then it will be. Take a fictitious therapy called ‘X’, for example.

If you have learned that ‘X’ creates a feeling of relaxation and that this will reduce your stress, which will also have a positive impact upon many illnesses, then you will probably receive a lot of benefit from it. Yes, some of the benefit would be placebo – your belief in the therapy. But who cares whether it is or not? That’s just academic.

The bottom line is that the person receiving the therapy is benefiting.

If, on the other hand, a person had been told by someone that there are no real benefits, that’s it’s all in the mind, then they might not have the therapy and so miss out on the benefits, just because a study might have shown that it was no better than placebo. But by receiving the therapy, they are getting benefits, even if much of it is created by the mind.
That’s the thing with the mind. Our beliefs make chemistry! And quite often, that chemistry benefits us.

The mind creates chemical changes in the brain and around the body. Hormone levels change, cells change, and genes express themselves, producing proteins all around the brain and body. In a 2005 paper, Eric Kandel, 2000 Nobel Prizewinner in Medicine, even wrote, ‘There’s no longer any doubt that psychotherapy can result in detectable changes in the brain.’ A new way of thinking about something activates different brain regions from before, encouraging blood flow in a new direction, leading to actual structural changes in the brain, often in the region of the prefrontal cortex.

Getting therapy ‘X’, whatever it is, allows the person’s mind to create healing change in the body, regardless of whether the therapy was any good in and of itself. It really shouldn’t matter if ‘X’ was no better than placebo. Placebo heals in and of itself. That was one of my greatest learnings when I worked as a scientist with one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies.

Time and again, I learned about clinical trials (for drugs that are currently on the market) that showed a large number of people improve because they believed they were getting a medicine when, in reality, they were getting a small white tablet made of chalk or sugar – a fake drug. Belief makes chemistry!

I think many criticisms are purely academic. The evidence in mind-body science is compelling. We also now know that thinking causes structural changes in the brain, for instance. We’ve reached a point where we can no longer say, ‘it’s all in the mind’, because our own thinking is not inert. You can’t have a thought or hold a belief without affecting your brain and body.
So if a person believes that a particular therapy can help them on their healing journey then, providing it can’t actually do any harm, it should be encouraged.

I would always recommend, however, that you talk to your doctor/physician about your intentions. Many physicians are open to the use of alternatives and it can be good to have your physician on board, in support of what you’re doing. It can make you feel better about what you’re doing.

If they are not, then it is your right to seek a second opinion, or a third.