The Mind as Medicine The power of positive thinking can foster health and longevity
Saturday, March 17, 2001	By NANCY VAN VALKENBURG	Standard-Examiner staff

 

If you heard the claims on an infomercial, you'd probably smirk and change the channel:

Increase the quality and possibly the length of your life with these secret mental techniques! Lessen your risk of stroke and heart disease in the privacy of your own home by using these simple strategies and the power of your own mind!

Yeah, right. Your internal "snake-oil" alarm is probably blaring at full volume.

Well, behavioral psychologists will tell you the power of the mind is very real. You never will see it on an infomercial, because the healing power of thoughts and attitudes is free to anyone who cares to use it.

An optimistic attitude and the ability to slough off stress really can add years and quality to life -- just as sure as a negative, hostile attitude and poor coping skills can open a door to deadly disease.

"Our thoughts, our emotions, our personalities, our interpersonal experiences -- all of these parts of our psychological life can affect our nervous and endocrine (immune) systems," said Timothy W. Smith, head of the University of Utah psychology department.

"Stress can contribute to all kinds of changes in our bodies, and if the stress is repeated over long periods of time, it causes the wear and tear on the body that can lead to disease. There's a direct connection."

Which means we can also use our mind/body link to foster health and longevity.

"There's a whole variety of stress-management techniques, and ways to calm the body or reduce exposure to stress," said Smith, who is also president of the American Psychological Association's division of health psychology.

"There are relaxation training techniques people can learn. There is exercise as a stress reliever. People can learn to avoid excessive conflicts and to increase their supportive connections with other people. All these things can reduce stress and the damage it does to the body."

Hugo Rodier, a holistically oriented physician who teaches courses at various Utah colleges, puts it this way: "Everything you feel shows up in your body."

Diet, genetics, environment and exercise probably play a larger role in the level of a person's health, Smith said.

But a positive attitude and strong coping skills can tip the scales toward health for someone already dieting and exercising. And an upbeat outlook is likely to inspire people to take better care of their bodies.

Outdated: Fight or flight

The body's response to stress is a legacy from the earliest humans. Natural selection favored those who, when faced with a serious threat, would get a rush of adrenaline enabling them to fight an opponent or run until they were out of harm's way.

"The fight or flight response increases our heart rate, our blood pressure, and stimulates adrenaline and the release of stress hormones," Smith said.

"All that is very helpful in preparing us for emergency action. The problem is that, in most cases, physiological arousal is not appropriate. These days, we don't usually run away or stay and fight. If you get a negative letter from the bank, your body may prepare you for fight or flight, but you are not really going to fight the letter or drop it and run away."

Nor are you going to fight or flee during a frustrating commute, or while waiting in an endless line at the grocery.

A stressed immune system

And our ancient response to modern stresses is mobilizing body resources that are needed elsewhere, said Patrick Steffen, an assistant professor in psychology at Brigham Young University.

"In the middle of a stressful situation, your body is less concerned with long-term health than it is with short-term survival," he said. "The stress response inhibits the immune system, which is not a problem if it happens once in a while, but can be a big problem to someone who is stressed every day."

So those who become highly stressed and negative after a diagnosis of cancer actually suppress the immune system they need to defeat the disease.

"A stressful, negative attitude can make it worse," Steffen said. "A study at Stanford showed that participating in supportive group therapy increased women's chances of surviving breast cancer. It helped the women cope so their immune systems could work better."

Another stress study called for volunteers to be injected with the active ingredient in chili peppers. Everyone's arms swelled, Steffen said, but those patients with good stress management skills experienced smaller inflammations, which also reduced more quickly.

"Those people better able to deal with stress had a better immune response," he said. "And a strong immune response is what allows our bodies to fight off the viruses and other threats we encounter every day."

Add a pinch of hostility

Smith said stress and hostility can raise blood pressure, which can lead to heart disease and can foster a form of arteriosclerosis that deposits fatty nodules or plaque in artery walls.

"It can cause the same damage as very high cholesterol," Smith said. "The effect depends on where it happens. If it's in the arteries that lead to your heart, a heart attack becomes more likely. If it's in the arteries leading to your brain, a stroke becomes more likely. It's a major cause of death in industrialized countries."

Those who face the greatest health risk from stress are those with other risk factors. People who have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, family histories of heart attack or stroke, or who are smokers, are placed at greater risk by stress and hostility, Smith said.

Treatment should include better nutrition, giving up cigarettes, getting more exercise and stress management techniques.

People without other risk factors are less likely to be hurt by the body's response to stress, but can still improve their health outlook with an attitude adjustment.

The medical community

Ron France, a U of U psychologist, said stress management and the mind/body connection have been accepted by the psychology community, but physicians have shown less interest.

"Medical schools right now are pretty much driven by finances and what will make the most money for the hospital," he said. And there's not much money in prevention.

"I don't see the system changing unless people force it to change," he said. "And the public is becoming more interested in prevention and alternative treatments. The orientation of the customers has to change. Patients have to make their demands known, and hospitals and medical schools will respond."

France teams with Rodier to teach a U of U class on medical trends for the new century. They focus on patient-driven methods of stress control.

Controlling stress

Biofeedback calls for a patient to be hooked up to monitors that measure blood pressure, heart rate and other vital signs.

Patients can learn to calm themselves, slowing their heart rates and lowering their blood pressures, and see immediate feedback on the techniques that prove most effective. Patients can then apply those same techniques as needed, even when they are not hooked to monitors.

The class also covers techniques such as self-hypnosis, meditation, visualization and progressive muscle relaxation. All can be used to relax the body, lessen the stress response and thus strengthen the immune system.

"The consumer has to be aware of what the options are," France said. "We're not suggesting we abandon Western medicine, just integrate all the elements that can help in healing."

The data is coming in

France said medical doctors tend to ignore anecdotal evidence. They want scientific studies with results that can be duplicated in subsequent studies.

That body of evidence is building, Rodier said, who also works at the Pioneer Comprehensive Medical clinic in Draper.

"The problem is, physicians are too busy under the current system to spend a lot of time reading new research," said Rodier. "And to put what they have read into practice takes even longer."

Numerous physicians contacted for this story declined to discuss the mind/body connection, although several suggested contacting behavioral psychologists.

Rodier said the public is finding the information without the help of doctors. Roughly 40 percent of Internet hits are on sites concerned with health care, he said.

"The information is out there," he said. "The Internet has had a democratizing effect. People are interested in the mind/body connection, and they are going to demand more information from their health-care providers, and we all will benefit from the changes just ahead."

You can reach reporter Nancy Van Valkenburg at 625-4275 or nvan@standard.net.