Connection between the body, brain is clear, doctors confirm
By Cynthia Lambert-Nehr / Special to The Detroit News
One thing that baffles Dr. Sara Warber, co-director of
the University of Michigan Complementary and Alternative Medical Research
Center, is how much of the medical world tends to consider the mind and
the body as something separate.
"What do they think the brain is, if not part of the body?" Warber
says. "It's all biochemical. Look at the term 'gut reaction.' Just that
statement alone makes the connection. It's saying that our body is
reacting to a thought."
But measuring the effects of positive and negative thinking on the body
is difficult, she says.
"There are not a lot of studies comparing the placebo to the nocebo
effect because it is not ethical to induce discomfort in someone," says
Dr. Jeffrey Nusbaum, a physician at the Center for Holistic Medicine.
Nusbaum is familiar with a study conducted in Japan and reported in
Hippocrates (Nov. 1999, Vol. 13, number 10), entitled "The Nocebo Effect."
Nearly 60 high school boys who said they were allergic to leaves of the
lacquer tree were blindfolded. Researchers told the boys that their arm
was being brushed with a chestnut leaf, when it actually was the lacquer
leaf. The other arm was brushed with the chestnut leaf, but the subjects
were told it was the lacquer leaf.
"Within minutes, the arm they thought was being brushed with the poison
leaf developed a bumpy, itchy rash," Nusbaum says. "The one that the
actual lacquer leaf touched had no reaction."
Many physicians, including Nusbaum, don't need scientific studies to
confirm what they already either know or strongly suspect. Those patients
with positive attitudes generally do better than those who don't.
Dr. Steven Harrington, a cardiovascular surgeon at St. John Hospital
and Medical Center in Detroit, sees this phenomenon on a regular basis.
"Some people have extremely positive attitudes, and they usually do very
well," Harrington says. "They are the ones who are up walking the next day
and out of the hospital after bypass surgery after three days. These are
the people who want to go back to work after two weeks. They're not afraid
of anything."
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