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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YOUR HEALTH CARE PROVIDER.
"A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth."
-- Albert Einstein, letter to a friend, 1901
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William C. Jarvis, September 28, 1820
Sandy's Scandals Column
Past and current Scandals
- columns by Sandy Gottstein (aka Mintz)*
* March 20, 2010 - Political
autism (commentary) - Pat Boone - WorldNetDaily - "Popular actress
Jenny McCarthy has just released a book about her previously autistic
son – and the amazing progress she's had in bringing him out of the fog
and separation of his malady through controlling his diet. Having come
to the conclusion that he'd been adversely affected as a baby by some
of the normal immunization shots, she put him on a new and stringent
organic health diet – which she credits for his being now perfectly
normal! The book is gripping and hopeful, and may point the way to real
breakthroughs in treating this awful imprisonment named autism. My
daughters and I congratulate Jenny and thank God for her son's new
life."
* March 19, 2010
- CANADA: British
Columbia Officials Seek to Boost HPV Vaccinations in Girls - B.C.
Center for Disease Control via Aegis.org - "More than two years after
its launch, British Columbia's human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination
program has achieved 62 percent uptake among grade-six and -nine girls.
That is second only to Quebec, where uptake is 80 percent - a goal B.C.
officials are hoping to achieve with a ramped-up campaign.
French-language media in Quebec did not carry as many anti- vaccine
stories or focus on controversies, peers there told Dr. Gina Ogilvie,
B.C. Center for Disease Control (BCCDC)'s associate director of STD
prevention and control. As a result, many parents in Quebec were not
persuaded to refuse the vaccine for their child."
* ►March 18, 2010
- New
genetic
associations detected in a host response study to hepatitis B
vaccine - journal article (Genes
&
Immunity) - "The immune response to hepatitis B
vaccination differs greatly among individuals, with 5–10% of healthy
people failing to produce protective levels of antibodies. Several
factors have been implicated in determining this response, chiefly
individual genetic variation and age."