This is Your Brain on Placebo

We had Sage's baptism this weekend and it rocked. Yes, my next post will be about her and have lovely pictures.

BUT, I wanted to post this before I forget and move on. It's the rough draft of one of my chapters from the book, and it's applicable to everyone, so I thought I'd post it. My editor is going to make me pare things down and move things around to be more topic specific, but the way I originally wrote it I think can speak to everyone, so here it goes.

On a side note, this came out today . People, we are powerful beings!

CHAPTER 3

Mind-Spirit-Body

We’ve all heard of the placebo effect. And for the most part, people just accept that the placebo effect is real and it happens, no questions asked. What floors me is, why are there no questions asked?

“A new study was done that showed X drug worked 50% of the time, and the other 50% was cured by placebo.”

And the reporter moves on, as if what he just said about placebo has no relevance. Just glosses right over it, as if some amazing didn’t happen within that study. Having any condition improved by a placebo effect I think is amazing. Why aren’t these placebo affects being treated as amazing? Why aren’t we looking into and applying the placebo affect everywhere?

The word placebo is latin for "I shall please". And a placebo is basically a pill or treatment given to someone, and the pill is either a ‘sugar pill’ or the treatment never happened at all. The placebo effect is when a person, thinking they have received the actual pill or treatment, recovers as if they had gotten the actual treatment.

Act as if, and it will be. In a nutshell, that’s what the placebo effect is. Everyone knows it happens, doctors and scientists know it happens. We all know it’s real, yet no one seems to take it seriously because mainstream science and culture doesn’t validate it. But because mainstream science and culture don’t validate it, does that make it any less real or applicable? Of course not.

For example, as early as 2002, through the Freedom of Information act, there were researchers looking into the issue of the placebo effect and anti depressants. One USA Today article said: “More than half of the 47 studies found that patients on antidepressants improved no more than those on placebos…They should have told the American public about this. The drugs have been touted as much more effective than they are."

(http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/drugs/2002-07-08-antidepressants.htm)

Think about that. Half of the studies said that a fake pill worked just as well as the real one, with no side effects and no cost.

Another study was conducted on 40 Parkinson’s patients. All agreed to and were prepped for surgery, and wheeled into an operating room. All were cut open and stitched up, but only half received the neuron transplants that they surgery was being performed for. Twelve months post surgery, those who thought they received the transplant reported better quality of life than those who thought they received the sham surgery, regardless of which surgery they actually received. In fact, one of the patients that had received the sham surgery said that before the surgery she had not been physically active for years. Afterwards she resumed hiking and ice skating, believing that she had received the transplant. ((McRae et al., 2004) (McRae C, Cherin E, Yamazaki G, Diem G, Vo AH, Russell D, et al. Effects of perceived treatment on quality of life and medical outcomes in a double-blind placebo surgery trial. Arch Gen Psychiatry (2004) 61:412–20.)

That is powerful! So, what is this powerful medicine, the placebo effect? It is your beliefs manifesting into real, measurable effects. Your thoughts do make up your reality.

We’ve all heard the Einsteinium equation E= MC2, but I don’t think the majority of us are aware of its implications and meaning. For if we did, birth and our world would be operating much differently. Before the E=MC2 discovery, science operated on the theories of Newtonian physics, which believed that all things just happened as a result of gravity. Newtonian Physics was Isaac Newton's theory that the Universe was made up of solid objects (atoms) which were attracted towards each other by Gravity. And atoms were solid and were the building blocks of nature. So electrons, protons, neutrons, etc. that each atom consisted of, was a solid mass or solid physical object. To a large extent, this is still what is taught in school.

What E=MC2 proved, though, was that upon further analyzation, atoms are made up of smaller particles (subatomic particles), and all that the subatomic particles were made up of was energy, nothing solid at all, even though they appeared solid. So, E=MC2 basically states that everything is energy. All things broken down in their most basic form is all the same thing: energy. And that this one energy makes up all things. So, everything that is in existence – the moon, the grass, your house, colors, sound, food, medicine, yourself – is all made from the same vibrating frequency of energy that merges with energies of the same frequency to shape our perceived reality and physical experiences.

Another physicist in Einstein’s day was Thomas Young who believed that energy existed as a wave form and was not particles at all, which got much attention and validation from the scientific community as well. And yet a third scientist, Niels Bohr, believed the energy was made up of both particles and waves, and this paved the way for what we know now. Bohr, through his work, also believed that these particles had the potential to take on various forms. That these particles appeared to be solid because of the high rate of frequency they were vibrating at.

Since the very early 1900’s, the study and science of Quantum Physics, with Niels Bohr being one of the influential contributors of it, has given us invaluable insight into how our thoughts shape our reality. Simply put, Quantum Physics (also referred to as Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory) is the study of the behavior of matter and energy, and it demystifies the process of manifestation. It explains how everything comes into existence, searching for the spring from where they come from.

To apply it to our lives, you probably will have to consider setting aside what we, as a society, has been conditioned to believe about cause and effect and how our reality comes about. Quantum physics says that everything in the universe is all made of the same thing: energy. And that energy basically knows no boundaries.

We grew up being taught that the Laws of Physics were concrete and everything in the world abided by those laws, the only problem is, that’s not true. There are some particles in the universe that do not obey the Laws of Physics. Neils Bohr conducted an experiment, called the Copenhagen Interpretation, on this energy that does not obey the Laws of Physics. He noted one incredible thing: that this rebellious energy they were doing experiments on was always affected by the scientist’s thoughts. Even in double blind experiments, this proved to be true. The Copenhagen Interpretation revealed that if the scientist was expecting the energy to appear in the form of a wave, it would be a wave, but if he was looking for it to take on the form of something else, a "particle" (matter) is formed. The thoughts and perceptions of the scientist doing the observing determined which one it was...waves or particles. As Wayne Dyer has stated, “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

(Chester, Marvin (1987) Primer of Quantum Mechanics. John Wiley. ISBN 0-486-42878-8, Bohm, David (1989). Quantum Theory. Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-65969-0.)

I know….‘whoa’ is right. When you grasp this knowledge, it can fundamentally change your life. Yes, your thoughts, emotions and beliefs have a real, measurable outcome. This is empowering knowledge! Because now you know that YOU are the most important variable in improving the quality and outcome of your pregnancy, birth, parenting, and life!

Additionally, almost all religions place emphasis on positive thoughts as a means to attaining temporal progress.

For example:

In Christianity: “As a man thinketh, so is he.”

In Buddhism: “All that we are is the result of what we have thought.”

In Hinduism: " Whatever is sown must be reaped sometime and somewhere. This is the law: every action, every intention to act, every attitude bears its own fruit. 'A man becomes good by good deeds and bad by bad deeds'"

And from the Kabbalah: "Three are the dwellings of the sons and daughters of Man. Thought, feeling and body. When the three become one, you will say to this mountain "move" and the mountain will move."

We also have many social mantras that mirror this:

“Garbage in, garbage out.”

“You get what you give”

“That’s bad/good karma”

“Obey the Golden Rule”

So, what this all means is that what the most influential religious and spiritual teachers and scriptures have been trying to teach us for thousands of years is true, we are all one, we are all made up of the same energy. Many scientists and philosophers have come to coin certain phrases as a result of quantum physics, and many times they will intersperse scripture to reinforce what they are proposing. Quantum physics also proved everything in our world once existed as a wave (spiritual) and through individual observation and expectation was transformed into a particle (made physical) based only their thoughts, beliefs and expectations of what it would be!

This means that your thoughts create your reality. Your thoughts, the initial energy wave forms, transform into subatomic particles which take form based on your thoughts, emotions and beliefs, and the energy from your thoughts and beliefs join and manifest in our physical reality. Now on to the Law of Attraction.

One of those coined phrases is The Law of Attraction, also referred to as The Law of Cause and Effect or Sowing and Reaping. The Law of Attraction is the law by which thought correlates with it's object. The Law of Attraction ensures that whatever energy (anything from physical energy to thought energy) that is broadcast out into the universe is attracted to energies that are of an equal or harmonious frequency, resonance or vibration (energy).

All of your thought waves, turned particles, seek other particles that match its frequency, or vibration and in turn all these particles collide and make up physical things that we can touch and feel. Another discovery, called Quantum Entanglement, found that these particles that have the same frequency or vibration, communicate instantly, regardless of the distance, they have no regard to space and time as we understand it on a day to day experience. In other words, unlike the speed of light, energy doesn’t need to travel because it’s already interconnected with all other energy that matches its frequency. The energy is non local, which means it exists everywhere all the time, and is not affected by other local energies, such as electro magnetic energy, which is subject to space and time.

There have been experiments where DNA is extracted from someone, and as that person changed emotions, his DNA that was outside his body, responded to and mirrored the emotional shifts that was happening with him, even when the DNA was hundreds of miles from him. Space (how far the DNA was from the subject) and time (there was no delay) had no claim on the reaction of the DNA to its source. (The Nature of God by Archie Crawford)

So, quite often in this book, when I refer to visualization, staying in the place of love and peace, etc., I am assuming that you have even the smallest understanding of quantum physics as I just presented, or spiritual/religious beliefs or both.

Many times in the book, I also refer to surrendering. How and why surrendering works can be found in the mechanics of the Law of Polarity which tells us that everything that exists has a direct opposite that also exists. Within every problem there is a solution. Within every failure there is a success. Within every heartache there's a joy. When you look for the good in bad situations, you are aligning your frequencies with the good and will find solutions and joy more quickly. Learning to fully surrender and accept whatever shows up in your life, and learning that all things can work together for your good will actually increase the rate at which good will come to you. So, for instance, acceptance of the possibility that you might experience what you would consider a negative labor and birth, or accept that fact that one has already happened if your previous births were not your ideal, is actually the opposite of resistance and will more readily attract to you a peaceful birth. Resistance, or fear of a negative experience, is putting your main focus on what you don’t want and as a result of that focus is attracting to you more of that which you are resisting. If you learn to accept, and then express the frequencies of sincerity and gratitude for all possible outcomes, desired or not, you will soon discover that you are more likely to experience what you desire.

““The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg. . . Dreams are the seedlings of realities.”

James Allen, As a Man Thinketh