Remarkable results, from positive thinking to good health, proven- part II

?

In our last article entitled “Remarkable results, from positive thinking to good health, proven, part I”, and which can be accessed through the link https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/remarkable-results-from-positive-thinking-good-health-ndabananiye-ihraf/?trackingId=1lzmsLQxRdOJtCiqJCwOGw%3D%3D , we demonstrated the wonderful powers of positive thinking. We then said that our following edition would be the second part of the same topic but with a different angle.

?

?

Whereas with some negative thinking examples the last article established the unconceivable powers of positive thinking, this article is going to employ several positive thinking examples, to prove the same point. These examples are those of people who have been miraculously cured of incurable diseases, just owing to positive thinking which has thus inspired them to act positively. Our point is also corroborated by a medical expert’s long-standing research which has generated an intensely great book admired by distinguished medical practitioners, as you will see it.

?

?

Some key details on positivity and negativity, before the promised examples

Positive thinking or simply positivity like negative one is colossally powerful beyond comprehension. As shown in the last article, negative thinking or negativity is extremely powerful but negatively. ?Positive thinking is also so, but positively. The American Psychological Association [APA] points out that chronic stress can result in detrimental health outcomes like a weakened immune system.?

Negative thinking forms one of the major triggers of stress. As illustrated by our last edition, it’s stress which caused some hair of the former US president, Barack Obama, to gray for only 44 days since he took office as president. The stress was caused by always and worriedly pondering work, to which he was not accustomed, that was awaiting him. Probably, he had not developed this skill of positive thinking to a very strong point.

?

CBC in its 11th January 2016 article titled "Barack Obama not the only president to go grey in the White House" points out "The stresses of the Oval Office are real, but its occupants still live longer than most," before adding "Even if presidents handle stress better than average populations, a Harvard study from late December suggests that election winners tended to die sooner than the opponents they defeated."

Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit American academic medical center focused on integrated health care, education, and research. It states “Chronic stress puts your health at risk. Chronic stress can wreak havoc on your mind and body.” It adds that the long-term activation of the stress response system and too much exposure to cortisol and other stress hormones can disrupt almost all the body's processes. “This puts you at higher risk of many health problems.”

?

The latter ones, according to Mayo Clinic, involve anxiety, depression, digestive problems, headaches, muscle tension and pain, heart disease, heart attack, high blood pressure and stroke, sleep problems, weight gain, and problems with memory and focus. “That's why its so important to learn healthy ways to cope with your life stressors.”

?

?

“A stressful situation, whether environmental or psychological, can activate a cascade of stress hormones that produce physiological changes,” says the National Institutes of Health [NIH] being the primary agency, of the?United States government ,?responsible for?biomedical ?and?public health ?research, said to the largest source of funding for?medical?research in the world.

The NIH states that research has found a link between an upbeat mental state and improved health. According to the NIH, it includes lower blood pressure, reduced risk for heart disease, healthier weight, better blood sugar levels, and longer life. This corroborates what Mayo Clinic points out with regard to stress consequences in the field of health.

?

?

The APA echoes Mayo Clinic in these words. “Stress affects all systems of the body including the musculoskeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular, endocrine, gastrointestinal, nervous, and reproductive systems. Our bodies are well equipped to handle stress in small doses, but when that stress becomes long-term or chronic, it can have serious effects on your body.”

?

?

Providing more clarifications on one of the systems which we purposively select, the musculoskeletal system, APA says that when the body is stressed, muscles tense up. “Muscle tension is almost a reflex reaction to stress—the body’s way of guarding against injury and pain. With sudden onset stress, the muscles tense up all at once, and then release their tension when the stress passes.

?

?

For example, both tension-type headache and migraine headache are associated with chronic muscle tension in the area of the shoulders, neck and head. Musculoskeletal pain in the low back and upper extremities has also been linked to stress, especially job stress.”

?Mayo Clinic says “Positive thinking often starts with self-talk. Self-talk is the endless stream of unspoken thoughts that run through your head. These automatic thoughts can be positive or negative. Some of your self-talk comes from logic and reason. Other self-talk may arise from misconceptions that you create because of lack of information or expectations due to preconceived ideas of what may happen. If the thoughts that run through your head are mostly negative, your outlook on life is more likely pessimistic. If your thoughts are mostly positive, you're likely an optimist — someone who practices positive thinking.”

?

Unconceivable powers of positivity as substantiated by the promised examples

The New York Times, in its 27th March 2017, says “There is no longer any doubt that what happens in the brain influences what happens in the body. When facing a health crisis, actively cultivating positive emotions can boost the immune system and counter depression.”

?

?

This giant media institution reiterates what the NIH says. “Studies have shown an indisputable link between having a positive outlook and health benefits like lower blood pressure, less heart disease, better weight control and healthier blood sugar levels.”

?

?

It adds that even when faced with an incurable illness, positive feelings and thoughts can greatly improve one’s quality of life. It provides an example of Dr. Wendy Schlessel Harpham, a Dallas-based author of several books for people facing cancer, including “Happiness in a Storm.” It further says that she was a practicing internist when she learned that she was suffering from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system, 27 years ago.?

?

?

The New York Times states “During the next 15 years of treatments for eight relapses of her cancer, she set the stage for happiness and hope, she says, by such measures as surrounding herself with people who lift her spirits, keeping a daily gratitude journal, doing something good for someone else, and watching funny, uplifting movies. Her cancer has been in remission now for 12 years. New research is demonstrating that people can learn skills that help them experience more positive emotions when faced with the severe stress of a life-threatening illness.”

Dr. Harpham said “Fostering positive emotions helped make my life the best it could be. They made the tough times easier, even though they didn’t make any difference in my cancer cells.”

?

?

The New York Times’ article also features Gregg De Meza then aged 56-year-old and architect living in San Francisco who learned that he was infected with H.I.V. four years before. He told The New York Times that learning “positivity” skills revolutionized his life. He pointed out that he felt “stupid and careless” about becoming infected and had initially kept his diagnosis a secret.

?

?

“When I entered the study, I felt like my entire world was completely unraveling,” he said. “The training reminded me to rely on my social network, and I decided to be honest with my friends. I realized that to show your real strength is to show your weakness. No pun intended, it made me more positive, more compassionate, and I’m now healthier than I’ve ever been.”

?

?

On March 6, 2020 The Washington Post ran an article headlined “After spending 17 years studying ‘miracle’ cures, a Harvard psychiatrist says Western medicine has it all wrong.”

The article reads “Sometimes things happen in medicine that astonish doctors. A young man in Colorado is diagnosed with Stage 4 brain cancer. After surgery, he begins chemotherapy and radiation but decides he does not want to spend his last few months in misery, so he stops. At a friend’s suggestion, he moves to a “healing center” in Brazil and begins a regimen of spiritual exploration and meditation. Two years later, an MRI shows that the tumor is gone.”

This giant media organization goes on saying that a physician in Ohio experienced a biopsy that reveals idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an irreversible disease that always ends in death. “Weak and exhausted, she goes on disability. She has to carry a CPAP machine everywhere to force oxygen into her lungs. She starts seeing a faith healer, who is also a physician. He gives her acupuncture and prays over her. She begins to feel stronger, gives up the oxygen, goes back to work. A couple of years later, a chest X-ray shows no evidence she ever had the disease.”

?

?

“A woman in Oregon learns she has pancreatic cancer. She refuses the risky surgery her doctors offer and decides to live her remaining months as well as she can, among friends and family, doing what she loves. Five years later, a CT scan shows her pancreas is clean. Sounds impossible, right? No wonder doctors dismiss these outcomes — the original diagnosis must have been wrong. The very subject is taboo in mainstream medicine, Jeffrey Rediger writes in the introduction to his new book, “Cured: The Life-Changing Science of Spontaneous Healing .” Faced with recoveries they can neither explain nor replicate, doctors tend to dismiss such cases as flukes, one-offs.”

The Harvard psychiatrist at the faculty at Harvard Medical School is Rediger. He’s the medical expert whom we have already mentioned in the introduction. In his compelling book which constitutes the result of 17 years which he has spent, tracking these miraculously healed people down and verifying their stories, he says “These were irrefutable, documented diagnoses, which were then followed up — weeks, months, or sometimes years later — by documented evidence of complete remission,” he writes, before adding that the mind-body connection is only beginning to gain a foothold in Western medicine.

?

?

Listening to their stories, he came to believe that a certain thing had changed in these patients that allowed them to heal. “And that there were lessons to be learned”. “To anyone familiar with health trends, these lessons will not be surprising. They include diet, exercise, stress reduction, social interaction, love, faith and finding your “true self.”

?The Indian Express in its article “Explained: Why patients sometimes make ‘miraculous’ recoveries” has written about Rediger’s book. It first states “Now and then, a doctor comes across a patient who improves unexpectedly from a disease that usually progresses, such as cancer, and at times is even cured. This is called spontaneous healing.”

?

?

“In their 1966 book?‘Spontaneous Regression of Cancer ’, W H Cole and T C Everson defined it (in cases of cancer) as “the partial or complete disappearance of a malignant tumour in the absence of all treatment, or in the presence of therapy which is considered inadequate to exert significant influence on neoplastic disease. Such cases notwithstanding, the medical fraternity is often sceptical and takes ‘miraculous’ recoveries as flukes [accidents/coincidences/chances]. Very few study such cases such or take them into account when treating patients.”

According to The Indian Express, among these very few cases features Dr. Jeffrey Rediger, MD, a psychiatrist who also possesses a master’s degree in divinity, according to the Indian Express. It adds that he has passed more than 15 years studying spontaneous healing, the results of which he has written in his new book.

?

The book ‘Cured: The Life-Changing Science of Spontaneous Healing’, according to the medium, explores patterns behind healing illnesses such as the deadliest kinds of cancers, and lays out physical and mental principles associated with recovery. “These include physically healing diets and immune systems, and mentally healing stress responses and identities.

Rediger argues that much of our physical reality is created in our minds and perception changes our experiences, sometimes to the point of changing our bodies. Therefore, Rediger argues, healing our identities may be a key tool to recovery.” Different prominent medical professionals have commended the book.

?

?

Some of their quotes

Dr. Mark Hyman, MD, Director of the Cleveland Clinic for Functional Medicine, Author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller?‘The Blood Sugar Solution has said’ declared “Cured is a rare glimpse into the mysteries of human health and disease. Why do some people with incurable disease suddenly heal? This phenomenon has been ignored by medicine rather than investigated. Dr. Rediger finally asks what we can learn from these cases of spontaneous remission and how can we activate the power of the human body using the mind to harness our body’s own healing systems.”

?

Jill Bolte-Taylor, PhD, Neuroanatomist, Spokesperson for the Harvard Brain Bank, Author of the New York Times bestseller?‘My Stroke of Insight' —"I believe Dr. Rediger is the perfect person to write this meaningful and timely book, which shows us a new paradigm of healing from physical illness. His unique documentation of the traits and strategies of individuals who have manifested their own medical recoveries, against all odds, will offer not only hope but also genuine insight to anyone facing a medical crisis."

?

Ellen Langer, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, Author of?‘Counterclockwise’—"Dr. Rediger's work adds enormously to the growing body of work willing to take on the medical establishment and show that we may have far more control over our health than most physicians, researchers, and the lay public realize."

?

?

Martha Stark, MD, Faculty, Harvard Medical School—"Packed with pearls of wisdom gleaned from Dr. Rediger’s intensive immersion in the field of remarkable recoveries and from his thoughtful reflections about his own personal journey,?Cured?will touch the hearts and souls of everyone who reads this book and will inspire them to take charge of their health – and their mindset. This exciting book is bound to be a page- turner for anyone who wants to die from old age – and not before then."

?

?

By Jean Baptiste Ndabananiye- Media, Empowerment& MBA.

Management and Journalism Professional/Consultant with a demonstrated history/experience of involvement in women’s empowerment, project/program management, peace-building/conflict transformation, training, public awareness campaigns, governance and budget transparency, advocacy, documentation, the broadcast media industry, and community justice, among others.

?

?

He is skilled, among others, in English and French, Project& Program Management, Media Production, Peace-building, Leadership, Advocacy, and Kinyarwanda- English-French Translation, and Mind-Body Connection and its Link with Health through extensive reading and investigation about these two fields as well as Health Reporting and Communication. Strong management, media and communication professional with a Bachelor's and Master's focused in Journalism& Communication and MBA-Project Management respectively from University of Rwanda and Mount Kenya University.

?