Mind and Matter

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this-is-fortyEveryone can relate to the changes our bodies traverse one decade to the next. Changes? Perhaps the better word is brawls. At thirty-nine my physician informed me in no uncertain terms what I had medically to expect and monitor by regular checkups and tests for a white male in his forties in “good health.” These tests and checkups would vary and change into my fifties in order to search for common and uncommon anomalies before they became unmanageable.

Honestly, I wondered then the benefits of telling a patient, a person, in a number of different contexts what possible ailments await them in the looming? exciting future of preventative/reactionary medicine and treatments. How much should we know? How much CAN we know? Is it possible to know too much? Is it detrimental to know too little? More importantly, what are the effects on the mind and body of “too much” or “too little“?

This past August I was forced heavily persuaded to register for a Life-Line Screening October 7th. I conceded because there was no denying my last FULL physical exam was done over 17-years ago. As a few of my blog-posts attest — e.g. Snip-Snip and Done! — I become a messy blob of shivering jello around needles, syringes and all things designed to stick in, open up, modify, simplify, or rectumfy rectify the human body. Just the name of this screening (Life-Line? Are you freakin’ serious?) frightened the SHIT out of me! I obsessed, “If they perform this god damn screening at a funeral home or next door to or near a funeral home, I was prepared to do an immediate 180° turn and sacrifice my $350 to the god and altar of Fuck That.“

When my name was called by the nurse (named Temple; I kid you not) to start matters upon me, I immediately asked “When would be a good time to tell someone about my history of feinting since a boy?” With a warm grin she replied, “Oh? Now.” She was not only extremely attractive, near my own age, and chatting with a sweet sense of humor, everything seemed a silly figment of my hyper-nervous imagination with her by my side! As she took my measurements, including around my lower waist, my pulse and blood-pressure rose. Indeed, in a most natural way of course. Then she moved me to a station and chair where there was a large open-container of needles and collection tubes. Everything, inside and out of me changed. And as if that sight was not enough, she wants to take my blood-pressure before sticking me for vials of blood.

needlesI feel my palms getting clammy as she wraps the velcro-band around my bicep. Pump, pump, then the hissing… “Hmm,” she says with slight bewilderment, “that’s not so good. Is it all these needles and vials?” I inhale deeply, “They don’t help.” Temple begins giving me relaxation instructions, how to breath and to go to my “happy-place.” Umm, that would be out the nearest door… with you, I think to myself. “Okay.” I take several long deep breaths. She takes my blood-pressure a second time, then has to record it. She tells me with minor certainty “It’s a little better than before.” But waiting to be lead to the next station, she announces my name (to everyone in the church conference room) “We need to take your blood-pressure again. It’s too close to ‘Critical’.” What is going on? I think I feel better because the “needles” I perceived there were only the microneedle finger prick cases. I made it through that station with shaky flying colors!

Despite my lifelong embarrassing history of feinting around such objects in such places, there is a profound silver-lining to this post. Mind over matter, or what I’ve changed to Mind and Matter. Specifically the placebo effect on the human body and brain.

The Theater of Performance and Belief

For several thousands of years we have all engaged in a performance of relief to make us feel better. On the flip-side, we have all participated at various points in our life things we do not feel pleasurable about, but as necessary or unavoidable like I did for the Life Line Screening after 17-years. Others do it for some “expected” result. In some cases, and I’d say in most cases, we find ways to get addicted to relief… or a feeling of relief through belief of betterment even though it may never come to fruition in real life or this pre-mortem life.

Ted Kaptchuk of the Harvard Medical School says based on his decades of research that knowingly participating in a performance, which has no guaranteed desired results, activates regions of the brain to manage undesirable or pain symptoms.

“This new research demonstrates that the placebo effect is not necessarily elicited by patients’ conscious expectation that they are getting an active medicine, as long thought. Taking a pill in the context of a patient-clinician relationship — even if you know it’s a placebo — is a ritual that changes symptoms and probably activates regions of the brain that modulate symptoms.”
— Dr. Ted Kaptchuk, ScienceDaily.com, Oct. 2016

placebo-effectHowever, he and many medical researchers observing the placebo effect state the performance of expectation is a key component to improved symptoms or “healing” in test studies. The experiments have shown over and over that with a supportive patient-practitioner relationship, along with all the props and costumes of a medical-theatrical stage, improved or successful outcomes were induced from self-relieving, self-healing brain processes, not placebos or necessarily pharmaceuticals.

“The [theater of performance and belief, i.e. placebo] results were not surprising: the patients who experienced the greatest relief were those who received the most care. But in an age of rushed doctor’s visits and packed waiting rooms, it was the first study to show a “dose-dependent response” for a placebo: the more care people got—even if it was fake—the better they tended to fare.”
— Harvard Magazine, The Placebo Phenomenon, Jan-Feb 2013

But there’s more. A related study conducted by Karin Jensen of the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden has found it didn’t matter if the test participants experienced clearly visible or non-recognizable stimuli. According to further studies, they indicate that mechanisms responsible for placebo and nocebo effects can operate without conscious awareness of the triggering cues, i.e. theater. In other words, it is not what a person thinks will happen, it is what the non-conscious mind anticipates, despite any conscious thoughts. Dr. Jensen goes on to say…

“Such a mechanism would generally be expected to be more automatic and fundamental to our behavior compared to deliberate judgments and expectations”, says Karin Jensen. “These findings can help us explain how exposure to typical clinical environments and routines can activate powerful health improvements, even when treatments are known to be ineffective.”
— Dr. Karin Jensen, Placebos Can Be Activated Unconsciously, Karolinska Institute, June 2015

Hospitals, clinics, apothecaries, even fitness gyms are common venues for the Theater of Belief. There are hundreds if not thousands of groups and locations to harness the power of expectations, all with varying levels of observable efficacy. Tanya Luhrmann of Stanford University carries this phenomenon a step further. She includes sanctuaries and congregations of “divine” worshipping…

Luhrmann suggests that “belief is natural. It comes partly from the way our minds are hardwired.” She has spent most of her professional career deconstructing people’s interaction with a divine being. Her findings say that belief-based relief/healing requires not only a good theater, a riveting story, but also the earnestness of an active listener — someone with the desire to make what is being performed and imagined FEEL real. She goes on to emphasize that “humans have the capacity to change their experience.” It is why authors of popular fiction become best-sellers literally overnight — their readers engross themselves in the story, in the theatrical performance.

Personally, I see no reason at all to exclude religious fervor for the divine, or for sacred scriptures, or for objects or miracles to be any different from the Theater of Belief at hospitals, clinics, apothecaries, fitness gyms, and yes… at churches, synagogues, or mosques.

Throw in Peer Assimilation and…
lakewood_church_interior

Lakewood Ranch Church, Branson, MO

The power of group-belief and the theater of performance, whether based in fact, placebos, or verifiable data, can be easily demonstrated by religious pilgrimages. Every year some 5-million pilgrims make the journey to Lourdes, France for the seasonal Our Lady of Lourdes’ Healings. The Black Madonna pilgrimages all over the world are another example which attracts millions of believers every year. The annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia by over 2-million Muslims is one of “the five pillars of Islam.” Then the largest pilgrimage of all religions, the Maha Kumbh Mela to Allahabad, India occurs every 12-years and draws approximately 120-million Hindus. Pilgrims essentially attest to the same purpose or expectation, and ‘all are here for personal reasons, but all are here for each other as much as themselves.’ The more they feel they belong to a popular trend, the more they are convinced it comes from divine sources. If this doesn’t perhaps offer one definition of strength in numbers, then what does?

It seems that not only are you what you eat, or do, or consciously think, you can also be what you believe or expect, whether it is based on anything verifiable or not, especially if thousands or millions think and perform alike and with you, or you with them, then that performance and expectation makes it feel real for that individual! What an amazing revelation, borrowing the popular term. These neurological psychological studies can help explain why I have an aversion (to say the least) to all things designed to stick in, open up, modify, simplify, or rectum rectify the human body. But on a bigger scale these neurological psychological studies (placebos) can also explain a long long history of humanity’s most brilliant and blind, most virtuous and vile of human acts. Agreed? Disagree? Let me know below with your comments.

For further details and studies go to My Library page:  Bibliography – Mind and Matter
as well as this 2001 Newsweek article.

(paragraph break)

Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

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39 thoughts on “Mind and Matter”

  1. An absolutely superb piece, Professor, if I may say so; the perfect blend of you’ve-gotta-be-kidding-me counterbalanced and verified with fact. Actually, there wasn’t so much of the former for me, as I’ve experienced the placebo effect very strongly in my own life when attending therapy for a postural discomfort I was experiencing a good few years ago. I decided to take some therapy sessions in something called The Feldenkrais Method, which is in fact very interesting and has a lot to do with creating patterns of movement in the brain which then, once established, may play out in the body’s range of motor action options – yes, apparently there are actual patterns of neural connections that loosely simulate a body image and its movement options. Anyway, after very few sessions (4 or 5) I found the postural problem no longer was, even though I hadn’t yet had sufficient treatment for any noticeable effect to occur. I was feeling very positive about doing something about it, and also had reasonable confidence in the method and therapist. This somehow convinced the body to right itself, but in the unlikeliest degree of rapidity. It was clearly a placebo effect based on my belief that I was doing something positive for myself. I can’t say it was a belief that the method itself would necessarily work, only that it might, but I did believe I was making a positive decision in the matter, and that seems to be what produced the effect.

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    • Ahh, my friend… that is such a great story/comment! More so, it’s a perfect illustration of how powerful each of our own brains, along with a remarkably adept body and neurological system (to name just three components in harmony) can “RELIEVE”, can indeed cause healing if we BELIEVE we are doing what we should, or the best we know! It begs the question, Why do we need the placebo in the first place? Or other unverifiable “forces”? We have the power/empowerment and need no proxy! Ever! Accept each other! Ahhh, there’s a huge key, eh? 😉

      Thank you for your kind words Hariod. ❤

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    • Hmmm, WordPress can get SO complicated sometimes, eh? 😉 I do hope you stop by more GC. I value your feedback and perspectives.

      Yes, my father had the same physio issues with hospitals and equipment so it has been mentioned to me by doctors that our “phobias” might be psychosymatic, especially since my daughter also has a developing history of feinting now. 😮

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    • Thank you Jeff. Researching it and composing it was utterly fascinating for me. As the medical sciences continue to progress, evolve, and explain the real hardcore data/evidence of true human nature, this reinforces the capacity AND audacity the human brain is capable of reaching, healing — even when it is superbly fictious — in many ways we don’t need a proxy or mythical divinity! Expectation, performance, and peer support/inclusion still inspires the unimaginable, no matter how outlandish! Case and point, my phobia of medical tools! LOL 😉

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    • Indeed it is Nan, even perhaps they are both bed-partners and inseparable. 🙂 What is MORE compelling, if not certain to me, is that all 7.5+ billion minds and bodies are to a degree (very slight, slight, or noticeable) or degrees… different physically and behaviorally. But not so genetically! How so? When doctors and scientists do extensive studies on identical twins or triplets, genetically there are miniscule differences. Behaviorally there are more noticeable differences. As one moves beyond these (identical) peoples, the differences physically and behaviorally become more pronounced. However, genetically? Not so much.

      My point relative to your comment? In two words: fluid spectrums. Human life and death are a complete and fluid paradox! No matter what any one person or one Earthling group believes or behaves, there will ALWAYS BE an infinite amount of slight or noticeable differences originating from a less-than 0.1% genetic difference! Not one of which is any inferior or superior to another. Human expression, creativity, ingenuity, and interaction are absolutely boundless… until we go beyond this pale blue dot of a planet. 😉

      Thank you so much Nan for reading and commenting! ❤

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  7. I know what you mean about needles. I hate them. Hate them.

    I like your points here, and they’re certainly demonstrated in our responses to existential death anxiety. It’s actually held that this awareness of our mortality drove the development of symbolic language, which means it drove human culture. We have always looked for ways to transcend the mortal body. It’s what makes us, us.

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  8. Hi! 🙂 I am a person of faith (not religion) that is doing some research into the minds and science of non-believers. Placebo can question reality itself. Something not tangible or there can change into something that can be measured. Love, Isabella

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    • Placebo can question reality itself.

      If I am understanding your comment correctly Isabella, yes indeed, the Placebo-effect can most certainly question/change reality as it is perceived by the individual. However, it has much less effect (if any at all) on the Universe/Cosmos and its Natural laws… which on the macro-scales operate OUTSIDE of our small/tiny personal spheres of influences, our interpretations, or perceptions.

      Thank you for stopping by. Please feel free to visit and comment at anytime! Happy New Year to you too Isabella! 🙂

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      • Thank you 🙂 Well, at the quantum level all options are in superposition with one another. Only when observed/measured that it changes.

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        • Quite true Isabella. As science continues to study and understand Quantum Physics more it seems antiquated forms of philosophy, self-perception, and extrapolation (and hopefully psychological projection) will inevitably be dismantled. This excites me! 🙂

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            • You too have a wonderful attitude. 🙂 I embrace diversity Isabella, in fact I enjoy it and welcome it (in a spirit of decency), if for no other reason than it makes us all sharper, broad-minded, humble, and more whole human beings. When we experience MORE of this world, it’s many various people/cultures, it’s Natural elements, and other species… we gain a much deeper understanding of ourselves and others! In fact, many of my dearest friends call me a reincarnated Marco Polo. 😉

              Btw, I made a comment on your post “Arguments against faith & creationism” that is currently in moderation. Looking forward to more exchanges of ideas Isabella! ❤

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            • Thank you so much. 😉 I am grateful that you think so. Your values are great. You write in a humble loving way and express yourself very well. Looking forward to getting to know you better ♡ ♡

              .

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  12. This will ring no bells with anyone—but I’m happy to be me. Just me. The old (that means aging) car I drive has never let me down; and other than checking that her levels are good and tyres ok that’s all the routine maintenance she ever gets. Oh, and yes, I run over her coat sometimes with my own home-made beeswax polish.
    We logged our first half million k’s sometime last year. Diesel, of course—to hell with them silly petrol things: diesel starts reliably.

    And when the sun shines even the bees love her. Actually, especially the bees love her and gather ’round admiring — I’ve never figured that out, I guess bees know a good ‘un when they see it.

    The analogy is, that’s also (sans the wax polish) how I treat my me.
    Me goes to the doc for defect repair only (when The Spouse threatens me with physical bodily harm if I don’t) (and that’s how I like my medics — at a distance but available in emergencies.

    It seems to work. Car certainly does …

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    • Hahaha! 😄 Argus, I did have to read your comment 2-3 times to find the analogy, the metaphor, or wrench in the machine 😄, but I THINK I got it—emphasis on THINK. Your old jalopy car does not still run smoothly, no hitches, because you only talk to it once a week or once a day expecting it to never breakdown, or keep the petrol tank full, all by its own… or for it to repair other’s jalopies by simply talking (silently, eyes closed?) beseeching your jalopy or those other jalopies. Right!? It takes YOUR active, physical attention and efforts to make YOUR eternal jalopy the premier jalopy on the streets! Yes? 😁

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      • More or less. (Hell, I confuse even my me sometimes, too active a mind. As a young man I tried an experiment—how many levels could I actively consciously think on simultaneously? I think I almost blew a fuse …)

        An Abrahamic might say that God looks after her, seeing that I don’t. And by association, He looks after me — hey, how come God is always a He? I prefer lady gods (Aphrodite, boom boom!)

        As a fatalist (in my case I have some way-out ideas on time/space)

        —bugger. Just answered a phone call and lost track. You’ll just have to fill in the gaps—but rest assured, you cannot possibly be wrong.

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    • Indeed it is Ross. Once I truly began understanding the intricacies, the cytology, biology, and genetics of all the intertwined human body’s systems and how remarkably they function (not always perfectly however), plus my sudden introduction to actual people born intersexed at birth and how common those birth-rates were—this/that was a HUGE eye-opener for me!—I quickly concluded that “God’s workshop,” His supposedly “perfect” workshop or creation(s) is in truth… extremely flawed and sometimes completely random. It had nothing at all to do with an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present, all-good all-perfect Deity we have been wrongly taught for several millenia.

      In the end and as a consequence, I’ve found incredible levels and depths of peace simply because NOW I know my real place and purpose in this (extremely) short life I have…. from star dust! 🤩 I am so much more grateful about this life than I’ve ever been, especially my 11+ years as a serious, born-again, Evangy-Fundy, seminary student & Scripturalist, missionary abroad, and deacon with the Singles Ministry. As they say in those circles of my bygone past:

      The truth will set you free!

      And boy howdy HAS THE REAL TRUTH DELIVERED!!! I am now a 31-yrs plus, ecstatic Freethinking Humanist from Earth. Period. Stop. Nothing more, nothing less. 😁

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      • Yeah there are so many things that you just don’t learn as a Christian, and I was so amazed to learn these things when I became an atheist for the first time!

        Yes knowing our place and purpose is extremely valuable. Despite knowing this I still don’t feel I’ve got this incredible depth of peace you describe, I’m working on it for myself I guess. The most empowering thing for me was learning that I can’t just wait for a God to come in and fix everything for me, and that I’ve got to reach these things by myself. This attitude has helped me solve so many problems up until now, and I will use it to try and solve more!

        But yes, far happier and more peaceful now than when I was a Christian.

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