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Mind Medicine (Part 1)
— Challenging the
Medical Model
Andrew Paterson—03/2004 |
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So you have a serious illness. Perhaps you
may even be facing the reality of your own demise.
The revelation that death may be near is a huge
shock, and the doctor's diagnosis keeps being played,
over and over again, in your head… a mantra
of fear and hopelessness. Your mind is so frozen
and confused that you can't think straight. Often
you won't even know that you have any choices,
and you will meekly accept whatever advice or treatment
you are given. At times like this, it is essential
that you not necessarily reject but challenge the
medical model. Ideally, you embrace what is called "Mind
Medicine", the medicine of the future. In this
way, you will maximize your chances of survival. |
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 HE
OTHER DAY, I was reading a promotion poster for the charity Cancer
Research on a tube train: it stated that more people
are getting the "all clear" than
ever before. The obvious implication is that the proverbial "war
on cancer" is being won by increased medical research
and trends are being reversed. It forgets to mention
that the primary reason for a slight decrease in cancer
rates is the reduction in smoking, not better cancer
treatment, and as more people are now undergoing screening,
there are naturally more "all clears" as well.
In fact, due to an ageing population, the actual numbers
of people dying from cancer continue to rise. As leading
medical academic, John Bailar, has written, "Our
decades of war against cancer have been a qualified
failure." So Cancer Research's ad is somewhat misleading.
I suppose it is understandable though: if the public
knew the real truth about the "war on cancer" they
might stop donations to these orthodox cancer charities
altogether and look for something more effective to
support. |
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| According to the World Health Organization, over
80% of all deaths in industrialized countries are due
to cardiovascular disease and cancer. In other words,
four out of five of all of us will die from just one
of these two conditions. What is more, these statistics
are not improving, despite the billions of pounds being
poured into vascular and cancer research every year.
In a few years, cancer alone is predicted to take one
in three lives. |
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| Why is modern medicine, despite all its expensive
techniques, drugs and research, powerless to make any
significant dent in these statistics? Much of what
we think we know about the medical establishment is
actually garnered from a slick PR job — a PR
job that, in any other industry, would be heavily restricted
by legislation. And it is that PR job that helps the
medical establishment to maintain, not only its monopoly
in healthcare, but its standing and authority in the
eyes of the public. But how long can the public's credibility
be stretched in the face of such dire mortality statistics? |
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| Not long at all, if the numbers seeking alternative
treatments is to be believed. Many of us are have already
lost faith in much of the current medical establishment
and its treatments, which is why the market for alternative
and complementary treatments, as well as lifestyle
advice and nutritional supplements, is growing exponentially.
People are fed-up watching friends and relatives dying
of degenerative diseases whilst receiving the best
and most expensive high-tech medical "care",
or ending up in hospital from the side effects of medication,
which, according to Guylaine Lanctot, is responsible
for one third of all admittances! |
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| Of course, nobody willingly gives up a monopoly,
especially one worth trillions of pounds worldwide
and one that carries so much prestige and power, and
so there has been and continues to be a vicious orthodox
backlash against alternative medicine, lifestyle treatments
and nutritional supplements. The orthodox medical establishment
maintains its position of power on the backs of the
unimaginably wealthy pharmaceutical industry which
has the resources to effectively lobby government to
maintain this medical monopoly; the power to threaten
and harass anyone, doctor or otherwise, who questions
the status quo; and the influence to encourage the
media to present exaggerated and spurious dangers of
natural healthcare. And yet, despite all this resistance,
the alternative health industry STILL flourishes. |
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| There have, however, been casualties: pioneers in
unorthodox medicine have been jailed, their reputations
trashed; alternative therapies have been outlawed or
stifled under a blanket of restrictive legislation;
and, as is happening here in Europe, food supplements
are being outlawed. Pioneers of the alternative world
that come to mind are Royal Rife (his books were officially
burned as late as 1955 in "the land of the free"),
Max Gerson, Antoine Bechamp, Gaston Naessens, William
Kelley, Edward Bach, Paul Bragg, Linus Pauling, Stanislaw
Burzynski, Hulda Clark, Matthias Rath, Carl Simonton,
Larry Dossey, Bernie Siegel and Guylaine Lanctot (who
simply walked out of a witch-hunt trial stating, "I
am a free physician"). The new inquisition has
fought tooth and nail to stop this medical mutiny.
But it will fail. Revolutions have a habit of completing
themselves, no matter what the opposition, because
of new blood. (Thank God for human mortality!). |
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| Who is responsible for this sorry state of national
ill health? We all are: generations of our forebears
gave away responsibility for their health to an official
group of health professionals — the medical establishment — in
much the same way that previous generations gave away
responsibility for their spiritual expression to the
Church. But any "public service" that becomes
institutionalized ends up becoming a cancer to society,
its tentacles forever reaching forward to extend control
whilst its original raison d'etre is buried
behind bureaucracy and immoral profit margins. |
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| Of course, just because a doctor is orthodox does
not mean that he or she does not greatly care for his
or her patient. But if all a person has is a hammer,
pretty soon everything looks like a nail, and despite
the very best of intentions, remedies and advice more
in the interest of the pharmaceutical industry than
the overall and long-term health of the patient are
being recommended because these are the only tools
in the doctor's bag. That is why correctly prescribed
orthodox medication is now the third biggest killer
after cancer and heart disease, an official statistic
that is outlined in Bryan Hubbard's book "Secrets
of the Drug Industry"). |
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| So what is the standard medical model and why is
the medical establishment so fierce in upholding its
dogmas? In the standard medical model, the body is
seen as a biochemical machine, or, as some have put
it, a hairy bag of a soup. The mind is regarded merely
as an emergent property of the brain, and all disease
primarily as biochemical imbalance or infection. (Ironically,
this description actually represent the view of some
alternative practitioners which also can have a pretty
mechanical view of the body, although their emphasis
is usually on helping to prevent biochemical imbalance
with natural methods such as nutrition.) The modern
medical establishment differs from "mechanical" alternative
therapists in that it believes that there are only
three main ways to correct imbalance in this biochemical
machine: chemical solutions (medicines), surgery and
radiation — poison, slash and burn. (Every other
mode of treatment is disparagingly dismissed as "alternative
medicine".) |
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| Our bodies are very complex systems. So complex that
nobody understands exactly how they work, despite centuries
of worldwide scientific investigation. Whilst it is
true that the base sequence of specific human DNA has
been recently identified, we are a still a long way
off from understanding exactly how these sequences
determine our physiology and biochemical fingerprint,
in much the same way that although we know the brain
is a network of neurons, we don't understand how those
neurons give rise to mind (if indeed they do at all). |
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| Any "systems" physicist (or mathematician)
would be aware of the emerging study of chaos and complex
systems. The human body, and indeed all living things,
comprise a complex system. Complex systems are notorious
for behaving unpredictably, with small changes in one
part often making unexpected large changes in another.
This unpredictability or non-linear aspect of complex
systems means that they can only be imperfectly understood
from a linear, "A affects B which affects C",
perspective — the very perspective at the core
of modern medical and biochemical understanding. In
other words, the medical model is inherently incomplete,
which is why, despite the unimaginable detail, complexity
and funding of modern medical and pharmaceutical research,
complex diseases such as cancer and heart disease never
seem to yield to drug solutions, and is why prescribed
medication is now the third biggest killer. Side-effects
are inevitable when linear solutions are used on complex
systems — a 1 or 2 dimensional remedy at best
well never be entirely right for a 3 dimensional problem,
and at worse, are more harmful than the disease itself. |
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| This does not say that medication is
without merit. Sometimes the side-effect in relation
to the disease itself is the lesser of two evils during
an acute stage of an illness or disease, but the problem
is that these side-effects themselves are unpredictable.
What is the lesser of two evils today might not be
tomorrow. Medication, therefore, should be given very
cautiously and its effects continuously monitored.
Everything is in flux, and considering that the side-effects
of medication is one of our biggest killers, it would
seem that this is an issue that the medical establishment
must face up to, and face up to it publicly. The problem
is that if we severely restrict the drug arsenal of
a doctor, or limit its use, then there is not a lot
left for him to use because his training has almost
exclusively focused on medicinal solutions. For example,
the average medical student receives just 6 hours lectures
in nutrition during his entire 4 or 5 year training,
so she is unlikely to value or recommend nutritional
solutions to disease (outside of the proverbial and
unhelpful advice to eat a "well-balanced diet"). |
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| Trying to control a complex system by
influencing some of its parts is not a good idea if
you are after a specific and consistent outcome. We
need to be able to influence the whole, all at the
same time. Generally, this is done with holistic treatments — remedies
that take the whole person into perspective. If you
have a problem with your liver, for example, rather
than just treating a biochemical imbalance in the liver,
a holistic therapist would use a treatment program
which would take the whole person into perspective.
Such a program might include diet, supplements, homoeopathy,
acupuncture, herbal remedies, massage, shiatsu, lifestyle
changes, reflexology, breathing techniques, visualisation,
affirmations, flower remedies, and orthodox medical
drugs (provided that they are part of a holistic program
and are frequently reviewed). The solution must reflect
the dimensionality of the problem, and as the body
is a complex system, few problems can be solved satisfactorily
with simple, linear solutions such as medicines. |
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| Of course, there is one aspect of us
that is entirely holistic and non-local — one
that links every part of the body and is able to make
non-linear and non-local changes. That part is our
mind. The mind is severely underestimated in orthodox
treatment with its effects being relegated to "placebo" — derived
from the Latin "I will be acceptable or pleasing." The
term "placebo" has become something of a pejorative
term, the fly in the ointment that can skew research
results unless it is carefully eliminated. What an
insult to the power of the mind; rather than trying
to eliminate the placebo effect in medical research
by use of double blind tests, we should be finding
ways to optimise it! Surely that would be in the interest
of the patient? |
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| Most people, including doctors, severely
underestimate the strength of the placebo effect. Research
indicates that placebo effects are often as high as
40% for patient improvement and sometimes as high as
80 or more percent. Considering that Allen Roses of
GlaxoSmithKline has publicly stated that 90% of drugs
only work in 30-50% of people (and no doubt he presenting
an optimistic view here as he is part of the industry)
and one realizes just how important "mind" effects
are in recovery. In fact, if the placebo was a drug,
it would be called a miracle cure by the medical establishment! |
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| So why is the medical establishment
so dismissive of the power of mind? When somebody tells
an oncologist, for example, that they are doing visualisation,
they will usually get some patronising remark or condescending
smile — it isn't even worth the vitriol that
is reserved for the rest of "alternative therapies".
The mind is a joke from the establishment's point of
view. And yet, billions is spent every year on double-blind
protocols to take this effect into consideration, or
rather eliminate it. |
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| The modern biological paradigm still
sees the mind-body interface as light-weight. In fact,
this is probably a runoff from Descartes' original
scientific philosophy that neatly separates mind from
body. The body is complex enough without having the
mind involved in the equation as well! Of course, many
an old-time family doctor used the placebo effect to
good measure because they were aware of the mind's
influence, but in the modern age, with the commercialisation
of modern medicine and the strong focus on profit rather
than cure, expensive medicines have become the order
of the day. There is just no money to be made in mind
medicine. |
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| But the mind is the medicine of the future,
and one day it will be in the forefront of medical
research. According to Lynne McTaggart, author of The
Field, there are over 150 studies confirming that distant
healing works. Larry Dossey documents very clearly
in his books the research that demonstrates the effect
of mind on living systems. Of course, if you have some
materialistic dogma to defend, or if you are on the
payroll of an organisation which profits from reinforcing
a materialistic dogma, then you can always come up
with some reason to dismiss the validity of these experiments.
A sceptic always has the right to be sceptical towards
the truth in front of his eyes. It is time to leave
these sceptics behind and move forward in the interests
of humanity. |
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| Apart from the profit issue, which is
the overriding factor, the other problem to the orthodox
medical establishment about "mind medicine" is
that it is difficult to control and erodes the authority
of "the establishment". (It is to health what
free-energy machines are to physics.) Mind medicine
reinstates the individual as the creator of his or
her reality, and encourages a direct relationship with
God or All That Is. Francois Mitterand once said, "The
health of citizens is a commodity which is bought and
sold." That commodity is worth trillions to the
pharmaceutical industry, but give mind medicine its
rightful place in the healthcare system, and human
beings would be a far less profitable harvest. |
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| The first step in realizing mind medicine
is attitude: we have to take it seriously if we want
to see good results. (Many current experiments in mind
over matter clearly demonstrate a correlation between
outcome and the belief of the experimenter.) Mind medicine
needs to be picked out the rubbish where it has lain
for a century and more, dusted down, polished up and
put back in place of honour on the centre of the mantelpiece.
To relegate the mind to an interesting curiosity that
is worth a try as an addendum to "proper" treatment — conventional
or otherwise — sabotages that very power of belief
that needs to be harnessed. There is nothing more important
than our expectations and beliefs in disease outcome,
period. |
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| The second step is focus: we need to
live, breathe and eat the wholeness that we seek. With
our minds, it is the strongest and most persistent
thought that "solidifies" into shared reality,
and so it is important to focus wholeheartedly. One
of the unfortunately characteristics of the modern
mind is its unfocused nature and its passive need to
constantly be entertained. Focus is essential if we
are to control this complex system that is called our
body. There are many books on the techniques of focus
but perhaps the best way to attain good focus is through
the practice of meditation (or if you don't like that
word, deep prayer). |
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| As a general rule, we need to be able
to visualise and see ourselves as whole. If we have
cancer, for example, this might involve visualisation
of cancer cells being destroyed by our white blood
cells, whilst at the same time following our intuition
as to a treatment program. Some of us might feel that
chemotherapy is the right thing to do, but we ourselves
must come to this decision through a combination of
our feeling self and our rationality, and not through
fear or the false belief that there is no alternative.
We must get in touch with our intuition, and this can
only happen when we are not overwhelmed by feelings
of fear and hopelessness. For most, this will occur
when we see our illness from the perspective of our
religious or spiritual beliefs. From that perspective,
we are a small part of something great, and the outcome
of our disease loses its importance. When this happens,
we are free to make the right choice for ourselves. |
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| And the third step we need to take to
ensure our minds are given the best chance to heal
our bodies is to get away from anybody or any information
source that would weaken our mental resolve. That,
of course, includes rationalists that think they know
everything, and indeed anybody who does not respect
what you are trying to do. I am not one to quote the
Bible but I do like the quote from Jesus, "Whoever
will cause one of these little ones who believe in
me to stumble, it would be better for him if he was
thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around his
neck." Unshakable faith and belief is essential
to the power of the mind. Most of the people who have
been successful with mind medicine insulated themselves
from doubters (those doubters often being members of
their own families). In a society often cynical with
regards to the power of the mind, mind medicine can
be a lonely journey. |
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Putting mind first, through these three
steps, does not exclude the use of medicines or other
treatments. In fact, with our mind's cooperation, these
treatments can be many times more effective. But the
individual mind must be honoured first and foremost
because this places the Self back into the centre of
the healing equation, rather than having it cowering
at the periphery of a treatment that has been insensitively
imposed from an outside authority. In this way, the
full power of individual is focused towards health,
rather than wasting energy on potential and imagined
negative outcomes, and fearful emotional states. |
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| Mind medicine is the medicine of the
future, but if we are courageous enough, we can have
it today. |
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| (Part 2 of Mind Medicine
goes into much more detail of using the mind for healing
and should be posted next month.) |
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| This
article is for interest only. If you are unwell or
have a medical condition, please seek professional
medical advice. |
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| "The real doctor
is the doctor within. Most doctors know nothing
of this science and yet it works so well." |
| Albert Schweitzer |
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| Andrew Paterson is an independent writer currently living in London. He has no affiliation to any religious or political organisation. To contact him, please email . |
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