Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body

The field of alternative medicine is plagued with claims that can be as misleading as they are lethal. In Simon Singh’s book, Trick or Treatment, he covers aa number of the alternative medicines with a solid scientific rebuttal of those that fail to live up to expectations. But is there something going on that science is beginning to uncover? In this book Marchant considers the latest scientific research into the effect that our minds can have over our bodies, with solid evidence of the effects of positive thoughts and mindsets.

In the book she considers some fairly fundamental questions; the way our minds work, the almost magical effect of placebo, the management of pain and how the act of caring for someone can be transformative. show more There are chapters on training your immune system and the power of friendships. All of these things, when used in conjunction with a sympathetic doctor and the appropriate course of drugs can have an amazing effect compared to just regular treatments. Alternative medicine has lots of flaws, but what it does do well is to spend time with and care about the patient, something that conventional appointments with their rushed 10 minute slots and almost guaranteed prescription at the end of the consultation seems to have now lost. Throughout the book she meets with the scientists, doctors and patients who are at the leading edge of this research, bringing us their perspectives and trying to articulate why they think that it is working.

When reading this it did bring to mind Pratchett’s headology, the way that people see themselves and the world around them. But this is about real lives and people who are being treated with regular medicines, but who are fortunate to have doctors who are considering the whole individual at the same time. Marchant writes this with sparkling clarity and authority, and thankfully rarely dips into obscure medical jargon. It made for very interesting reading too, with some well written examples of those that have been healed or had their lives return to something closer to normal. Based on the research here, we need to consider both mind and body treatments not just a blind acceptance of the newest drugs. All very interesting stuff and much food for thought. show less

"Adeptly weaving research and individual’s stories together, Marchant has created a fascinating exploration of how our mind affects our body and how our body affects our mind. Beautifully written, Marchant explores a wide range of mind-body issues with a healthy skepticism, profound respect, and delightful curiosity. With a light touch, she points out how research into this area is stymied by the way most medical research is funded, and the current medical research model. Along the way, she raises a number of important questions, including things like if the placebo effect is real and helps people in a measurable way, why should things that create it be discounted?" -eachurch, LibraryThing early reviewer
"This book is a great show more introduction to mind/body phenomena in medicine, because it approaches the topic from a rigorously scientific, evidence-based standpoint. Ms. Marchant is a science and history journalist with a doctorate in microbiology, and without any touch of New Agey credulity. She looks at the ways in which the mind can affect the body's ability to cure itself, looking at individual case histories and at studies of many cases. Much of the evidence she cites is compelling...Beyond convincing arguments and evidence, Ms. Marchant has written an eminently readable and engrossing book. She makes one thing very clear: the antipathy of the current medical establishment to non-traditional medicine, even when it is shown to be helpful. This is based on the sad fact that it is at present very difficult to make money from an approach that leans to fewer pills, less intervention, and more human contact. Perhaps efforts at cost saving will bring this approach more into the limelight. In the meantime, this book is well worth reading, particularly for those with intractable medical issues."-annbury early reviewer LibraryThing show less

I expected this book to be much more of an exposé, but Marchant does a really good job of reporting the ways in which placebo treatment, mental distraction, and emotional support effect health outcomes, without ever going along with any actual "mind-over-body" claims. And she has plenty of stories of people who blame themselves for their diseases and try to cure them with diet, homeopathic remedies, and "positive thinking", and how tragic the results inevitably are in such cases. The conclusion, with which I agree: pseudoscience is pseudoscience and hurts people. The science of integrated (emotional and physical) healthcare can help people.

This book is so amazing I immediately wanted to share it with all my friends! Sure, we are surrounded with claims of the powers of “natural” treatments for medical conditions: reiki, acupuncture, holistic cures, and the like. Yet, author Jo Marchant sorts through it all to present scientific evidence of the actual affect of thoughts, emotions, and beliefs over the physical functions of the body. She sorts through Hoodoo and woo-woo to demonstrate the proven value of placebos, conditioning, emotional and sensation training. In other words, the brain can be used to lesson pain, improve ailments and disabilities, and reduce the need for risky, powerful medications.

Patients recovering from surgery who received painkillers administered show more by an informative physician received up to 50% more pain relief than those receiving the same drugs via a computer-controlled intravenous drip received. Irritable bowel syndrom sufferers taking placebos received relief from the condition from placebos, even when they knew they were taking placebos.

Marchant supports the potential of the mind’s ability to heal and to improve the body function with 28 pages of footnotes. As a PhD in genetics and medical microbiology, Marchant approached this investigation as a scientist, yet she could not be dismissive of research-supported results.

I highly recommend “Cure: a Journey into the Science of Mind over Body” for anyone faced with chronic or disabling medical conditions or people interested in pushing their bodies to extremes. It is foolish to discount the interplay of psychology with medical treatment, and this book demonstrates why. show less

Adeptly weaving research and individual’s stories together, Marchant has created a fascinating exploration of how our mind affects our body and how our body affects our mind. Beautifully written, Marchant explores a wide range of mind-body issues with a healthy skepticism, profound respect, and delightful curiosity. With a light touch, she points out how research into this area is stymied by the way most medical research is funded, and the current medical research model. Along the way, she raises a number of important questions, including things like if the placebo effect is real and helps people in a measurable way, why should things that create it be discounted?

This book is a great introduction to mind/body phenomena in medicine, because it approaches the topic from a rigorously scientific, evidence-based standpoint. Ms. Marchant is a science and history journalist with a doctorate in microbiology, and without any touch of New Agey credulity. She looks at the ways in which the mind can affect the body's ability to cure itself, looking at individual case histories and at studies of many cases. Much of the evidence she cites is compelling; her arguments are strong enough to make me consider a non-traditional approach to my chronic hip pain, and for someone as science-based as I, that's quite a concession.
Beyond convincing arguments and evidence, Ms. Marchant has written an eminently readable and show more engrossing book. She makes one thing very clear: the antipathy of the current medical establishment to non-traditional medicine, even when it is shown to be helpful. This is based on the sad fact that it is at present very difficult to make money from an approach that leans to fewer pills, less intervention, and more human contact. Perhaps efforts at cost saving will bring this approach more into the limelight. In the meantime, this book is well worth reading, particularly for those with intractable medical issues. show less

Reading Jo Marchant’s Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body, I found religion. Well, to qualify that a bit, I felt as if I wanted to convert others to the good news Cure offered. I couldn’t help but make a mental list of those who needed this book. Topping that list were some of the doctors I’ve seen across the years, including the hot-shot specialist who asked me if I wanted to play 21 questions when I asked about a drug’s side effects. Unfortunately, those doctors are the least likely to take my advice.

Almost every other page in my copy has margins highlighted or marked NB. The amazing findings keep coming at you. It is impossible to remember them all in detail. What you do take away is rekindled respect for show more researchers working with scant resources and even scantier respect from their peer-reviewing scientific community. This diverse group includes, among others, neuroscientists, anthropologists, surgeons, and anethesiologists.

Marchant explores the latest research into the mind-body relationship keeping her style straightforward and brisk rather than arcane and dense or its opposite, moonstruck and fawning. With a doctorate in genetic and medical microbiology from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College in London and an MSc in Science Communication from Imperial College London, she previously edited the New Scientist and Nature.

Her background as a scientist suggests she is likely to be a skeptic of grand schemes and unsubstantiated claims. Though she is indeed a skeptic, she is also open-minded and willing to follow the evidence. There is quite a lot of it showing the interplay between mind and body. Although it might not convince the powers that be (practicing clinicians, research funding sources, health insurance plans, pharmaceutical companies), it may persuade patients to apply pressure to them by asking questions. Begin by asking one simple question: is there another way to affect my health positively without harm. Marchant says a lot of evidence suggests there is. Isn’t that what the scientific community says it relies on.

Modern western medicine is built on a foundation of physical findings which can be detected and diagnosed. Long gone is the physician’s attention to or even recognition of the patient’s own subjective experience.

Marchant begins by examining the work of several researchers working with placebo effects. By now many of us have heard that our understanding of placebos is more complicated than previously thought. The old story was that placebos were worthless and harmless, but the newer view is that placebos can positively affect a patient’s well-being as well and sometimes better than some treatment drugs. Research is moving beyond studying placebo’s role in improving symptoms to treating the disease itself.

There are informed doctors who do acknowledge the research showing placebos’ positive effect on a patient’s health. But they have steered clear of using them because it is deemed unethical to mislead or deceive a patient into thinking they are receiving a “real” treatment when they are not. Recent research shows that it is possible to inform a patient that they are receiving a placebo and still have a positive outcome. The ethical issue can now be reframed to ask whether it is ethical to withhold the use of a placebo that research has shown positively affects how a patient feels, especially when that information is provided in advance.

The power of positive thinking has been a popular one for many years and is associated with science’s polar opposites. Faith and prayer, Oprah, and Norman Vincent Peale come to mind. We may be dismissive of their value and regard them as little more than mental sleights of hand, and yet studies are showing that such things serve to make many of us feel better. Marchant finds that a growing body of research suggests that believing we are about to get better can have the power to heal.

The research is sometimes based on subjective feedback from patients but it is also increasingly based on the kind of evidence scientists prefer, such as brain scans. Researchers are tracking evidence of biochemical or neural pathways, somehow triggered by our beliefs, to explain placebo effects.

One researcher, neurologist Joe Stoessel, used brain scans to show that dopamine levels tripled after patients thought they’d taken their real medication, amphetamine. Neuroscientist Fabrizio Benedetti has demonstrated that motor neurons fire more slowly after injecting a placebo in Parkinson patients. Marchant cites many other studies.

Conversely, nocebo effects can be triggered when we anticipate receiving bad side effects. Research on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome has found that patients who feel their condition is untreatable and that engaging in any activity is harmful are less likely to recover.

The use of positive thought can be as simple as thinking positive thoughts when taking medications. One researcher, anthropologist Dan Moerman, “talks” to his pills to enhance their affect and reduce their number. Positive associations with treatments include the doctor’s attitude towards patients. This seems so obvious as to not even be worth mentioning and yet how many patients would report a warm or positive rapport with their doctors.

We are in the early stages of recognizing that we have partially understood what placebos offered. While much of the placebo research looks at how patients feel, there is a newer aspect to this research in the field of immunology involving the treatment of the disease itself. Researchers, such as David Felten, a neuroscientist at the Indiana University School of Medicine, are finding evidence of connections between the immune system and the brain, a previously denied possibility. The bulk of immunologists do not recognize this.

While placebo research continues, albeit with scarce funding sources and amounts, we learn that antidepressant drugs such as Prozac are little better than placebo effects. This information was pried out of the hands of drug companies when Irving Kirsch, an associate director at Harvard’s placebo studies program, used the Freedom of Information Act to force the FDA to release their clinical trial data.

Placebo is a powerful tool in healing, but there are others such as meditation and hypnotherapy. Hypnotherapy, unfortunately, has associations with some questionable practices, such as past life regression. Again, however, neuroimaging is showing changes affected by hypnotherapy. IBS and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients, for example, can benefit when hypnotherapy is added. Marchant’s account of patients reducing excrutiating pain from burn and trauma with the use of hypnotherapy is an argument in favor of trying it in skilled hands.

Virtual reality (VR) hypnosis is being studied on a small scale, but the preliminary results have been so promising that the gaming industry, not pharmaceuticals, is paying close attention.

Then there is just plain old fashioned talking and nurturing. Such fundamentals of caring when applied in childbirth, certain outpatient surgeries or palliative care result in more positive patient outcomes. These common sense approaches have fallen by the wayside as financial pressures stress quick patient encounters over patient outcome.

While old fundamentals of patient engagement are being reclaimed, research has uncovered a new amazing world of telomeres. It has caught on in a big way as we hear more about telomere length, stress and aging. Whether shorter telomeres contribute to illness or are harmless side effects is unclear.

Although telomere’s role remains to be determined, the relationship between poverty and stress and illness and premature death is far from vague. Our psychological response to stressors may also directly affect our health. People who are chronically stressed may experience reshaping their brains resulting in an enlarged amygdala and shrunken hippocampus and prefontal cortex, parts of the brain which help us stay calm and in control.

A companion piece to Marchant’s thorough examination of these fascinating and compelling new studies is Ivan Illych’s Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health, written in 1975. Conventional medicine may drag its heels at recognizing the merits of placebos, hypnotherapy, and other approaches, but it cannot deny its responsibility for significant harmful practices and outcomes. Illych introduced the notion of iatrogenic medicine at a time when no one else dared. But he was on to something. An Institute of Medicine study in 1999 found a huge number of medical errors. Only a few months ago a major meta-analysis published in the British Medical Journal found medical errors represent the third leading cause of death.

Surely the sobering finding that iatrogenic medicine is widespread should encourage conventional medicine to take a hard look at its methods and how it can reduce harm. As Marchant concludes,

“My hope, then, is that this book might help to overcome some of the prejudice against mind-body approaches, and to raise awareness that taking account of the mind in health is actually a MORE scientific and evidence based approach than relying ever more heavily on physical interventions and drugs. show less