Lissa Rankin And The Self-Healing Theory
It is not a recent subject. Since time immemorial, there has been talk of self-healing or the ability of the human body to heal itself. Dr Lissa Rankin has published a book called Beyond Medicine, Our Mind. Scientific evidence for your ability to self-heal, in which she talks about this topic.
She evokes the eternal enigma of placebo drugs. It is clear to science that a person’s suggestion acts as a self-healing mechanism. However, how this mechanism works has not been studied much.
How does the body manage to heal itself? This is the central question that can be found in the research carried out by Lissa Rankin. His book talks about six essential steps for the body to heal on its own and voluntarily. It also indicates the main measures to build a “preventive” spirit in terms of physical health.
Iconic background
In 1957, a case linked to the famous placebo effect became paradigmatic. Doctor Philip West was treating a patient named Wright. He had lymphosarcoma, which is a type of cancer that affects the lymphatic system. The disease was very advanced and metastases were already present in various areas of his body. The man was terminally ill.
However, Wright had heard of an experimental drug called Krebiozen. He always insisted to his doctor to try it when he was not fit to do this experiment. But his insistence was so great that the doctor agreed, knowing that he only had a few days left to live.
West applied Krebiozen to him on a Friday. On Monday, the patient was in great shape and no longer complained of pain or discomfort. After examining him, the doctor saw that his tumors had shrunk by 50%. But most strikingly, some time later a study declared the drug to be unusable. The patient fell ill again. The doctor then decided to lie to him. He told her that a new, much more effective version of this drug had just come out. He applied distilled water to her and the patient’s condition improved again.
Despite these results, the American Association of Medicine did not want to give credit to these facts. She revealed the doctor’s lie and, upon hearing it, the patient fell ill again. He died shortly after. Many similar cases exist. Lissa Rankin used them for her research.
Lissa Rankin and Self-Healing
Lissa Rankin began to compile a list of all the cases where the placebo effect had worked. The latter affected several serious diseases: cancer, hypothyroidism, diabetes, ulcers and even HIV.
She also found several examples of experiments where patients were told they were being given chemotherapy. In fact, we were just giving them a placebo. Even then, people were losing their hair and vomiting continuously after receiving this substance. All of this prompted Lissa Rankin to assert, without the slightest doubt, that the mind was capable of healing the body.
She especially emphasized the following fact: if all the conditions are in place for the patient to think he is going to get better, he will get better. The body receives this command, these instructions from the brain and therefore acts accordingly. If he thinks he’s sick, he’ll get sick.
The means to self-heal
Lissa Rankin refers to several ways that help the body to be more efficient in this process of self-healing. However, she mainly emphasizes two elements that she considers essential.
The first element is preventive medicine. This includes all the healthy practices incorporated into people’s daily lives. Beyond their concrete effect on the body, these lifestyles make people feel healthy. Under these conditions, they are not very receptive to the disease.
The second aspect is related to stress. According to Rankin, stress, in all its forms, has excessively harmful effects on the mind and body. It negatively activates what she calls the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. It is about how an organism reacts to a threat. However, he cannot know if it is a problem of couple or an earthquake. So he feels it the same way.
Even though Lissa Rankin’s studies have not been formally recognized, the majority of doctors agree that the placebo effect actually works. Seeing an increase in the number of studies and research on this subject would therefore be a very good thing.
Our thoughts The nocebo effect leads the patient to believe that the drug can cause side effects which most of the time eventually manifest.
