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What you think about your health and treatment has a physical impact on your body that is real and may even be measurable. Your ability to relax and your relationship with your physician both have important roles in helping you to overcome illness and to heal.
The Placebo Effect is Measurable
Doctors have been using placebo (fake) treatments since the 18th century to help patients whose medical symptoms appeared to be psychosomatic. Placebo treatment is often a pill with no active ingredients, but it can also be a fake procedure or surgery. Medical research is growing that shows persons with actual physical ailments sometimes improve even when they are in a control group that is receiving the pills with inert ingredients or a sham procedure.
Research has shown that measurable changes in a patient's' brain chemistry in these situations:
The Nocebo Effect is Just as Real
The nocebo effect is the phenomenon that occurs when people getting sham treatments report having adverse effects that they were warned about as if they were getting the actual treatment in research studies. Researchers have found that these affect the part of the brain that modulates pain reception and also activate the hippocampus, the area of that is associated with anxiety and memory.
Stress and Relaxation Hormones are Important Factors
When you face a situation that makes you feel afraid or stressed, your sympathetic nerve system produces chemicals that cause your adrenal glands to produce a hormone called cortisol. While this hormone helps your body to cope more effectively with dangerous situations, it should subside within 30 minutes after the threat has passed. However, when you mull over what just happened, allow new imagined worries to crop up, and the body treats these as real threats too and continues its stress response.
While you will have the response for good reasons so you can react effectively in emergencies, if you stay in this state too long, it can be damaging to your body and can also inhibit its natural healing mechanisms.
On the other hand, during a state of relaxation the parasympathetic system of your body produces healing the healing hormones: oxytocin, dopamine, nitric oxide, and endorphins. It also inhibits inflammatory responses that can cause damage if they are turned on continuously.
Compliance Dependent on Understanding the Treatment Strategy
Although having a hopeful attitude is vital, medical interventions are often necessary and the attitude you have towards them also affects how you will respond to treatment of your health conditions. Current research also indicates that your beliefs about your illness could have a bigger impact on your long-term prospects than the severity of the condition.
Patients are more likely to be compliant with treatment if:
So to summarize: your beliefs about your illness and treatment can have profound impacts on your health and prospects for healing. It is important to learn to relax after a stressful situation so that your body can get in a healing mode. Finally, you need to have a good relationship with your physician (like those at Mount Laurel Primary Care Physicians) and understand why the proposed treatment plan would be beneficial to you.
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