Positive Thinking.

Article: Can you Think Yourself Younger: (BBCNews: Feb, 2010)

An experiment in 1979 to see if thought patterns could affect the ageing process has turned out to have far reaching consequences in the field of positive thinking. Taken back 20 years through visual aids and other stimulus to see if it affected their group of elderly gentlemen were Prof Langer, who took physiological measurements both before and after the week and found the men improved across the board. Their blood pressure dropped and, even more surprisingly, their eyesight and hearing got better. Both groups showed improvements, but the experimental group improved the most. Their gait, dexterity, arthritis, speed of movement, cognitive abilities and their memory was all measurably improved. Prof Langer believes that by encouraging the men's minds to think younger their bodies followed and actually became "younger". (3)

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The Love Study:

The following experiment was designed to determine if our consciousness has the capacity to reach out and connect to someone else in a way that's health-promoting?". Dr Schiltz has been conducting the study at the Institute of Neotic Studies in North Carolina, in which loving couples, married over a decade, are tested in the following way:

Schlitz takes one of the couple into an isolated room, where no sound can come in or go out. They settle into a deep armchair as Schlitz attaches electrodes to their right hand which measures blood flow in the thumb and skin conductance activity, both of which are measures of their unconscious nervous system. Schlitz locks the person into the electromagnetically shielded chamber and ushers the partner into another isolated room with a closed-circuit television. She explains that the screen will go on and off. And at random intervals, the images of the other partner will appear on the screen for 10 seconds. During the times when they see them, they are told to think about sending loving, compassionate intention.

The results show changes in the first partners blood pressure and perspiration when they sees the image of their partner, the steady lines suddenly jump and become ragged ... More interesting however, is that at the same time there's a change in the blood volume of the other partner. It is described as a sudden change like that associated with an orienting response. If you suddenly hear somebody whispering in your ear, and there's nobody around, you have this sense of what? What was that? That's more or less what they are seeing in the physiology.

After running 36 couples through this test, the researchers found that when one person focused his thoughts on his partner, the partner's blood flow and perspiration dramatically changed within two seconds. The odds of this happening by chance were 1 in 11,000. Three dozen double blind, randomized studies by such institutions as the University of Washington and the University of Edinburgh have reported similar results.

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So how are we to explain this 'quantum entanglement'? The current theory is as follows:

Once two particles have interacted, if you separate them, even by miles, they behave as if they're still connected. So far, this has only been demonstrated on the subatomic level. It is proposed that the same effect could be working on people in close relationships -couples, siblings, parent and child, not just emotionally, and psychologically - but also physically. This idea, that we may be connected at some molecular level greatly echoes the words of the mystics.

Article: Scientists Show How Your Thoughts Can Cause Specific Molecular Changes To Your Genes...

'According to Dr. Bruce Lipton, gene activity can change on a daily basis. If the perception in your mind is reflected in the chemistry of your body, and if your nervous system reads and interprets the environment and then controls the blood�s chemistry, then you can literally change the fate of your cells by altering your thoughts... In the simplest terms, this means that we need to change the way we think if we are to heal cancer.'.

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Faith Healing.

The jury is still out as to exactly what is being witnessed with faith healing. There are numerous claims of 'miraculous' healing in the literature but results of clinical trials vary from trial to trial with one claiming that remote 'intercessory' prayer has a positive effect on patients (4), another saying it has no effect whatsoever (5), and the next saying that it even has a negative effect on the patients outcome (6), so what exactly is the truth behind faith healing. The results of faith healing tend to be ascribed to the projection of positive thought, but this is yet to be satisfactorily established, as there is also evidence suggesting it is the thoughts of the 'patient' that are at the heart of any witnessed phenomena.

Spirituality And Health:

In a long-term case study of patients with HIV, Prof. Gail Ironson began to notice that certain patients never got sick. She decided to investigate the matter and found something surprising. If you ask people what's kept you going so long, what keeps you healthy, often people would say spirituality," she says. "It was something that just kept coming up in the interviews, and that's why I decided to look at it." Prof. Ironson began to zero in on a patient's relationship with God in an attempt to predict how fast the disease would progress. She focused on two key indicators. She measured viral load, which tells how much of the virus is present in a person's body, and immune cells called CD-4 cells, which help fight off the AIDS virus. Ironson says over time, those who turned to God after their diagnosis had a much lower viral load and maintained those powerful immune cells at a much higher rate than those who turned away from God. "In fact, people who felt abandoned by God and who decreased in spirituality lost their CD4 cells 4.5 times faster than people who increased in spirituality," Ironson says. "That was actually our most powerful psychological predictor to date." "Just so I understand it," I confirm, "if someone weren't taking their meds and were depressed, they would still fare better if they increased in spirituality?", "Yes," she says. "Now, I'm not in any way suggesting that people don't take their meds," she adds quickly, laughing. "This is really an important point. However, the effects of spirituality are over and above."

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Dr Charmaine Griffiths, spokesperson for the British Heart Foundation, speaking on the subject of faith healing said: "While this research suggests that prayer and alternative therapies do not improve the clinical outcome for patients undergoing heart procedures, there is increasing interest in the possibility that positive emotional states are beneficial to heart health". She said associations had been seen between positive emotional states and low levels of the stress hormone cortisol. "Further evidence is emerging that people with a more positive outlook appear to be less affected by stressful events, such as having surgery." She added: "Patients learning to relax by using breathing techniques and listening to music, and being aware that others are thinking of them may contribute to a more optimistic outlook. "Whether these effects are significant remains unproven." (5)