Good health is important to all of us and a natural approach towards health is becoming increasingly popular.

There has been for some time now, a growing trend towards the acceptance and acceptability of what are commonly called ‘alternative’ therapies.

Many traditional doctors incorporate alternative therapies in their practices or recommend such therapies to patients for the treatment of certain conditions.

However, should your health only depend on cure or could prevention be part of your regular daily life? Is it possible to be and remain healthy?

There have been many clues that prevention of illness might be possible; from innocuous advertisements such as ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’ to more specific ideas such as recommended diets to prevent certain conditions.

However, have you ever considered how you can possibly prevent illness and disease, or even if you can possibly prevent illness and disease?

Why does it seem that ‘some people’ can manage to be and remain fit and healthy throughout a long life; some of them maintaining habits that have been declared as ‘bad for you’ such as smoking?

Why is it that some people become ill and possibly die, even though they have maintained what many would call a ‘healthy lifestyle’?

How can these paradoxical situations be reconciled with the information you are given about ‘how to be healthy’, ‘what to eat’ and ‘what not to eat’, ‘how much exercise to take’?

There is a huge range of books, television programmes and medical advice about what is healthy and what is not healthy. The trouble is that what you are told today is healthy may be on next week’s ‘bad for you’ list.

So, how can you possibly manage to find a way through this barrage of information that often seems to conflict with your experience?

The clue may be in some very interesting research on the 'placebo effect', which demonstrates that a person's beliefs alone can make him or her better.

Many doctors today use placebo pills on a regular basis. The pill itself is just a sugar pill with no medicinal properties but the patient doesn't know this. Because the patients have belief in the doctor and belief in the medicine they've been given, they become well again.

Even more astounding was the result of a major trial in the USA on the placebo effect of surgery for arthritis of the knee.

A team of surgeons in Texas tested the procedure by performing the surgery on 180 patients with osteoarthritis in the knee. Two-thirds had two different types of the surgery.

But for a third, the surgeons went through the motions by giving a tranquilizer, making three incisions and pretending to do the surgery.

All participants in the study had to sign their chart to show that they understood they might receive the placebo surgery, which would not help their arthritic knee.

Most arthroscopic surgery on the knee is done to repair injured ligaments and cartilage, which doctors say is useful. The experiment was designed to see whether the surgery helped reduce pain and increase mobility in patients with an arthritic knee.

The researchers found patients who underwent the placebo surgery were just as likely to report pain relief as those who received the real procedure. It seems for osteoarthritis patients, the relief is all in patients' heads.

Dr. Bruce Moseley, an orthopaedics professor at Baylor College in Houston and one of the study's co-authors, said "I don't believe that arthroscopic surgery for osteoarthritis of the knee is any more beneficial than a placebo effect, and I don't recommend it,"

Further evidence was shown on a recent TV programme in the UK made for BBC's Open University,

The researchers found that the effectiveness of all medicine, orthodox and alternative, is certainly partly due to the 'placebo effect', meaning that if you believe something will do you good then it most probably will.

The programme continued by saying that the placebo effect could demonstrate the power of a person's mind and body to heal itself, thus further illustrating how the importance of expecting a positive outcome plays an important role in the effectiveness of both alternative and orthodox medicine.

To expand the placebo effect to the area of diets, consider the statement that ‘if diets really worked, there would only need to be one diet and it would work for everyone.’

As stated by Prof. Fletcher, Dr. Pine and Dr. Penman "Diets are so ineffective in controlling weight that around 95% of people who go on one end up just as fat a year later (and sometimes fatter too)."

In a 20 year study of behavioural flexibility in British Universities and for the UK's Medical Research Council, Professor Ben Fletcher, Dr Karen Pine and Dr Danny Penman discovered that the more flexible your behaviour, the more weight you will lose.

What is really amazing about this study is that weight loss or gain had nothing to do with food consumption.

This is a powerful example demonstrating that 'what goes on in your mind determines your physical experiences'.

As further examples of how your health is affected by 'what you think', consider the following medical research findings.

Steven Greer and his colleagues of Kings College Hospital medical school in London conducted a study on breast cancer. They found that patients with 'fighting spirit' or 'denial' were more likely to be alive and relapse-free five years after diagnosis than patients who resigned themselves to the disease.

Further to this, in a study by Brenda Penninx and her colleagues on the relationship between depression and cancer, it was found that chronically depressed non-smokers were more likely to develop cancer than smokers.

In addition, a great deal of study has been carried out on how 'natural killer cells' in the body's immune system are affected by stressful periods in a person's life. It was clearly demonstrated that the effectiveness of the 'natural killer cells' was reduced during periods of high stress.

These findings are supported by an experiment conducted on a group of dental students. Small holes were made in the roof of the mouths of a group of students, once during a holiday period and once just before their exams. The wounds took on average 40% longer to heal around exam time than they did in the more relaxed holiday period.

Not only do your beliefs affect your health, they also affect how long you live. Daniel E Moerman, PhD and Wayne B Jonas MD were able to show that non-white Chinese Americans die much earlier than would normally be expected if, according to Chinese traditions, it was indicated that they had an ill fated combination of birth date and disease. They demonstrated that the more a person believed in the traditional Chinese culture, the more pronounced the effect. The differences in life span, up to 6% or 7%, were not due to having Chinese genes but to having Chinese beliefs.

This powerful example shows the dire consequences of erroneous and often hidden thought patterns.

The placebo effect shows that there is more to human health and wellbeing than is currently explained by either orthodox or alternative medicine.

All the above examples are a clear demonstration that there is a hidden factor in the general understanding of the nature of reality.

Reality is far stranger than you can imagine.

NoR

About the Author

Many people are dissatisfied with the contradictions between science, religion and the mutually exclusive world views with which we are constantly bombarded. Therefore, NoR set out to use their lifelong studies in philosophy, metaphysics and science to create the Nature of Reality Course, bringing together ancient wisdom and contemporary science in a way that provides new and exciting insights.

To find out more about the Nature of Reality Course, which is acclaimed in over 25 countries worldwide, click on the following links