Can Your Thoughts Make You Sick? Exploring the Mind-Body Connection

My Mind-Body Connection

Hi everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Design Thyself. Before we dive into today's topic, I want to share a little story from my own life that I think many of you might relate to.

A few years ago, I went through a really stressful period. I was juggling a highly demanding job, trying to maintain relationships, and just dealing with the everyday chaos that life throws at us. On the outside, I seemed fine—smiling, going through the motions, telling everyone I was okay. But inside, I was a mess. My mind was constantly racing with negative thoughts, and I felt like I was living a double life: one that I showed the world and one that was my true, anxious self.

It wasn’t long before I started noticing physical symptoms. My energy levels plummeted, I started having serious stomach issues, and my sleep was all over the place. I even started developing random aches and pains that had no clear cause. Even though it was a tough time, it led me to a realization that has stuck with me ever since.

What if my thoughts were making me sick?

It’s a question that has puzzled cultures for decades. Does what we say and think actually affect our health?

Boris Pasternak pointed out in his book Doctor Zhivago, that there's a real danger in living a life where we're constantly saying one thing but feeling another. A life where we’re pretending to like things we despise and celebrating what only brings us misery. He believed that these thoughts don’t just remain in our heads. These thoughts affect our physical bodies too. And that’s because our nervous system isn't some abstract concept; it's a real part of us. It’s something that can't be mistreated indefinitely without bearing the consequences.

Whether it’s something small such as a cold or something serious like cancer or chronic heart disease – bad health can suck the joy out of life.

Candace Pert, in her book  Molecules of Emotion, suggested that our mental state plays a significant role in our physical health. It's like our emotions and thoughts are intertwined with our body's well-being, influencing how we feel physically.

The Science Behind Stress and Illness: Understanding the Connection

In this episode, we're discussing how our mindset and the way we handle things can either make us sick or on the flip side, help us recover. Today, we’re going to look at how negative thoughts, suppressed emotions, the stress of life, and trauma can lead to illness.

We’ll discuss how trauma from your past may still be affecting your health today. We will look at the nocebo effect, the dark twin of the placebo effect and we will also talk about the term 'medical hexing'. Which is basically how grim diagnoses can actually influence patient outcomes.

Eventually, we’ll try to find an answer to the question: Can positive thoughts lead to a longer life?

Along the way, we’ll explore the research and findings of Psychiatrists, Psychologists, and even writers like Boris Pasternak.

Ok, let’s dive into it. Now, I’m sure, you’ve already heard of the close connection between our bodies and our minds. Think of them as two sides of the same coin. Carl Jung talked about this, the relationship between the two. He pointed out how closely our physical and mental traits are intertwined. He went so far as to say you can learn a lot about someone's mind from their body, and vice versa.

But are our mind and body connected in ways that are deeper than we often realize?

Most of us understand that how we feel mentally can have a big impact on our physical health. It's common knowledge that stress can weaken our immune system and make us more susceptible to getting sick.

And anxiety? Well, it can mess with our gut and disrupt its normal function. Personally, I’ve been struggling with stomach issues since 2013. And that’s because of a really stressful period, and even now, 11 years later I still feel the effects of that chronic stress.

It's pretty obvious that our minds and bodies are closely connected. But strangely enough, a lot of mainstream medicine doesn't always give this connection the attention it deserves.

Just think back to the last time you went to see your Doctor because you were sick. Did they ask you about your mental state? Or just go straight to a physical exam?

Doctors often don't think about how much someone's mental state or thoughts could be contributing to their illness. This oversight means they might miss out on ways to prevent or treat health issues more effectively.

How Trauma and Chronic Stress Have Long-Term Impacts on Health

You might have seen clips of Gabor Maté on your social media feed. He strongly believes that trauma can make someone sick. In his book, The Myth of Normal, he explains that the idea of the mind and body being deeply intertwined isn't new at all. What's new is this idea some doctors have that you can separate the two. It's like they're missing the bigger picture about how interconnected everything really is.

And if we travel far back in ancient Greece, Hippocrates, the founding father of medicine, and I’d add of mind-body medicine, wrote that “the natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well.” And I’m sure you’ve also heard what he was preaching which is “healthy mind in a healthy body”. That was the main component of the entire Hippocratic philosophy.

Now let’s come back to nowadays, and if you think about it, it's interesting how much attention mainstream medicine gives to studying the biological and chemical factors behind diseases. They invest tons of time and resources into that. But there's this whole other side of research that's gaining traction. It's all about how our thoughts and feelings can actually contribute to making us sick. Or if we already are sick, how our thoughts can keep us ill.

The Nocebo Effect and Medical Hexing: When Thoughts Harm Health

Have you heard of the nocebo effect? Well, it's like the dark twin of the placebo effect, which I’m sure you’ve heard about. You know how a placebo can sometimes make people feel better just because they ‘think’ it's a real treatment? Well, the nocebo effect works the opposite way. If you expect something bad to happen to your health, sometimes it actually does. It's really fascinating how our beliefs and expectations can influence our physical well-being.

Lissa Rankin, an MD and  mind-body medicine physician puts it in her book Mind Over Medicine, “The more you fixate on all the ways your body could go wrong, the more likely you are to actually feel those symptoms. The nocebo effect is a reminder of how powerful our minds can be in shaping our health outcomes.”

Similar to the nocebo effect, is the ‘voodoo death’. It’s an ancient concept in cultures where people believe in curses and spells having power over them. For example, just imagine this… a respected figure like a shaman places a curse on someone. The fear and anxiety that a person feels leads to their death.

I’ll share with you a story from Aboriginal cultures in Australia that illustrates this. Down in Australia, a Doctor named Herbert Basedow had a very interesting patient. He told a story of how this man truly felt he was cursed with nothing more than… a magic bone. Herbert of course tested this out. He realized that just the sight of the bone made his patient go white and feel sick. The look on his face was pure terror. The bone made him withdrawn. He would refuse to eat or join in any tribal activities. Herbert knew that unless another shaman could lift the curse, the patient would waste away and die.

Henri Ellenberger, a Canadian psychiatrist, wrote about this in The Discovery of the Unconscious. He showed how deeply our beliefs and emotions can impact our physical health, sometimes even to the point of life and death. It's a powerful reminder of the mind's influence over the body.

Of course, we don’t see many voodoo deaths in the modern Western world. But there's a similar concept that Andrew Weil, a medical doctor and a big advocate for integrative medicine calls "medical hexing". He talks about it in his book Spontaneous Healing. Think of when someone is diagnosed with a serious illness and is given a grim prognosis. It’s like they're told they only have a limited amount of time left to live. And strangely enough, many of these individuals end up passing away right on schedule.

It's not just a matter of the illness taking its natural course. It's more about how powerful our minds can be in influencing life-and-death situations. There are cases where people were wrongly diagnosed as terminal. Yet they still died within the timeframe they were told. As Lissa Rankin points out, even autopsies sometimes can't explain why they passed away so soon after being given that prognosis.

This phenomenon really emphasizes how powerful the mind's influence is on our health outcomes. Even in situations where we'd think medical science should have the final say.

It's interesting how some surgeons have this gut feeling about how much our thoughts and expectations can influence whether we live or die. One of them is Herbert Benson, a cardiologist, who talked about this in an interview with The Washington Post. He mentioned how surgeons can tell when a patient is absolutely convinced they're going to die. In those cases, studies have shown that nearly everyone in that mindset ends up passing away.

It's like our beliefs and emotions have this profound impact on our physical health. Sometimes even affecting the outcome of major medical procedures. This really highlights how much our mental state can shape our experiences with illness and recovery.

Dr. Gabor Maté used to be my teacher. In many of the online workshops we did, he always pointed out how chronic stress, unhealthy ways of dealing with emotions, and past traumas can significantly increase the risk of conditions like cancer, heart disease, and autoimmune disorders. You can read more about this in his book The Myth of Normal. I’ll drop a link to the book in the description below.

Gabor points out that stress comes in two main forms. There's the immediate response we feel when we're faced with a threat, which is normal and even necessary for our survival. But when stress becomes chronic—when it's ongoing and we can't find relief from it—that's when it starts to take a serious toll on both our physical and mental well-being.

Of course, stress is hard to avoid. Especially in modern times where taking on too much is the norm. But chronic stress means it’s going to stick around for a while. In that case, it's not just about what happens to us, but also about how we handle those challenges.

Gabor talks about this in his work, pointing out that chronic stress isn't just caused by external events. It's also influenced by our own character and mindset. Factors like courage, resilience, seeking wisdom, and developing habits that promote relaxation can really help prevent us from getting stuck in that cycle of chronic stress.

On the flip side, if we don’t adopt these qualities and healthy habits in our everyday life, we risk being constantly stressed out. And that's a big deal because chronic stress sets the stage for a whole host of health problems. In his book, Maté goes into detail about how prolonged stress messes with our hormones, leading to anxiety, depression, and weakened immune systems. It can also lead to inflammation, heart disease, diabetes, and the list goes on and on. It affects everything from our bones to our brains and even raises the risk of serious conditions like heart attacks and strokes.

So what you need to remember from all this is just how crucial it is to not only manage stress but also to cultivate resilience and healthy habits that support our overall well-being.

From Negative Thoughts to Positive Healing: Shifting Your Mindset

So now the question becomes, ok, how can I cultivate those habits? A healthy way to start handling negative emotions is to let yourself feel them. Then process what's going on. And then finally figure out what changes you need to make in your life to move forward. On the flip side, if you suppress or ignore these feelings and don't address the underlying issues, that's when things can go south. Because if these emotions stay within without processing then they develop into chronic health problems.

Several studies show how extreme suppression of emotions, like anger, can be linked to conditions such as breast cancer. Take rheumatoid arthritis for example. When someone constantly puts others first and withholds anger, they are at a higher risk for rheumatoid arthritis. I’ll leave some links in the description below if you want to dive deeper into some of those studies.

Trauma is another big factor here. Maté explains how traumatic events can cause lasting internal changes that lead to ongoing mental anguish. This could be fear, shame, or depression. All of which wreak havoc on our bodies.

For instance, research from the University of Toronto found that men who endured serious childhood trauma were three times more likely to die from a heart attack. This is even after accounting for other factors like substance abuse.

This is a reminder of just how interconnected our minds and bodies are.

What we think, believe, and feel, whether we're aware of it or not—has a profound impact on our health. So, paying attention to our emotional well-being isn't just about feeling better emotionally, it's about staying healthy physically too.

Now of course everyone is going to ask me…  should we point fingers at people who do have chronic illnesses? Should we blame them, that perhaps the disease is self-inflicted? Of course not. There are of course other biological factors that go into people getting sick. However, our mind plays a larger role than a lot of us realize.

Instead of blaming, recognizing this connection should be empowering. Because just as our thoughts and emotions can contribute to illness, they also hold the power to help us heal. Let me know if you enjoy this episode and whether you’d want me to create another one diving into how our mindset and character traits can actually boost our body's natural ability to heal itself. An episode where I’ll explore how positive thinking can impact your health in a positive way. Let me know in the comments below if you’d like that.

The Importance of Mindset in Health and Well-Being

Lissa Rankin hits on this idea beautifully in her writing. She raises a thought-provoking question: “What if achieving health isn't just about the obvious things like eating well, staying active, and seeing your doctor? What if the real key lies in changing how we think? How we feel deep down? And how we allow our life energy to flow?”

It's a compelling idea that suggests our mental and emotional well-being might be even more crucial to our health than we realize.

Leave a comment below this episode with your thoughts on this subject. I’d love to hear from you. Until next time, make sure to always ask yourself: How are my current thoughts affecting my physical health?