You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter

Remember the laughter study from Chapter 2
? Japanese researchers found that watching an hour-long comedy show upregulated 39 genes, of which were related to natural killer cell activity in the immune system.
Several other studies have shown increases in various antibodies after subjects watched a humorous videotape Research at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill further showed that increased positive emotions produced increases in vagal tone, a measure of the health of the
vagus nerve, which plays a major part in regulating the autonomic nervous system and homeostasis.
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In a Japanese study, when baby rats were tickled for five minutes a day for five days in a row to stimulate positive emotion, the rats brains generated new neurons.
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In each of these cases, strong positive emotions helped the subjects trigger real physical changes that improved their health. Positive emotions cause the body and brain to flourish.
Now look at the pattern of many of the placebo studies The moment someone starts getting a clear intention of anew future (wanting to live without pain or disease) and then combines it with a heightened emotion
(excitement, hope, and anticipation of actually living without pain or disease) is the moment the body is no longer in the past. The body is living in that new future, because as we’ve seen, the body doesn’t know the difference between an emotion created by an actual experience and one created by thought alone. So that heightened state of emotion in response to the new thought is a vital component of that process, because it’s new information coming from outside the cell—and to the body, the experience from the outer environment or inner environment is the same.
Remember Mr. Wright from Chapter 1
? He got very excited when he thought about taking the powerful new drug he’d heard about and imagined how it might cure him. He was so excited that he badgered his doctor to allow him to take it. When he actually did, he had no idea that it was inert. But because his brain didn’t know the difference between his highly emotionally charged mental images of being well and actually being well, his body emotionally responded as if what he had imagined had already happened. His mind and his body were then working together to signal new genes in new ways, and that, rather than the
“powerful new drug he took, was what shrank his tumors and restored his health. That’s what created his new state of being.
Then, when Mr. Wright learned that the drug trials showed that the drug didn’t work, he reverted back to his old thoughts and old emotions
—to his old programming—and not surprisingly, his tumors returned. His state of being changed once again. But when his doctors told him that he
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could get an improved version of the drug that had worked before, he got excited allover again. He really believed that this new version of the drug could work, because he’d seen it do so before (or at least that’s what he thought he’d seen).
Naturally, when he reembraced the intention of health and started thinking new thoughts about possibility again, his brain went back to
firing and wiring new neural connections, and he created anew mind. All his excitement and hope returned, and that emotion created the very chemicals in his body that supported his new thoughts. And so once more,
his body didn’t know the difference between his thoughts and feelings about being well and actually being well. And once more, his brain and body responded as if what he’d imagined had already happened—and his tumors disappeared again.
Once he read in the news that his miracle drug truly was a bust, he reverted to his old thinking and old emotions one final time—and his old personality-self, along with his tumors, returned. There was no miracle drug—he was the miracle. And there was no placebo—he was the placebo.
So it makes sense that we should concentrate not merely on avoiding negative emotions, like fear and anger, but also on consciously cultivating heartfelt, positive emotions, such as gratitude, joy, excitement,
enthusiasm, fascination, awe, inspiration, wonder, trust, appreciation,
kindness, compassion, and empowerment, to give us every advantage in maximizing our health.
Studies show that getting in touch with positive, expansive emotions like kindness and compassion—emotions that are our birthright, by the way—tends to release a different neuropeptide (called oxytocin), which naturally shuts off the receptors in the amygdala, the part of the brain that generates fear and anxiety.
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With fear out of the way, we can feel infinitely more trust, forgiveness, and love. We move from being selfish to selfless. And as we embody this new state of being, our neurocircuitry opens the door to endless possibilities that we never could have even imagined before, because now we’re not expending all our energy trying to figure out how to survive.
Scientists are finding areas in the body—like the intestines, the immune system, the liver, and the heart, as well as many other organs—
that contain receptor sites for oxytocin. These organs are highly responsive to oxytocin’s major healing effect, which has been linked to growing more blood vessels in the heart stimulating immune function increasing gastric motility and normalizing blood-sugar levels 127

Lets return to mental rehearsal fora moment. Remember how the frontal lobe is our ally in mental rehearsal That’s true because, as we established earlier, the frontal lobe helps us unplug from the body, the environment, and time—the three main focuses of someone who’s living in survival mode. It helps us get past ourselves to a state of pure consciousness, where we have no ego.
In this new state, as we envision what we desire, our hearts are more open, and positive emotion can flood through us so that now the loop of feeling what we’re thinking and thinking what we’re feeling is finally working in our favor. The selfish mindset we were in when we were in survival mode no longer exists, because the energy we channeled toward survival needs has now been freed up for us to create. It’s as though someone paid our rent or mortgage payment for the month so that we have extra cash to play with.
Now we can understand exactly why it is that if we hold a clear intention of anew future marry it to a state of expansive, elevated emotion and repeat that over and over until we’ve created anew state of mind and anew state of being, these thoughts will seem more real to us than our previous, limited view of reality. We’re finally free. And once we truly embrace that emotion, we can more easily fall in love with the possibility that we’ve been envisioning.
The symphony conductor (frontal lobe) feels like a kid in a candy store
—excitedly and joyfully seeing all sorts of creative possibilities for new neural connections that can combine to form new neural nets. And as the conductor unplugs us from the old state of being and switches on the circuits in this new state of being, our neurochemicals begin delivering new messages to our cells, which are now prepared to make epigenetic changes that signal new genes in new, empowering ways—and because we’ve used heightened emotions to make it seem as though it’s already happened, we’re signaling the gene ahead of the environment. Now we’re no longer waiting for the change and hoping for the change—we are the

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