All medical students know, at least in general terms, that consciousness can have an effect on the body. They were told that some people get better if they believe (unreasonably) in the benefits of the medicine. In medicine, the phenomenon when a patient gets better after taking a pill containing only sugar is called the placebo effect. My friend Rob Williams, the developer of the energy-psychological treatment system PSYCH-K, believes that this effect would be more correctly called the effect of impression (perception). I prefer to call it the faith effect, emphasizing the fact that our impressions, both true and false, have the same effect on our behavior and our body. I attach great importance to the effect of faith. In my opinion, it provides excellent evidence of the effectiveness of therapeutic agents based on the connection between mind and body. However, in official medicine, this “imaginary” placebo effect is strongly associated, at best, with increased suggestibility of patients, and at worst– with cheating. This effect is mentioned only in passing in the programs of medical faculties, focusing the main attention of students on the true means of modern medicine – medicines and surgery. This is the greatest mistake. The placebo effect should be the subject of the closest study by future doctors. Doctors should be taught to recognize the forces that are hidden in the human body. They should not neglect the influence of the human mind, preferring medicines and a scalpel. They should reconsider their belief that the human body and its components are inherently stupid and helpless, and that we need outside intervention to preserve our health. The placebo effect should be studied in the course of a full-fledged, financially secure scientific search. If researchers can find a way to enhance this effect, they will be able to equip doctors with an effective, side-effect-free treatment for the disease based on energy exposure. Healers claim that they already know such remedies, but I am a scientist and I believe that the more we know about the scientific basis of the placebo effect, the more fully we can use it in clinical practice. Of course, the reason for such a drastic rejection of the consciousness factor in medicine lies not only in dogmatic thinking, but also in financial considerations. If bodily ailments can be cured by the power of one’s own thought, then why go to the doctor, and most importantly, why buy medicines? I recently learned that pharmaceutical companies are identifying patients susceptible to dummy pills in order to exclude them from clinical trials. Drug manufacturers are haunted by the fact that “fake” placebo drugs are no less effective in the testing process than their sophisticated chemical cocktails. Although pharmaceutical companies claim that they do not intend to market ineffective drugs, we understand that the effectiveness of placebos is a direct threat to their business. The idea driving these companies is obvious: if a placebo can’t be won in a fair fight, you need to keep it out of the competition! Most doctors are not trained to take the placebo effect into account, which is quite funny, because a number of researchers make a strong case that the history of medicine is largely the history of placebo. Previously, doctors simply did not have effective means of resisting the disease, and official medicine often resorted to methods such as bloodletting, wound treatment with arsenic, not to mention the proverbial “panacea” – snake oil. There is no doubt that some patients who were particularly susceptible to the healing effects of placebo (according to the most conservative estimates, there are a third of the total number) actually recovered after such treatment. Nowadays, when patients see a doctor in a white coat, they often believe that treatment will help them, and it really helps whether the patient has taken a real drug or a sweet pacifier. Although the question of how a placebo works is largely ignored by official medicine, researchers have been increasingly appearing recently. Their results indicate that not only the extravagant methods of the 19th century can contribute to the manifestation of the effect, but also quite modern medical technologies, and even the most “specific” of the treatment methods is surgery. Researchers from Baylor Medical School conducted a study in 2002 on the effectiveness of surgical treatments for severe knee pain. The head of this work, Dr. Bruce Mosley, “knew” that operations helped his patients: “Any good surgeon knows that there is no placebo effect in surgery.” However, Mosley decided to find out which surgical intervention brought relief to the patients. The patients were divided into three groups. In the first group, Mosley cut off the damaged knee cartilage, in the second he cleaned the knee joint with the removal of tissues that were believed to cause inflammation. Both of these operations were among the standard methods in the treatment of arthritis. But the patients of the third group underwent false operations. The patient was given anesthesia, Mosley made three standard incisions, after which he imitated the operation with all his behavior – he gave commands, moved around, even threw a little saline solution out of the jar, creating a sound that usually accompanies the knee washing procedure. After 40 minutes, Mosley sewed up the incisions – the “operation” was over. All three groups of patients were prescribed the same postoperative treatment in the form of physical exercises. The results were stunning. As expected, the patients who underwent surgery improved. But it was also observed in the placebo group, and not much less frequently than in the other two groups! Despite the fact that 650,000 knee joint operations are performed in the United States every year, each of which costs about $5,000, Mosley confidently stated: “My surgical skills did not bring any benefit to these patients. The benefits of surgical treatment of knee osteoarthritis are entirely due to the placebo effect.” Television news programs have illustrated these startling results as vividly as possible. Patients in the placebo group were shown walking, playing basketball-in short, doing all the things they couldn’t do before the “treatment.” For two years, these patients did not know that the operations they performed were false. One of the members of the placebo group, Tim Perez, was forced to walk with a stick before surgery – today he can play basketball with his grandchildren. In an interview with Discovery Health, he actually formulated the main idea of my book: “Anything is possible in this world – you just need to direct the power of your consciousness at it. I know that human consciousness can work wonders.” Studies have shown that the placebo effect can be very effective in the treatment of other diseases, in particular, asthma and Parkinson’s disease. In the case of depression, the effectiveness of placebo is so high that psychiatrist Walter Brown suggested using placebo pills as a first aid for patients with mild and moderate forms of depression. In the course of the studies, they were even informed that the pills they were taking did not contain active ingredients, but this did not reduce the effectiveness of the drug – the placebo pills worked anyway! Another evidence of the effectiveness of placebos is contained in a report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It says that among patients with severe forms of depression, half of those who took medications improved, compared to 32% of those who took placebo. But even these impressive figures do not fully reflect the strength of the effect, as in the course of research, many participants determined that they were receiving a real drug based on the side effects that were not observed when taking a placebo. And as soon as these patients became convinced that they were taking the real medicine – as soon as they began to believe in it, they became especially susceptible to the placebo effect. Is it any wonder, therefore, that the barrage of criticism that falls on manufacturers of antidepressants (annual turnover of 8.2 billion dollars), who are accused of deliberately exaggerating the effectiveness of their drugs. In 2002, the American Psychological Association’s journal of Prevention and Treatment published an article titled “The King’s New Pills.” In it, Irving Kirsch, a professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut, proves that the 80% effect of antidepressants revealed during clinical trials can be attributed to placebo. In 2001, Kirsch had to appeal to the Freedom of Information Act to obtain data on clinical trials of the most common antidepressants, because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was unwilling to provide them. According to these data, in more than half of the trials of the six most common antidepressants, these drugs did not exceed the effectiveness of placebo (sugar balls). And in an interview with Discovery Health, Kirsch noted: “The difference in response to the tested drugs and to placebo on average did not exceed two points on the clinical scale, which ranges from 50 to 60 points. That’s a very small difference. From a clinical point of view, it is negligible.” Another interesting fact about the effectiveness of antidepressants is that their performance has consistently improved over time during clinical trials. This suggests that the associated placebo effect is partly due to skillful marketing. The more the press, television, and advertising trumpeted the miracle of antidepressants, the more effective they became. Beliefs are contagious! We live in a world today where people believe that antidepressants work. So they work. Janice Schoenfeld, a designer from California, took part in a trial of the effexor drug in 1997 and found out that she had been given a placebo all the time. She was as “stunned” as Tim Perez. Thanks to the pills, she not only got rid of the depression that had plagued her for thirty years, but a brain scan conducted during the study showed that the woman’s prefrontal cortex activity had significantly increased. The improvements that had happened to her were by no means “imaginary.” Changes in consciousness have an unconditional effect on the biology of the body. Schoenfeld even experienced nausea, a characteristic side effect of the drug effexor. This woman behaved like most other patients who recovered from the placebo and then found out about the substitution. She refused to believe that she had not been given a “real” medicine, convinced the doctors of a mistake and insisted that they check their records again and again.

Although most doctors know about the placebo effect, few of them have really thought about all its aspects in terms of self-medication. If positive thinking can help you get out of depression and heal a sore knee, then what can negative thinking do? Cases where consciousness has a positive effect on health through positive suggestion are referred to as the placebo effect. Accordingly, negative suggestions of the same consciousness that can cause damage to health are called the nocebo effect. In medicine, the nocebo effect can be just as powerful as the placebo effect–keep this in mind every time you step into a doctor’s office. The words that the doctor says, his manner of behavior can inspire a defeatist mood in the patient, kill his hope – as for me, this is completely unacceptable. Let’s recall Albert Mason – he was sure that it was his inability to inspire optimism in patients with ichthyosis that nullified all his efforts. Here the doctor tells the patient: “You have six months left to live.” If the patient chooses to believe such a statement, he is unlikely to have a chance to live longer. I have already referred in this chapter to the Discovery Health channel’s 2003 program “Placebo: Consciousness versus Medicine,” which presents a pretty good selection of extremely interesting medical cases. One of the most fascinating was the story told by Nashville oncologist Dr. Clifton Meador, who had been thinking about the potential power of the nocebo effect for thirty years. In 1974, Meador had a patient, Sam Lond, a former shoe salesman, who suffered from esophageal cancer, a disease that was considered incurable at the time. Lond underwent a course of treatment, but all representatives of the medical world “knew” that sooner or later his tumor would recur. Therefore, no one was surprised when Lond passed away a few weeks after he was diagnosed with this disease. But then there was a sensation – the autopsy revealed that this cancer could in no way have led to Lond’s death! Two tumor–affected areas were found in his liver and one in his lung-and there was no trace of esophageal cancer, which, by all accounts, was his killer. In an interview with Clifton Meador, he said, “He had cancer, but he didn’t die of cancer.” But then what killed Sam Lond? Did he die just because he believed death was near? Thirty years have passed, but this case still haunts Clifton Meador: “I thought he had cancer. He thought he had cancer. Everyone thought he had cancer… did I somehow take away his hope?” Such delicate situations suggest that if doctors, parents, and teachers inform a person about his hopeless situation, they may eventually force him to give up and give up. Positive and negative beliefs affect not only our health, but also all other aspects of our lives. Just as with the efficiency of assembly lines, Henry Ford was right about the power of human consciousness: “Whether you believe in what you can or what you can’t… you’re absolutely right in both cases.” Think about what the example of a person who drank a solution of cholera pathogens says. Think of people who can walk on hot coals without getting burned. If they doubt their abilities for a second, they will get terrible burns. Beliefs play the same role for a person as light filters on a camera lens – they change his way of seeing the world. And human biology adapts to these beliefs. If we unconditionally acknowledge the power of our faith, we will receive the key to freedom. We may not be able to change what is encoded in our genetic programs, but consciousness is in our power. In my lectures, I give the audience two sets of plastic light filters – red and green, and I suggest they take a light filter of one color or another and look through it at a white screen. Then I ask them to say out loud what feelings they feel about what they see on the screen – joy or fear. The thing is that those who chose the red light filter see a cute picture showing a house with a sign saying “House of Love”, flowers, the sun in a clear sky and the inscription: “I live in joy and happiness.” But those who chose a green light filter see a leaden stormy sky, bats, snakes, a ghost wandering around a gloomy, gloomy house, and the inscription: “I live in fear.” It gives me a lot of pleasure to watch the confusion that occurs when half of the audience shouts at the top of their voices: “Joy!” and another with the same degree of confidence – “Fear!” And then I ask the audience to switch filters. In this way, I want to convey to the audience the idea of the possibility of choosing what to see. It is in your power to let your life pass through the pink filter of beliefs and thereby promote the health of your body, or to look at it through a dark glass and become more susceptible to diseases, both physical and mental. You can live in fear, or you can live in joy. The choice is yours! But keep in mind: if you convince yourself that you live in a world of love and happiness, then your body will blossom, and if you prefer to live in a world of fear, then in a literal, physiological sense, you will force it to go on the defensive. This does not have the best effect on health. Learning to control your mind in a way that promotes growth and development is the secret of life. That’s why I called my book The Biology of Faith. Teachers like Buddha and Christ have been telling us the same story for millennia. Today, science is also pointing in this direction. Our lives are not governed by genes, they are governed by beliefs.… O you of little faith! Looking at life through the proverbial rose–colored glasses is not a bad thing at all – in fact, they are absolutely necessary for your cells for health and well-being. Positive thoughts are a biological mandate for a happy, healthy life. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny. A source: Bruce Lipton “The Biology of Faith. How the power of beliefs can change your body and mind.”