Eliminating Cancer with the Mind :: Biology Essays Research Papers

Eliminating Cancer with the Mind Over 1 million Americans are diagnosed with cancer each year and over 1,500 lives will be lost to cancer today (1). Many people undergo grueling hours of chemotherapy and radiation to discover that their cancer has spread to other parts of their body and that the treatments need to begin all over again. Unfortunately, there is no cure for cancer at the present time. Modern medical treatments attack the cancer and treat the organs affected by the disease, but pay little attention to the other areas of significance in the person's life. This calls for a new treatment that extends beyond the organs overcome by the disease and focuses on the person as a whole. Guided therapy, relying on the idea that the mind can affect the functions of the body and thus make people feel better, claims to do just that. But does it really work? Throughout history, the power of the imagination has helped people heal. In Eastern Medicine, envisioning one's well being has always been a large part of the healing process. In Tibetan medicine for example, physicians believe that creating a mental image of the healing god improves one's chances for recovery (2). The ancient Greeks, including Aristotle and Hippocrates, also had their patients use forms of imagery to help them heal. People continue to rely on imagery to hasten the healing process. Psychologists and neuroscientists use evidence from Positive Emission Tomography (PET) scans of the brain to demonstrate that guided imagery is effective. In a PET scan, the subject is injected with a small amount of radioactively labeled water. When an area of the brain is working hard and processing information, more blood flows through it and higher levels of the radioactive water are detected (3). In terms of brain activity, there is ample scientific evidence that imagining an experience stimulates the visual cortex, the same region of the brain activated by the actual experience (4). Stimulating the brain with imagery can have a direct effect on the nervous and endocrine systems, which ultimately affect the immune system. Thus, in terms of brain activity, picturing something and actually experiencing it are equivalent. Psychologists believe that relaxation, an essential part of guided imagery, is responsible for producing images and triggering the unconscious, which generates emotions (5). Research has shown that the physiological impact of relaxation is due to its inhibition of cortisol, a hormone released by the body in response to stress.