MultiCare Health System

Self-Help Exercises

An American Health Magazine article states, “How you feel about yourself affects your physical well-being. Researchers now recognize that a sense of purpose, a positive outlook and the feeling of being in control of one’s life may help prevent illness, from cancer to the common cold.

“The notion that attitudes affect health is almost as old as medicine. But it’s taken the re-emergence of certain humanistic values in medicine for doctors to put science to work charting exactly how the mind influences the body and vice versa.

“They are finding that attitude and state-of- mind can alter the responsiveness of nerve cells to a variety of chemicals that relay messages throughout the brain and nervous system. Further, chemical messengers of mood and motivation in the brain communicate with cells in the immune system responsible for countering invasion by tumors and microorganisms...

“It may be a long time before anyone draws a complete picture of the mind’s effect on the body. But this much is known: we each have a larger role than ever imagined in combating illness.”

The body has an immune system. One of the theories is that part of the immune system is the thymus gland located in your chest directly behind the breast bone. The thymus gland has two specific functions. First of all, it creates 12 to 15 different hormones. These hormones travel throughout the body looking for cancer cells.

When they find the type of cell that they recognize, they do not harm the cell but attach themselves to it and send back a signal to the thymus gland. In response to this signal, the thymus gland dispatches a natural killer cell (NK cell) that goes directly to this hormone and kills the cell. It then returns to the thymus gland ready to be sent out again.

One thought is that the thymus gland can be controlled by the brain in that during a time of trauma or depression, the brain will reduce the function of the thymus gland. During this period of reduced function, cancer cells, which are supposed to occur normally in each person some six times a year, are allowed to divide and multiply. When the trauma or depression is over, the thymus gland will resume normal operating. By this time, the cancer has had a chance to multiply and establish itself to the point where the NK cells are incapable of destroying it. At this point, we have cancer.

Two cancer treatment specialists rationalized that if the mind played a function in causing cancer, why couldn’t the mind be trained to help treat the cancer. They started a clinic in 1976 and brought 150 cancer patients there. These were not normal cancer patients, though. They had two unique qualities. First, they were terminal because their doctor said they were going to die from their cancer. Second, they could have no possible medical treatments such as chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, hyperthermia, immunotherapy, etc. These people were going to die from their cancer.

They taught these people two things. First, they taught these people to relax. Not just superficially, but a way down deep relaxation. It is a scientifically proven fact that tumors grow faster in mice under stress. What is the dangerous part about your cancer? The fact that it will continue to grow! If your cancer never grew from where it is, you could live for another 100 years with it. If, by relaxing, you could slow down the growth of your tumor, you would be better off.

Second, they taught these people to visualize their cancer and think it away. Sound silly? Some two years later, when Annette and I read about them in the newspaper, of the initial group of 150 terminal cancer patients using only their minds to think away the cancer, some 10% were totally free of cancer. Another approximately 10% were dramatically improved. A third 10% had their cancer stabilized. My wife and I made up our minds that if I had a 30% chance of staying alive instead of none, we were going to go there.

As it was, the doctors felt that they could successfully treat me. However, I used the relaxation and imagery in conjunction with the medical treatments. I cannot say that it is what cured me, but I can state without any
question that it made me feel better; I believe it helped, and I positively know it did not hurt me. I would never recommend this in lieu of medicine but only in addition to everything else your doctor wants you to do.

A study of 45 elderly residents in retirement homes suggests relaxation therapy may enhance a person’s natural ability to fight disease. The study, conducted by researchers at Ohio State University, found an increase in cells that defend against viral infections and a decrease in certain anti-body levels in volunteers who practiced relaxation techniques, compared to no change in control volunteers who didn’t use the techniques.

In discussing these theories with doctors, I have found that those outstanding physicians whose primary interest is the recovery of the patient, who insist on an independent second opinion, who seek help from major cancer centers and refer their patients to qualified specialists, are staunch believers in this form of therapy in addition to medicine. The practitioners who are trying to build their practice generally have a desire to receive full credit for a cure without having to share it with any other institution, physician or method of therapy. Their most espoused argument against relaxation and imagery is that the statistics are inaccurate because the people who use it have a stronger desire to live than the average person. My answer is that I only want to help those who have a strong desire to live. If a person wants to die, that is their business. Those who want to live should have every opportunity to do so.

Occasionally, a shallow-thinking health professional says that medical treatments are the only things that cure cancer. He does not want his patient confused with the idea that anything but his doctor can help treat
him. Mental attitude has nothing to do with it. Furthermore, if the patient tries mental imagery and it doesn’t help them, they will have a guilt complex and that attitude will hinder their recovery. If that isn’t talking out of both sides of their mouth, I don’t know what is! If the patient’s mental attitude could hinder their recovery, how could it have nothing to do with their recovery? When someone can explain spontaneous remission to me, I’ll quit believing in lots of things. The head of a major cancer center, an outstanding oncologist, told me he strongly believes in, as he put it, the will to live. He had a very good personal friend admitted with advanced cancer. He believed she had only a week or so to live. She was in critical condition. She had a daughter’s wedding scheduled for some months hence and her husband had promised her a trip to Europe after the wedding. He urged her to move the daughter’s wedding to the next few days because of her condition. She insisted she would make the wedding and the trip to Europe. Sure enough, she went into remission, was there to watch her daughter get married and even went on a wonderful trip to Europe feeling good. On the return trip her cancer recurred. She returned directly to the hospital where she died a few days later.

Going even further, and this is a giant step further, Dr. Herbert Benson, the cardiologist who heads behavioral medicine at Boston’s Beth Israel Hospital, one of the main teaching facilities at Harvard Medical School says, “Belief is the hidden ingredient in Western medicine and every traditional system of
‘healing’ I know about...A new drug given by a doctor who believes in it enthusiastically is far more potent than the same drug given by a skeptical doctor...Clinical studies have shown that a patient’s belief in a medicine can make it far more effective.”

From these comments, you can appreciate my statement that there are three fundamental requirements for an individual to have a chance to beat cancer. First is an honest, strong desire to live. Second is total confidence in their doctor. Third is absolute confidence that the treatment their doctor is recommending will successfully treat them. If any of these three factors is missing, I urge the patient to make a few telephone calls to see if a qualified physician can be found who can make them possible.

I have a stronger reason to believe this than anyone else. After being told I was terminal, I went to a doctor who said he would cure me. He did not say he would try this or hope for that. He said he would cure me, and he told me step-by-step exactly what would happen to me over the next year. Everything happened as
he said it would, and at the end of two years, I was cured. A year later, I heard an outstanding oncologist say there was no chemotherapy effective against my type of cancer. I felt like standing up and saying, “Here I am.” Again, in 1984, some six years after these drugs helped cure me; I heard the head of a cancer center say the same thing. Then and only then, I realized what it probably was. Drugs alone are in truth probably ineffective against this type of cancer. But these same drugs given by an enthusiastic physician to a patient who believes they will work and who practices mental imagery along with the drugs did their intended job.

In other words, for some patients with cancer, there are no medical options. Relaxation and imagery could help in these cases. It positively cannot hurt. In most cases there are multiple medical options. Here, relaxation and imagery could help doubly by stirring up the body’s own immune system to help kill the cancer, along with magnifying the effects of the treatments to destroy the cancer.

An additional benefit of relaxation and imagery is that it allows a patient to be intimately involved in their own recovery. It gives them a feeling of being at least partially in charge of their own destiny, which can do
nothing but improve the quality of life. As the child of a patient so aptly put it in a letter, it made her father fight to live rather than wait to die.

Relaxation and imagery, as the name implies, is a two step process. It is felt that imagery can be much more effective only after relaxation has been successfully established. Relaxation is not a state of being that you hope or wish for; it is the result of a specific set of physical acts. If you follow the prescribed recommendations, you will end up relaxed. Several methods are suggested. Some people are more receptive to one method than another. Try each several times and then use the method with which you feel the most comfortable and which does the best job for you.

Both meditation and relaxation are highly effective natural ways to handle stress. While both have the effect of getting you deeply calm and relaxed, the real benefits are in the rest of the day when this calm spreads into other phases of your activities. This calm state is the direct opposite of stress. Your breathing
slows, your heartbeat is quiet, your metabolism lowers and your body recuperates during this period. The effects are gradual, but the more you practice, the greater they will be.