I was fascinated by a talk given by Dr David Hamilton to my Hypnotherapy organisation last year. David had been employed in the pharmaceutical industry and became intrigued by the results of many experiments where subjects improved in health, not after taking the medicines on test, but by taking a placebo pill. This reinforced his belief in the power of the mind to influence the body.

He became so intrigued that he gave up his career to investigate further the effect of the mind-body connection on healing, in a wide array of conditions and studied many of the scientists and therapists who had worked in this area.

He identified many situations where individuals had treated themselves effectively. For example, speeding up healing post injury, dealing with pain, viruses and even cancer, to name but a few. In his book ‘How your mind can heal your body’, David explains the workings of the mind that enable anybody to influence the functioning of the body.

A few extracts from David’s book are given below:

Optimists live longer than pessimists. That’s the conclusion of a 30 year study involving 447 people that was conducted by the Mayo Clinic. They found that optimists had around a 50% lower risk of early death than pessimists… Optimists were also found to have fewer physical and emotional health problems, less pain and increased energy and they generally felt more peaceful, happier and calmer than pessimists.

One of the reasons that a positive attitude is so important is because it boosts our immune system and therefore our ability to fight illness.

The production of chemicals in the brain, when a person takes a placebo, was first proven in 1978 when a scientist at the University of California showed that placebo analgesia occurs because the brain produces its own natural analgesics. More modern research is beginning to show that the same kind of thing happens when placebos are given for any condition- the brain produces a natural drug that’s tailor-made to combat the illness.

We can boost the power of the placebo. It is called conditioning. In a typical experiment, scientists give a patient a real drug for a couple of days and then secretly swap it for a placebo then next day.. Of course the patient doesn’t suspect anything, so when they receive their ‘medicine’ (actually the placebo) they expect to get the usual level of relief that they’ve been getting during the past few days when they were taking the actual drug. And they do. They have been conditioned to believe that each injection or tablet will work , just as Pavlov’s dogs were conditioned to salivate when they heard a bell ring. Studies suggest that the longer conditioning is carried out, the more powerful the effect; the deeper into the body’s systems the mind can penetrate, the more powerful the placebo becomes. In some conditioning experiments, the placebo effect has been boosted to 100%.

David also went on to explain quite clearly how our thoughts affect the flow of certain chemicals through the body and how by carefully managing your thoughts, you can make a substantial impact on your health and healing abilities.

As a practising Hypnotherapist, I have used the mind-body relationship to help clients to deal with various physical issues; amongst other things, the relatively common condition: irritable bowel syndrome. In the most recent case, the client was asked to imagine going inside her body and seeing the lining of the gut, which she described as being very raw and red. The client then chose to visualise a white Gaviscon hand travelling through the gut, coating the lining in a white, cool, protective fluid. This treatment, added to the work done on the anxieties creating the problem, resulted in the eradication of that problem.

It is my belief that we will see quantum leaps forward in this field in the years to come and that hypnosis-based techniques will be employed to help deal with many physical conditions that are currently only dealt with using conventional medicine.

Also, I believe that sports performance enhancement will continue to benefit from those same mind techniques, which can be used to speed-up healing and improve performance levels.