Cure: The Science of Mind Over Body - Explore Mind-Body Healing for Wellness, Stress Relief & Self-Improvement | Perfect for Meditation, Therapy & Personal Growth

Living in an academic town full of old hippies, I know about some of the techniques covered in this book. Living with chronic problems, I've tried many of them. But I didn't know the science behind them, or that so many scientists are studying these various "alternative" approaches to healing. Of course, those scientists don't get enough funding, because drug companies have the big money, and are not interesting in paying for studies that don't involve drugs. I especially recommend this book to anyone struggling with chronic physical or mental disease.Review by Jerry Woolpy for Amazon of Cure: a journey into the science of mind over body by Jo MarchantMedicine used to be an art that was full of superstition and sample sizes of one or two. Shaman had the advantage of generations of cultural experience. But then came science and the double blind placebo controlled study with large sample sizes that cost millions. Big Pharm loved this because they could bear the cost and filter the publication of results. If there wasn’t a potentially huge payoff at the end the research was simply not done—to heck with folk medicine, cheap supplements, and inexpensive cures. But recently neuroscience and epigenetics have generated a whole new paradigm of treatments based on mind-body interaction that do not lend themselves to the traditional methodology. This book is all about this paradigm shift. Here are some mind-blowing findings:A placebo for amphetamine, a Parkinson’s drug, can flood the brain with dopamine just like the actual drug. The patient’s body becomes erect; shoulders go back in the normal posture. So too when saline is substituted for apomorphine in implanted chemical brain stimulation of subthalamic nucleus otherwise Parkinsonians can control their movements.Fake oxygen administered at altitude to an anoxic mountain climber can mimic the effect of oxygen to improve climbing performance although there is no increase in the climber’s blood oxygen.Valium has no effect on anxiety unless the patient knows they are taking it. Antidepressants like Prozac have little effect over placebos. Patients recovering from surgery were given painkillers intravenously either automatically or with a physician present telling the patient what was happening. With the Doc present the patients got 50% more relief. Long suffering and desperate irritable bowel syndrome patients have reported pain relief even when they were told ahead of time that they were taking a placebo.ADHD children could get the same drug relief with half the dose when all doses were paired with a distinctively colored placebo first with the full dose for a month and then with a half dose. But when controls without the placebo were reduced to half dose after a month they regressed.Lonely elderly people have compromised immune responses attributable to the up and down regulation of the genes that control immunity. The same genes are oppositely regulated in highly social people. Experiments with rats normally mothered compared to those that weren’t licked and nurtured by their mothers show that the neglected rats have all kinds of aberrant behavior and the differences are associated with the up and down regulation of specific genes. The survival of oncology patients is highly correlated with how they rate their quality of life. Those who rate their quality of life as poor have double the risk of dying from cancer.Meanwhile our medical interventions do far more harm than less invassive treatments. Psychiatric drugs are responsible for half a million annual deaths in the Western world. Errors in hospitals cause 400,000 annual deaths in the US. Another 100,000 Americans are killed by adverse drug reactions. It is time to revise our consideration of treatment and how we decide what is worth studying, less invasive, more affordable.I read this book years ago and lost my copy! So glad to have found it on Amazon. The author reviews the research on placebo, and reveals the mysterious way in which our minds contribute to our healing. She writes clearly and in an engaging way, without hyperbole (unlike some more recent books on this topic). This is a serious read on an important topic.The author stated her skepticism regarding any real "mind over body" connection early on, and devoted the rest of the book to citing study after study in support of her view. She dismisses Bruce Lipton's "Biology of Belief" out of hand, and gives little attention to anything not supported by a suitable "scientific" study. Marchant does acknowledge the incredible difficulty of getting studies approved and funded that look into alternative medicine. (Most studies are funded by drug companies who have no interest in techniques that don't sell more drugs.) She makes copious use of the descriptor "no better than a placebo", only occasionally acknowledging that the "placebos" used in medical trials are often equal to or better than the best of the studied interventions. Very little serious study has been undertaken of why that is. No serious effort has been made to take advantage of it.In my opinion, real science actively seeks explanation of the unexplained. In that regard, there seems to be very little real science going on the field of healing and medicine. Much evidence of unexplained phenomena is summarily tossed out as "anecdotal". Anything that cannot be explained by Newtonian physics is ignored, rather than seriously studied, even when it is well-documented. (Of course, most scientists recognize the incompleteness of the Newtonian description of the Universe.)The effect of human intention on the behavior of plants, animals, people, and scientific experiments (even "blind" and "double blind") has been documented for over 60 years. Many healing modalities depend on "intention" and/or the manipulation of "energy." The number of people who depend on alternative medicine, either as practitioners or patients, is non-trivial. The title of Marchant's book suggests that these effects and experiences would be explored in some detail, rather than summarily dismissed. I know of one researcher who gave up experiments in remote and intentional healing (of cancer in mice) because the students he trained were too disturbed by their success: it went against everything they "knew." I suspect Marchant would have similar difficulty reconciling the results with her world view.Excellent food for different thought about how illness is viewed and treated within an allopathic system driven by drug companies more than we perhaps realise, since there is no money mileage in funding research for cures not involving medication or surgical supplies.The author, Jo Marchant, presents some eye-opening findings & explores some alternative approaches from simple quality of life care to the faith healing of Lourdes.Well worth the read, and the audiobook form made the subject more accessible to me.As a holistic therapist with 40 years experience as a pharmacist much of this book made total sense. But even for a convinced mind body advocate like me this book had me going wow. A great read for any healthcare professional who feels there must be another way. And for any holistic therapist who wants a wider understanding of how therapy and medicine can work togetherA useful book exploring mind / body therapies as an alternative to , or alongside, medial treatments, and written from a sceptical point of view.The author comes across as both honest and inquisitive, and touches on alternative approaches to healing, how our environments effect our health, and how the mind maybe harnessed toward healing.Worth a read.An excellent book very well researched. I found it easy to understand and very well written on most health issuesimportant to me. Jo is knowledgeable and writes with compassion and depth and in my opinion, if interested in health and wellbeing this would be a most helpful and fascinating book.I wish I could give clearer information on each chapter but it is a while since reading it and I have let a friend borrow it for now. I can say that if you are fascinated by health issues and are perhaps looking for deeper answers than the usual websites offer, as I am, then you will find this book useful and interesting.Love love love it! Evidence based, easy to read and thought provoking. I am recommending this book to everyone I know! Fab fab fab! I often get bored part way through books but this one had me engrossed from start to finish and am going to re read it too! :-)Thank you Jo for such a great read. :-)