THE BIOLOGY OF HOPE
Leigh Erin Connealy, MD
Introduction
We are at a point in time where medicine is coming back to whole body health care from a reductionist view that dominated the conventional medicine world for the past several hundred years.
Just like a pendulum that swings back and forth, science has also swung from one point of view to another throughout history, from healing through shamanic rituals to using pharmaceutical drugs to make a change in the body at the molecular level. As the pendulum slows down, we are able to integrate worldviews of both conventional and integrative/functional medicine into an integrative whole person model that utilizes the best of both worlds without sacrificing one or the other. There is a place for chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery for treatment of cancer, but based on latest research we know that there is a place for the mind and the spirit as well. Integrative and functional medicine view incorporates and realizes that healing with a whole being platform or the 7 pillars of health takes place on all levels including the spirituality, mind-body, immunity, nourishment, detox, lifestyle and targeted therapies.1 In fact, in psychosomatic medicine, it’s often understood that a person’s mental state and outlook on life such as hope could have an influence on the course and severity of a physical disease such as cancer.
Conventional Approach
Western science has been divided ever since the seventeenth century when Rene Descartes, the philosopher and founding father of modern medicine, developed his theory on the mind-body problem known as the Cartesian dualism, in which the body and the mind are viewed as separate entities. Interestingly, this happened when Descartes was forced to make a deal with the Pope in order to get the human bodies that he needed for dissection.
He agreed he wouldn’t deal with the soul, the mind, or the emotions, which were under the jurisdiction of the church at the time, if he could claim the physical body for his own study. And sadly it has been like this for western science and medicine ever since, where most of the medical establishment has been forbidden to bring the mind into discussion.
Today, conventional oncologic treatment consists of chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. But my experience with thousands of patients over the years has solidified the belief that they aren’t enough to cure cancer or other medical problems.
In the conventional approach, a patient is tested for cancer by mammogram, ultrasound, confirmed by biopsy, and then given a cancer diagnosis with a prognosis that has a time limit. When a time limit is given, all the patient hears in their mind is a death sentence and this fear in itself prevents the patient from healing. In other words, the mind has a powerful impact on the outlook of the course of the disease and this of course is not taught to the doctors or mentioned to the patients in the conventional world.