The Wellness Scoop - Why Changing Your Mindset Can Change Your Health

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

We’re joined by Dr. David Hamilton, a leading expert on the mind body connection, about the latest research on the power of our mindset, how a change in thinking can exert physiological effects within the body and how we can harness the mind to improve our wellbeing. We talk about: Why the placebo effect is more than ‘just in the mind’ How can we harness the power of our mindset to create positive neurological and physiological change The relationship between psychological stress and our health Why kindness is so key to our health How to use kindness practices to support our brain and heart health The power of bringing together conventional and complementary medicine  How different mind-body strategies can support different health conditions The power of visualisation and nature Why belief is central to the health benefits of alternative practices David’s books: How your mind can heal your body The contagious power of positive thinking And his latest book Why Woo Woo Works   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hi, I'm Ella Mills, the founder of Deliciously Ella, and this is our podcast, Delicious Ways to Feel Better. Each episode explores various aspects of our mental and our physical health to help you make the small, simple changes to your life that will hopefully help you feel happier and healthier. And today we're looking at why changing our mindset can really change our health. That your body is always responding to your mind. So if you change the direction you're pointing your mind in,

then you change the internal conditions inside your brain and inside your body. I mean, for example, many of us do this all the time. We're thinking of something that annoys us and the state of the brain and body is following us in real time. It's producing stress in the body as well. But if we change the focus, the direction we're focusing in, perhaps towards thinking kindly of people, then we actually change the internal environment in the brain and inside the body and again the body follow the internal condition of the body follows

the direction of the mind. Before we delve into the episode though I just wanted to say a quick welcome back this is our first episode in almost six months and it feels so good to be back sitting in this chair. I have genuinely missed the podcast so much and I have to say another huge thank you actually for everyone who's been listening since we started. I was doing a bit of research into how the podcast has been performing ahead of coming back and I've seen that we've had almost 19 million downloads since we started just over three years ago. So it's millions and millions and millions and millions beyond my wildest expectations. And I just wanted to say a very heartfelt thank you for that ongoing support and for tuning in every week. It really

means more than I can say. So thank you so much. There has been a lot going on at Delicious Cielo over the last six months. We've opened our restaurant, Plants, in central London. We've relaunched our app. And with that, we wanted to extend beyond recipes in the way that we have with the podcast and go into what we see as the four pillars of health. So nutrition, movement, mindfulness, and sleep. We've also launched a range of fresh, delicious soups and cooking sauces into some of the retailers that we've been working with for years, as well as new retailers, including some of the fast delivery apps, such as Gorillaz. And we're now starting to talk to them about international launches for 2022, which is incredibly exciting. And we'll update you with that. So it has been a bit of a whirlwind,

but as I said, I'm so happy to be back. And in that time, we've also been looking at how we can make our podcast so much better going forward. So we've done two big changes. First up we're going to be doing a new weekly bite-sized episode. These are going to be short but very sweet with very comprehensible breakdowns just on one topic and for that we'll have a monthly resident expert. So our first expert is a nutritionist and the first one coming up this Wednesday is going to be looking at eating for energy. The second one will be on how our diet can affect our mood and our sense of happiness. So very much looking forward to hearing what you will think on those. And then the second change which I think some of you will be absolutely thrilled to hear is that

we will no longer have any random radio style ads interrupting your listening halfway through which I am also completely thrilled about. Instead we'll just have one sponsor and it'll only ever be a brand that I genuinely love and that I genuinely use. We will never promote something that isn't totally authentic or something that I don't believe in. So for the next few months our podcast sponsor is going to be Simprove, a supplements company that I've been using to support my gut health for about five years now. So I've been using it for years and years before I started working with them. I know gut health is such a prevalent topic at the moment and we're going to have a mini episode specifically on

eating for gut health at the end of January as I know it's something so many of you are interested in too. The gut microbiome is made up of trillions of bacteria that support pretty much all aspects of our mental and physical health, from digestion to our immune system, energy production, and mental health. And keeping the right balance of good bacteria in our gut is just so important. Our diet and lifestyles have a huge huge impact on that but adding in live bacteria can really help too. The bacteria in Simprove which is a water-based supplement can really survive the long journey from the mouth to the gut where they can then multiply and support our microbiome. I truly swear by it and I hope you love it too. For anyone wanting to try it they've shared a 15% off code with us so you just need to use Ella15 which is valid on

Simprove.com for new customers based in the UK but they also have a subscribers package if you're an existing customer. So our guest today for the first show back is Dr David Hamilton. David completed a PhD in organic chemistry in the 90s before beginning work in the pharmaceutical industry developing drugs for cardiovascular disease and cancer and this sparked an ongoing fascination with the mind-body connection which emerged after observing the power of the placebo effect in clinical trials. Participants who were given a placebo instead of the real drug continuously saw marked improvements in their conditions. David has since become a world leader in the field of the mind-body connection and has written several books on the topic, including How Your Mind Can Heal Your Body and The Contagious Power of Positive Thinking. And his latest book, Why Woo-Woo Works, builds further on this,

delving even deeper into the science behind that mind-body connection, the placebo effect, the power of belief, and why thinking something works might just mean more to your health than you might think. So David, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. It's my absolute pleasure. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Honestly, I'm super excited about this conversation but I have to say before we kind of delve into the whole thing could we just take a minute to actually understand what you mean by the term woo-woo because I think it's a term that gets bandied around quite a lot and actually can have some quite kind of negative dismissive connotations so I'd love to understand how you

define it. Yeah well actually the official definition is something like unconventional beliefs regarded as having little or no scientific basis, especially those relating to spirituality, mysticism, and alternative health. And it tends to be a derogatory term. So what I actually tried to show is that, you know, that's just, we just make an assumption about things we call them woo-woo not because we're experts and we actually know there is no basis but because it just doesn't sound plausible to us I try to rebrand determinacy in fact move from woo-woo to what I call true woo you know that it's not so woo-woo after all it's more true woo. I love it honestly and I'm sure there's a lot of listeners here whose family

have raised eyebrows at perhaps some of the things they've looked at i know even 10 years ago that was when i changed my diet and my lifestyle and even at that point there was almost no science it feels like in the mainstream within all the wellness practices even the ones that we're now seeing pretty robust science behind and they don't even need that leap of faith. And I know my brother in particular called out a lot of woo-woo things, which I have enjoyed sending him papers on ever since and to show there's reason to believe. But David, I wondered if we could start with the power of our mindset and the concept of the placebo effect and why thinking something works actually could be all you need, as you said, you know, just to open your mind and believe that something could be true and I'd actually love to go back in time a little bit

because as far as I understand you went from doing a PhD in organic chemistry to working in the pharmaceutical industry and developing drugs to then exploring the mind-body connection it feels like quite an unconventional path. Yeah well, actually, I would say it was because when I was a kid, my mum had a postnatal depression or postpartum depression. And it was after my youngest sister was born. I have three sisters and my youngest sister was born in 1976. And she had postnatal depression. It wasn't very well understood at the time. And, you know, my mum didn't really get the right treatment. I remember one of the psychiatrists I think saying to you just need to give yourself a shake you know asking a woman with postnatal depression to give yourself a shake I mean that's like asking someone with a broken knee to just you

know run it off so my mum didn't really get the treatment she needed and as a kid my mum didn't tell us she was feeling unwell but I just had this feeling you know that I just knew that there was something up and I'd only just begun high school and this might sound really woo-woo but a book fell off the shelf when I just I went into the library for the first time ever in a library never been in a library and it was called The Magic Power of Your Mind by Walter Germain and I thought I bet I can help my mum and I just took it I didn't know you're supposed to join a library and borrow books I just put it in my bag and you know we still have the book but you know it really helped her it didn't cure depression in a day it didn't just she didn't wake up the next day uncured but what it did it taught her tools and strategies that helped her to

navigate a course through you know some of the really difficult times, you know, things like affirmations and what we now call meditation. So because they were so effective, I remember my mum, when I was a kid walking about the house pumping her fist and going, I can do it, mind over matter, it's thought that counts. And it was affirmations that were helping her to get through and she would practice relaxation or meditation, you know, every evening. And so when I was a teenager, my mum and I used to talk a lot about the power of the mind because we'd both witnessed firsthand how helpful it had been for my mum.

So when I ended up in the pharmaceutical industry after my PhD, we were building drugs for cardiovascular disease and cancer. And although I love that type of science and we were making some really fantastic medicines, I found the placebo effect so intriguing and I think a big part of science is asking questions and so I began to ask questions you know what's going on there and how does that work you know how is it that you know is there a mind-body connection so eventually I would chat with some of my friends and my colleagues and they would just dismiss it all it's all in the mind it's just the placebo effect and I began to research into it and discovered that there was already research showing that when you believe something your belief actually

fiddles around with your brain chemistry and your brain then produces what it needs to produce to meet your expectations and I thought isn't that absolutely amazing and so after gathering enough evidence and becoming so inspired by the idea that the mind can exert an effect in the body and perhaps we can use that in a health-giving way you know I just left the industry because I really want there's enough organic chemists which is what I did my PhD and there's plenty of them doing that kind of work they don't need another one of me I thought my skill set was much better suited to you know education and seeing if I can help people to understand and harness the mind-body connection so that's really how that transition came around

it's extraordinary and I love how many people who now work in some capacity in the wellness space have that really really personal connection to it and that that's what kick-started it and it's really interesting there because I think you said your your friend said themselves it's just the placebo effect and I think the word placebo again I feel like it's quite a negative term and it makes it sound like it's a kind of it's not important it's nothing to believe and I just wanted to understand and kind of really clarify from what you're saying is that if the placebo is working in the sense of I really believe this is having an impact on me because I believe I'm doing something that can change my health and change my well-being the brain can start sending signals that create tangible measurable physiological effects within the body it's not all in the mind as such yeah absolutely in fact people just assumed it was all in the mind even such. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, people just assumed it

was all in the mind. Even back when I worked in the pharmaceutical industry, it was just an assumption because no one really questioned it because no one really understood it. We just assumed that people who responded to placebo would just get better anyway. But now we actually know from brain scans, from lots of neuroscience research, that when you believe something, your brain produces, within reason, your brain produces what it needs to produce to deliver what you believe is supposed to happen. So for example, you take, let's say, pain.

If I was given a little white tablet to relieve my pain, let's say I had pain somewhere in my body and I took a little white tablet and it was assured to me that this will reduce your pain. But it was really secretly a placebo. Then my brain would actually produce its own natural painkillers to meet that expectation. So my expectation is that pain will go away. So my brain does what it needs to do to meet that expectation.

And how it does it is it manufactures its own version of morphine and heroin. So morphine is an opiate. So we have endogenous opiates, meaning manufactures its own version of morphine and heroin so morphine you know is a and it's an opiate so we have endogenous opiates meaning your brain's own version and so my brain literally produces its own version to meet the expectation that i have i.e a reduction in pain so it's a real tangible effect in the brain that's caused by something psychological it's absolutely and i guess in the most kind of simple way what does it mean is it in some capacity we've got this own kind of pharmacy within us how do we harness this to have a bigger impact in our own health in our everyday lives yeah oh great it is like a pharmacy we really do have a kind of pharmacy it's almost like there's a wee pharmacist in the brain that said okay so you know if it was you so Ella's belief is such and such a thing so

what do we need to meet that belief oh it's that stuff there and the wee pharmacist gets it pours it into the brain and that produces an effect in the brain and an effect in the body that literally is equivalent to what you believed was supposed to happen the way to harness it is to understand that your mind is always affecting your body. Every pattern of thinking you have, every way that you feel is exerting an effect. I mean, for example, most of us harness the, you know, rather than the placebo effect, we can broaden it to the mind-body connection, which is really a broader way of encapsulating the placebo effect. We harness it all the time. Every time people, we talk about someone that we don't get on with, or we talk about something that irritates us, because of

what we're thinking about and how that feels, we actually produce stress hormones in the brain and body. And they're not just magically appearing on their own. They're appearing in the brain and body because of something you're thinking about and because of how you feel. So by understanding that the mind is always exerting an effect in the body, then we can harness the placebo effect or the mind-body connection by just choosing the direction to point our minds in. Because I can point my mind, for example, rather than something that's causing me stress, I might point my mind instead on something that's peaceful or even towards thinking kinder, compassionate thoughts towards someone. And right now, because there's a physiological effect of that, I'm then harnessing the mind-body connection to bring about a beneficial effect in my brain, but also in my

body, particularly in the heart, if I'm thinking about compassion and kindness. So do you think it is true to say that a change in our mindset can actually change our health? Well, 100%, you know, 100%. In fact, here's a good change example. You know, physiologically speaking, the opposite of stress is kindness. I often ask people this when I'm giving talks, I'll say a show, I ask people to call it, What do you think is the opposite of stress? And 99% of people will say it's peace or it's calm or it's tranquility. But those are not the opposite of stress. Those are the absence of stress. Physiologically speaking, the opposite of stress is kindness. It's how kindness feels. Because when we produce stress hormones, they don't just appear because you're in a stressful situation. They appear because of how that feels to you. But when you be kind, because of how kindness feels to us, we produce opposite physiological effects. We actually produce what I call kindness hormones. I call them that, you know, to draw a parallel with the fact that they're produced because of how kindness feels.

And they produce opposite effects in the body. So this change in thinking from thinking of something that bothers me to let's think something kindly of a person. And I actually literally change some of the physiological, the biochemical environment inside my brain and body as quick as that, simply by changing my focus. And if you could give so far one learning in this power of the mind to heal the body and to look after the body that you wish everyone knew, what would that thing be? It would be that actually, it would be to recognise that kindness is physiologically the opposite of stress. It's a simple little thing because very often we think, well,

I feel very stressed and maybe I should sit down or maybe I should lie down or something. But in actual fact, to generate the opposite effect in the body, we can practice just stopping for a moment and thinking of someone you care about and just thinking something nice about them. And I know it sounds woo-woo, it sounds kind of really corny, but just doing that leads to a different physical effect in the brain and a different physical effect in the body and it sounds such a simplistic thing but if I was to offer any piece of advice it would be that. And to understand the effects of that and the ramifications a little bit more how would that benefit the body to have more of the kindness hormones as opposed to the stress hormones flooding our system? In a really fantastic way one of my favourite things that happen actually kindness hormones they do this really fancy thing they park on the lining of our blood vessels and I say park it really is like parking you know you can take a vehicle into a big car park nowadays and you have different shapes and sizes of parking bays that are receptive

to vehicles of different shapes and sizes so you have like like big ones for buses and caravans and middle-sized ones for SUVs and smaller ones for little cars and stuff. So inside the body, we also have vehicles and parking bays, although scientists don't call them vehicles and parking bays. They call them hormones and receptors. But I like to sound a bit more clever. But if ever you hear the term hormone and receptor,

it's really just the body's version of vehicle and parking bay. Now it turns out, so I'm thinking of some, kindly of someone, I produce, a little tap gets turned on, I produce kindness hormones are floating around my blood vessels and my brain and they park on the lining of the blood vessels. And what an amazing thing happens, that causes a wee chemical change that softens the walls of the blood vessels and they open up.

There's a release in tension in the walls of the blood vessels and they open up. There's a release in tension in the walls of the blood vessels so they become wider and then the heart doesn't have to work quite as hard to get the blood through the blood vessels so the heart eases off some of its pressure and what you get is a reduction in blood pressure. So kindness hormones are actually called cardioprotective and what that means is they protect the cardiovascular system. And first and foremost, they do it by causing a reduction in blood pressure. So there's a physical effect on the heart. And how do we produce the kindness hormones? Just think kindly of them.

Think of kind thoughts about people. Think of a person you care about and list in your mind for even a minute all the reasons why you really value that person's presence in your life some just think kindly of them because of how that feels we produce the kindness hormones but they're exerting this real tangible physical effect on our blood vessels it's amazing isn't it i absolutely love this it's extraordinary and do you see it beyond the blood vessels as well do you see it in other parts of the body? Oh, yeah, yeah. Kindness hormones have multiple effects in the body.

In fact, you know, the gene for the kindness hormone, the main kindness hormone, is one of the oldest in the human genome. It's about 500 million years old and 45 minutes, you know. I'm only joking about 45 minutes. And what's it called, David? It's like oxytocin. It's a female reproductive hormone.

But I call it the kindness hormone simply to say that it has more of a it plays much more of a role in the body than just being involved in reproduction and breastfeeding it has multiple roles in the body but as well as impacting the heart it also cleans the environment in our blood vessels and when i say clean that it works as an antioxidant and an anti-inflammatory it literally cleans up free radicals and inflammation inside the blood vessels and in the immune system but other things that it does is it even helps to facilitate muscle regeneration even helps regrowing of blood vessels it even plays a role in the brain to help growing of brain cells it helps growing of heart muscle cells another thing that it seems to do as well is even play a role in slowing down the aging process as well. Here's a really cool one, Ella. Scientists did a study

where they took cells that make up 95% of our skin, right? And they put them under stress in the lab to simulate, you know, the biological stress, the physiological stress. And immediately, very, very quickly, you got really high levels of free radicals, you know, that play a significant role in aging of skin cells, but also of the heart, the brain, memory loss, Alzheimer's, all that kind of stuff. They did the study again, but this time they put a few drops of the kindness hormone in there. And amazingly, levels of free radicals dropped through the floor. In other words, what was happening is the kindness hormone was actually combatingating neutralizing some of the aging process inside ourselves isn't that amazing i mean i've been practicing kindness

for for 87 years now you know i'm just gonna dye my hair gray make myself look my age you know but it really does have this effect on skin cells it's absolutely unbelievable and i think it's a really interesting conversation to have as well at this time because it feels like over the last decade or so conversations around more alternative practices and slightly different more holistic view of health care has absolutely come into the mainstream but obviously there is still resistance and we've seen lots of conversations around our kind of total health healthcare system and our total well-being. Obviously, during COVID, the pandemic has highlighted, I think, a lot of challenges

and a lot of questions and a lot of fundamental issues. And obviously, we're also seeing like on a really practical level, those resources are being kind of stretched way beyond the capacity to which they can kind of exist in the long term. And I was just really interested, obviously, because I guess in some ways you've worked on both sides of the coin there. How do you see we can bring conventional medicine and this more complementary lifestyle approach together? Because it feels that it would be infinitely more powerful if we were able to do that. Yeah, I totally agree, Ella. I think there's so much polarity. There's so many of us that have the idea that

it's all about the mainstream. And then there's a lot of other people that say it's all about the alternatives. I personally think there's something to be had in the middle, something really beneficial, a happy fusion. Let's call it, we take the best of the rest, but we fuse it with the best of all the rest. We mix it all together. And there's something in the middle there, you know, a happy medium, you know, sometimes more of this and less of that, but other times, you know, more of that and less of this, depending on the situation, depending on the person. And I think rather than an all of this or none of that, or an all of that and none of this, or a very black and white polar, let's meet in the middle, because I think that is,

in the long term that would ease some of the pressure on health care services that would be better for all of us i think and do you see there is that challenge there where it's because almost of the word placebo or the word woo woo as you use in the title of your book that people are a little bit apprehensive about some of these practices i know in the book you're into practices like meditation the benefits of nature etc and also as you said just almost just the simplicity of reframing your thoughts from negative to positive but it sounds too simple to believe that it could have such fundamental physiological impacts that it's easy to dismiss yeah I think so I think it's easy to dismiss? Yeah, I think so. I think it's about reframing the conversation. What I love is most of this research now is beginning to fall into the mainstream. It's peer-reviewed,

high-level academic studies. It's just that I think we've historically had a knee-jerk reaction to these kind of things. We just assume that there's nothing in it. Like my colleagues in the pharmaceutical industry, they used to refer to what I I some of my beliefs as quackery they didn't use the term woo-woo back then they called it quackery they weren't being unkind they were my friends people I got for drinks with they weren't really making fun of me they were just referring to another one of David's quack beliefs the mind-body connection woo kind of thing you know it was a bit of fun but there was a mind-body connection even at that time with dental surgery they'd already succeeded in showing that when a person believed that this

injection was going to numb the pain it was really just a saline injection it actually caused the production of the brain zone morphine in the brain so that had already been published in high level scientific journals my colleagues and I we just didn't know that. And so often you find this knee jerk reaction we have to the idea that the mind can exert an effect on the body or there could be any evidence for Reiki or anything like this. It's just a historical knee jerk reaction because we're just unaware of all the available research and thought and the subject. So what I've been trying to do over the last few years is pull out of the medical journals and the scientific journals stuff that's really interesting and helpful,

but it's just buried, it's just not accessible to the everyday ordinary person, and even to people in science themselves, because most people in science read up on their own field. So they're very unaware of all these other kind of fields. So I thought, I'm just going to pull all of this stuff out that I think is helpful to people, signs read up on their own field so they're very unaware of all these other kind of fields so I thought I'm just going to pull all of this stuff out that I think is helpful to people and let's see if we can work with it and change the narrative from skepticism into you know maybe there is

something really healthy in this that we can use. And of all that research that you've done and all those papers you've read what's really stood out to you oh god you know loads of things have been kind of life-changing for me actually first of all i would say all the research on kindness there's loads of it i mean i've written three books on the science of kindness because there's so much stuff on it that took me by surprise that the idea that kindness because of how it feels can impact your heart and your blood vessels or compassion how compassion feels can actually cause an effect even inside ourselves at the level of the dna you know and telomeres even that meditation for example that i hadn't really meditated much and still started

doing all this kind of research that you know different styles of meditation depending on where you point your mind can bring about different effects in the brain. Like if I just, for example, do mindfulness for people who have never tried it, if you just breathe, which I hope most people are doing at the moment is breathing. But let's say I was to breathe, notice that I'm breathing. In the noticing of it, I'm actually working out this part of the brain, this muscle, I'm working out this part of the brain. It's called the prefrontal called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. And it's working out just like if I was exercising a muscle at the gym. If I worked out a muscle at the gym, the muscle would become firmer and larger.

But something very similar happens in the brain. We don't call it muscle growth because scientists would like to sound cleverer than that. So we call it neuroplasticity. But the idea is more or less the same. And this part of the brain begins to grow. cleverer than that so we call it neuroplasticity but the idea is more or less the same and this part of the brain begins to grow but instead let's say instead of doing mindfulness do what I call kindfulness instead of focusing just on the breath focus as I explained earlier on thinking kindly of people now we also work out this region of the brain but there's a slight bias to the left-hand

side and a wee bit further in as well and these are regions associated with happiness and joy and being able to become better at extracting happiness from the everyday backdrop of of circumstances and events in our lives but let's say instead of doing these I even decided to practice like an om or an om mani padme hum some kind of mantra based thing and what happens then is that quietens down areas of the brain associated with mental chatter. So one of the most profound ideas in this whole mind-body connection thing that I've come across is not only does meditation, i.e. pointing your mind in particular directions have an effect, but you can actually change the effect depending upon what style of meditation you do. I point my mind at my breath and I do this, exercise this. I point my mind at kindness

and I exercise this bit and this bit. I point my mind to the sound of a om and I quieten chattering parts of the brain so you can accomplish different things. And this is all mind-body connection because it comes down to where am I pointing my my mind what direction am i pointing my mind in amazing isn't it it's so interesting listening to you just then because obviously a minute ago i was asking you about trying to whether there was a way to bring together the kind of conventional western style of medicine and some of these more alternative except i mean they're not new age at all they're you know they predate christianity not the case of meditation etc I mean, they're not new age at all. They're, you know, they predate Christianity, not the case of meditation, etc. But, you know, they're new to some of us in the West practices. And it's so interesting hearing you say that, because it almost sounds like again,

you know, this is obviously there's a huge epidemic of mental health challenges in the country. There was that report last week, looking at the NHS actually prescribing practices like meditation for mental health challenges perhaps as a first line of defense along with exercise instead of going straight into medication in some instances and it's so interesting to hear you say that and actually I wasn't aware to that degree about the fact that different practices could stimulate different things so for people who are really struggling with those ruminating thoughts, for example, and that kind of catastrophizing and that never ending circle of doom that some of us can be familiar with, that one, you know, the chanting could be particularly

effective or practices along those lines and mantras, whereas for other people who may be struggling more with kind of focus or something that really activating that prefrontal cortex could be extraordinary as well. And do you see that that as this prefrontal cortex could be extraordinary as well and do you see that that as this science advances that we could almost become prescriptive to some extent with the types of mindfulness but I assume that extends way beyond that the generally alternative practices point of better work that we use definitely I think what we're learning now but by looking at all this research into the mind-body connection, what's beginning to emerge from it is there are certain directions I could point my mind in or certain ways of thinking or beliefs that I, then that happens. If I do this, then essentially what we build up is a prescription. What is your ailment and what mind-body strategy could I use?

I mean, even for building the immune system, there was a paper in a leading scientific journal called The Breast, and it was a study of women going through treatment for breast cancer, which involved chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery. But half of them were also taught to visualise, to imagine their immune systems. And some of them imagined their immune systems like piranha fish,

destroying cancer cells and destroying tumours. Do you know, it was an immunology study and what they found, even after four cycles of chemotherapy, those who did the chemotherapy and visualization, their immune systems were still far more robust even after four cycles of chemotherapy, to the point that the researchers pointed that out. They said even after four cycles of chemotherapy, the immune system was still highly cytotoxic against cancer, you know, cytotoxic meaning

destroying cancer cells, even after four cycles of chemotherapy, but only in those who combine the chemotherapy with visualisation, visualising the immune system destroying cancer cells. And you know, there's a body of research that shows that visualisation, when we imagine something as if it's really happening, that works a little bit like the placebo effect. Where the placebo effect is the brain produces what it needs to produce

to deliver what you believe is going to happen. Visualization does something similar, but instead of delivering what you believe is going to happen, the brain produces what it needs to produce to deliver what you're imagining is happening. And so you do it repetitively. But the overall underlying mechanism, i.e. whether it works, seems to be the

same that the brain is responding to something in the mind whether it's a belief or whether it's something in your imagination so there isn't a lot of emerging evidence that we really could put a little table that i do this with my mind that happens i do that i think of someone i don't like and then i produce stress hormones i I think kindly of someone, I produce kindness hormones, that impacts the heart, the ageing process, etc, etc. Or I think of, I visualise illness turning into wellness and this happens or I do this. Or I focus on my breath and this happens,

I focus on something else. And we can list all these different effects and we can say, oh, this is what I'm struggling with right now. Here is a mind-body intervention that might be beneficial in that case not necessarily instead of medical advice but maybe it would supplement medical advice and for a lot of people maybe they would get more depending on the situation maybe they would get more out of these practices because some many of them you can do at home just by closing your eyes and choosing the direction of your thinking yeah get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express.

Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N.com. Absolutely. And these papers

are extraordinary. Are there any other papers that have really stuck out? Because I think that for a lot of our listeners, they'll be really surprised at the power of what we're talking about. Yeah. You know, one of my favorite types of research, in fact, one paper done at Harvard, actually, by a neurologist called Alvaro Pascal Leon. He got a group of volunteers to play a sequence of five notes on a piano. So they basically went plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk, up and down a scale for two hours on five consecutive days. I mean, not two hours straight, that's kind of tiring. You do like a minute plunking, a minute rest, a minute plunking,

but you're on and off for a two-hour period on five consecutive days, repetition. Now, they had their brain scanned every day, and the scientists focused in on a region of the brain connected to the finger muscles, and what they found is it was growing like a muscle. We call it now neuroplasticity, but it was growing. By the Friday, by the fifth day, it was like 30 to 40 times larger than it had been on day one, on the Monday.

So while they did that, a second group of people, instead of playing the notes with their fingers, they were asked to place their hands flat, close their eyes and play the notes in their mind. But the key was they were to imagine as if they were physically moving their fingers. It's called kinesthetic imagery. You imagine how it would feel if you really were making these movements. So again, in their minds, they just imagined going up and down the scale for two hours and five consecutive days. Now, they also had their brain scanned each day. And amazingly, on the Friday, you couldn't tell the difference. If you looked at, put the brain scan

side by side, you could not tell the difference in the change in the brain between those who'd played the notes with their fingers and those who'd played the notes in their mind so in many ways the brain doesn't really make a distinction between whether something's really happening or whether you're imagining it happening and that opens up an entire can of worms in a sense of what we're possibly capable of because there's no limits really to what our imagination can do so it's to what degree can the body the brain and the body the internal state of the brain the body to what degree can they follow imagination and that's what research is is looking at at the moment but it's certainly an optimistic picture i think it is it makes me kind of want to question,

do you think that we have a lot of untapped potential then as human beings? Oh, absolutely. You know, scientists are already showing this untapped potential, even in neurorehabilitation. I mean, there's a lot of studies showing that people have had a stroke. Everyone in the study goes through a normal physiotherapy, but half of them, in addition to physiotherapy they visualize moving the impaired limb or the impaired side of the body and amazingly what all of these studies

show is their recovery is much better and faster and significantly more during the time period than those who just do physiotherapy. A recent study even looked at children with cerebral palsy also doing visualization and amazingly again they made improvements relative to people, kids who weren't doing visualisation, all of whom, everyone got physiotherapy, but the improvement was slightly better for those who did also visualisation as well. So I think there is a huge amount of untapped potential. We're only beginning to learn now that if I do this with my mind, this happens. If I do this with my mind this happens if I do this this happens and beginning to understand that visualization or imagination we might call it

can have really profound effects you know we just got to stretch it out and really experiment a lot more and what what is you know I don't know what the limits of our capability is maybe in time when we learn from an earlier age that we can use our minds instead of you know i came to this in my adulthood which i think most people who read my books are learning about the mind-body connection for the first time in their adulthood but what if we learned it when we're young and then we don't have the competition in the brain of the little voice you know that that'll never work you know that can't possibly be true because those are ingrained in us from society. But what if we grew up not believing that X, Y and Z wasn't possible?

What extent might that amplify the abilities that perhaps each of us have to enhance our health or even help facilitate recovery from injury, illness and disease? I don't know what the answer is because we're just beginning to tap into this, I think. And so with this kind of idea of neuroplasticity and really opening up the brain, do you think that in order to achieve this, we do, to some extent, have to retrain our brains and retrain our way of thinking to shift to that more open-minded, more optimistic approach? And can we train ourselves to do that?

Yeah, absolutely. I think, first of all, we have to retrain. It really is about retraining because I think the sceptical thoughts we have are really just historical. We just, as we move through society, we just kind of meet in life in general so much, I guess, ideas that the mind

has no effect in the body, just the placebo effect and all these things. And we grow up learning that X, Y, and Z isn't possible. So first of all, we have to realize it's about training ourselves to learn, yes, maybe the X, Y, and Z is possible. And here's the evidence that points towards being possible. And then the next part is actually doing the work. And what I've learned is actually doing visualization practices, actually doing meditation, but not just doing meditation, but doing meditation with the knowledge that what I'm doing

is changing the physical structure of my brain. And then I notice after a few days, weeks or months of practice, I notice the actual changes in my life. And I begin to correlate that with a physical change in the structure of the brain that came because of what I was doing with my mind, the direction I was pointing in. So we begin to learn from our own experience that what I'm doing with my mind is having a real physical effect. So I think it's learning from experience and also from reading and watching videos and you

hopefully this podcast as well there's lots of ways we can learn but certainly we put it into practice ourselves and meet in first-hand experience the benefits of using our mind to impact our bodies impact our health and one of the areas you talked about in the book which i thought was particularly interesting and i guess there's a really nice illustration of that, and it almost feels like it's quite subconscious in the human brain, as for all of us, is the effects we feel in nature, and that we kind of, so many of us actually unconsciously feel so much more at ease when we're in nature. And again, that has a kind of a real calming, restorative effect on our brain that I don't know if we even realise is really happening, but it is. You're right there there Ella, I think we don't even realise it's happening but it is and

it comes down to you know eons of evolution. Our ancient ancestors lived in natural surroundings. I mean modern humans living in concrete buildings with glass windows and they're blocky and angular that's very very new to the human species in the whole recorded span of human evolution. For eons, our ancestors lived in natural settings where everything was green and they could hear birds and other animals and the sound of crickets at night and they could see the sunshine. Now, stress is something that we in the modern, us modern humans experience much more than our ancient ancestors. I'm not saying they didn't have challenging environments, but stress was something that was relatively infrequent compared to us. We live not just with the stress

of maybe there's a wild animal or an invading tribe, which would be few and far between for our ancestors and not all the time. But as modern humans, we're constantly thinking, stressing, we're constantly thinking, I've got to get this done by five o'clock. I need to meet this deadline. What will my boss say? I need to earn this amount of money to pay the mortgage.

We're constantly stressed. But our ancient ancestors didn't have that. Over eons of evolution, what happened is the resting state of the body of the human nervous system became correlated with our experience at the time. And our experience at the time was nature. Green grass, trees blowing in the wind, jungles, birds tweet,

lots of varieties of birds tweeting and other sounds of animals. So over eons, that nature became associated with calm in the body. And it becomes so wired over eons of evolution that nowadays the research shows the moment we find ourselves in a natural setting, that correlation instantly switches on

and the body moves into a restorative state. In fact, so much so, Ella, there's some amazing research that show that hospital patients recover faster if their window offers them a green view of nature rather than a view of a car park or a brick wall, which is, you know, another hospital building. In fact, research is now showing that so strongly that we improve more in our mental and physical health if we see nature. And it's not just because it looks sort of nice.

It's because there's an actual physical effect on the nervous system. As the human organism recognises nature and immediately that switch goes on in the nervous system, restorative effect, the nervous system moves into a state of rest and calm. It's an automatic thing. Lots of research shows that we even were able to tolerate pain better. In fact, scientists put people in identical hospital rooms, but in one, they put plants, sometimes flowering plants, sometimes just green plants, and they gave them pain threshold tests. And amazingly, people handled pain better in identical rooms, but just if the room had plants or flowers.

Isn't that absolutely amazing? Such was the impact of the nervous system. The people didn't even notice there was plants in the room. Just the subconscious awareness of them immediately changed how their nervous system, how their body handled pain. And pain was lessened simply because it was something green and natural in the room

it's amazing isn't it it is and it's also i think everything you're saying it's incredibly powerful because i think sometimes we think that our health and our well-being is so complicated and i think it can sometimes sound so complicated but actually i know easier said than done but reframing your thoughts being outside a bit more etc are actually simple actually simple, free tools. And as you're saying, David, they can have such extraordinary impacts on our health. And it's so easy to overlook them and dismiss them as all in the mind or too simple to be true. And actually, as you're showing time and time again, it's absolutely that's not the case. And as we kind of start to wrap up, I've got to ask you because you've in the book you do also include some of the more alternative practices within well-being whether that's reiki or crystals for

example and i think that's so interesting because i think so many people still think those are completely mad and you know really don't resonate with them at all but interestingly you show again that the power of belief and that can mean that actually these practices really they really can work yeah absolutely ella because they can bring about a restorative effect in fact there's even been randomized controlled trials on reiki you know statistical analysis on old studies on reiki you know meta-analyses and all that that have shown that reiki can be highly effective for reducing pain and also reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression so there's a physical benefit and there's a psychological

benefit from reiki sessions and it seems to be that reiki and other alternative similar alternative therapies they put the nervous system into a restorative mode you know so they put the whole body into a more kind of calm. So what you have in the body is what's called parasympathetic dominance, rather than sympathetic dominance. And what I mean by that, and for the listeners, the autonomic nervous system has two strands, there's the fight or flight, which is a sympathetic, and there's the rest and digest or the rest and relax, which is the parasympathetic and most of us most of the time live in a state of sympathetic dominance so that we're always in a background of alert background

of tension for many of us a lot of the time but what these reiki and other techniques do is they help to shift the body into a restorative feeling so they switch on more parasympathetic dominance and that allows the body systems to optimise. It allows them to work a little bit better. The immune system can work a bit more optimally. So can the cardiovascular system. In fact, you know, such is the effect of pain. And here's a bit turning the scepticism around.

One of the really big hospitals, I think it was Bryn Mawr in the US, there was a study, a scientific study that was done there that was looking at helping to reduce pain or to manage pain in knee replacement patients. People had gone through total knee replacement called total knee arthroplasty. And initially sceptical, the hospital didn't really want a Reiki study in their hospital. It's an academic teaching hospital as well. We don't want Reiki in our hospital.

But such was the positive feedback from the patients and the reduction in pain in the patients. The hospital were completely turned around in their opinions. They actually created a Reiki program themselves that quickly trained up 10 of their own nurses because it's a very popular operation in the US. And so they'd been so convinced by the results of the study, not just the reduction in pain, but the actual positive feedback from patients. They now have a Reiki program and many other hospitals are following suit because the evidence speaks for itself. The experience speaks for itself.

But is it right to say, David, that you've got to go into these practices or into these experiences believing that they might work and allow, therefore, those effects to take place if you walked into the room to have a reiki session or to look at some crystals or meditate with crystals and thinking this is complete rubbish i absolutely don't believe in this this can't work that it may not work yeah i would i would say so ella i think it's very easy to negate our own possible positive experience through our own mindset you know so just like the mind can exert positive effects the mind can also exert negative effects so

if I was very skeptical about Reiki and I went in with a very strong attitude oh this is all a lot of rubbish then I probably wouldn't derive any benefit perhaps my nervous system would respond a little bit but the attitude and stress generated by my dominant thinking would probably negate that altogether so maybe we don't even need to believe maybe we just need to suspend our disbelief a little bit we can meet in the middle it doesn't have to be I totally believe in this but maybe I'm willing right now to just accept that maybe there's something and maybe I'll suspend my disbelief just a little bit just to see if I feel anything

from this particular therapeutic experience and just see what happens. I mean, certainly that's been my experience and I don't know what your experience has been is that certainly, yeah, when I first got interested in this 10 years ago, it felt like, as I said right at the beginning, there was almost no science on any of it, studies on anything you know even meditation etc still felt quite

untapped especially in the mainstream and actually it's also been interesting to see going into these I was very open-minded and interested to explore and to learn and and you're now seeing 10 years later studies showing why they do work but they didn't necessarily exist at that point and I think that something I certainly feel passionate about that there's absolutely no point, if it causes no harm, why would you rule it out now? Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't work. And maybe we just don't know yet. But it might be that in 10 years time, there'll be a mountain of evidence showing exactly why it does work. So just because you don't have meta-analysis and empirical evidence for every single discipline, if it's not hurtful or

harmful then then why not if it helps you absolutely i totally agree i think research is pushing the boat out all the time and we're gathering evidence for things that now like like you said 10 years ago there was no evidence for at all and we laughed at these things 10 years ago or 15 years ago and now they're in the mainstream so i just like you said i think in 10 or 15 years time some of the really things we really call and dismiss with utter skepticism and label them woo-woo in a derogatory sense there'll be so much evidence for it'll be well accepted and maybe these things will be integrated into health care systems in most countries around the world and i think if were, that would ease some of the pressure, you know, because about 70%

of all doctor visits are stress-related. And many, as many doctors who specialised in lifestyle medicine, you know, where they practise normal medicine, but they also give people lifestyle prescriptions as well. You know, maybe a lot of people don't necessarily need a drug prescription,

but they need more of a lifestyle intervention. They need to learn about diet. They need to learn to manage the foods that they eat and maybe optimise be therapeutic experiences that lead us into a restorative feeling inside the body that allows the body systems to work more optimally. And so for a lot of patients, I think they would benefit more from a lifestyle prescription. Not all patients, but a lot of patients would benefit. And that would certainly ease the burden on our healthcare services and allow our healthcare services and allow our healthcare services to be able to give better care to the people who really do need that care you know who really really do need the high level acute care and maybe there may be more

resources available for these people because we we allowed more lifestyle prescriptions to move into our experiences and that would make it a little bit easier I think everyone wins absolutely I mean I've certainly on all my learning and have been so struck you know I know you said there David about stress and it's 70% of GP appointments were related to that I mean I've been so struck I certainly didn't understand before the absolutely extraordinary physiological responses to stress and how it basically interrupts and disrupts and has an impact on basically every part of the body and so therefore it is it's linked to so many of the ailments whether that's IBS, sleep challenges, anxiety, depression etc etc etc and even just you said managing that through all sorts of things it's extraordinary what the impact could be and

David I could honestly I could talk to you all day about this it's so interesting I think it's so powerful and I think it's so important because as you said it's not to dismiss medicine but that there's so much that's in our power and in our hands that we could do alongside it and perhaps in some cases instead of and that could have a radical impact on us both personally but also as a collective and I wanted to finish if you could share three take-homes for our listeners if there were three things that everybody should know about that link between mind and body and the power of belief. definitely help. But try kindness. Try actually being kind to someone or even just changing your pattern of thinking and think kindly of someone and watch what happens. Watch how quickly the opposite neurological and physiological effects take place. The second thing I would say also is

practice meditation, but with that additional knowledge that you're actually changing the physical structure of your brain and that you can actually change in many ways the brain doesn't distinguish real from imaginary, then sometimes when we're sick and the images pop into our mind of the illness, sometimes if we have medical knowledge we dominate our thinking by what it actually physically must look like on the inside, perhaps we can play around with turning that idea of illness into wellness and every time we catch ourselves with with turning that idea of illness into wellness. And every time we catch ourselves with that internal picture of an illness or something that we're not able to do, we just catch ourselves thinking that way and change the internal narrative, change the picture and imagine wellness. Turn that illness into wellness however you do it. You might be thinking

of your immune system or you might be thinking of something you can do or even just turning in a physical picture of something that's jagged into something that's relaxed and smooth or something whatever the condition is but just practice changing that internal picture from illness turning it into wellness and again see what happens i love that and david finally our podcast is called delicious ways to feel better and i wondered what if you could share with us the one thing that you do every day that personally helps you feel better i I wondered what if you could share with us the one thing that you do every day that personally helps you feel better I would say Ella gratitude practices and I found that to be extraordinarily helpful you know one thing I've struggled with in my life is anxiety you know I've

I've it's been something that comes and goes in my life and I just get used to it and the one thing that has the biggest impact on feeling anxious is gratitude and I just stop for a moment and I think about all the things that I'm grateful for right now maybe things have happened in the last day or two but I just allow my thinking to be dominated with appreciation for people and situations events that kind of stuff and it just seems to take the sting out of the anxiety triggers that have been playing themselves out at that kind of moment so that's something that i found to be immensely beneficial and it's a mind-body effect it's as i'm choosing what to do with my mind and that's causing a calming effect in my brain and in my nervous system

yeah i've i actually have to say I've found the same thing incredibly helpful well David we can't thank you enough for your time today this has been absolutely fascinating I hope everyone has enjoyed it thank you so much for sharing we will be back with our episode on Wednesday and back again with our next long episode next Monday have a lovely week, everyone. Thank you for listening. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts

offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com.