Mind Over Matter

We just talked about how the mind has been shown to be more powerful than morphine when we wrote about the placebo effect. The human mind is so powerful, yet most of us discount the power of positive thinking when we are in a tough situation.

I’m sure most everybody has heard the expression, “Mind over matter,” but how much do you really believe that expression. Mind over matter is the belief that the mind is more powerful than the body. Tony Robbins has even talked about through positive thinking, people can walk across a bed of hot coals. What if positive thinking could do more than just help a person overcome physical pain? What if positive, or negative, thinking could effect every aspect of your life?

There are many motivational speakers that believe that your mind does effect what happens in your life. In fact, the first universal law of attraction says, “Like attracts like.” Have you ever REALLY focused on something you truly wanted and not gotten it? If you focus on what you want on a daily basis, you can find a way to get it. I can honestly say that anything I have really wanted and focused on getting, I have gotten. I’m not talking about some fleeting thought that crossed my mind over the course of a day or two, but something that I was persistent with over weeks or months.

A vision board is a great way to help focus your thoughts on what you really want to achieve in your life. It can be clippings from a newspaper or magazine or pictures you find online, anything that is a physical representation of the goals you really want to achieve in your life. Your call to action this week is to create a visual representation of what you want in your life. While you are selecting objects, don’t try to create a plan for how you are going to get it, just focus on what you want to achieve. The how will eventually work itself out. A person I really look up to once said that you can go from Florida to California without seeing the entire path if you go a few feet at a time. Focus on what you want and if you are given an opportunity to take a few steps towards it your goal, take it. Anything can be achieved no matter how far away it may seem as long as its taken a few feet at a time.

Your Mind is More Powerful than Morphine

When health is discussed, most people immediately focus on physical well-being, but health is also a state of mental and social well-being; true health is only 1/3 physical. Even if we take amazing care of our bodies, true health can never be achieved unless we have a healthy mind.

The best way to convey the vast power of the mind is by explaining the power of the placebo. Henry Knowles Beecher, M.D., made a huge contribution to our knowledge of the human body when he discovered the placebo effect. Beecher began investigating the relationship between subjective psychological states and objective drug responses during World War II. Beecher was an anesthetist involved in treating wounded soldiers and during the height of the war morphine supplies ran out. In desperation, Beecher injected saline solution

into the wounded soldiers instead of morphine. When the soldiers were injected with the saline, they were told it was morphine and the pain would go away. To Beecher's surprise, shortly after the injection the soldiers reported that the “morphine” eased their pain. Beecher wrote about his findings, stating, “Three-quarters of badly wounded men, although they had received no morphine for hours...have so little pain that they do not want pain relief medication, even though...such is available for asking.” This vital discovery by Beecher lead him to write one of the most influential papers in medicine, The Powerful Placebo, leading to the prospective, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials used as the standard of testing new medicines today.

Medical researchers are constantly frustrated with the fact that the drug or surgery they are testing often achieves the same results as a placebo (a fake drug or surgery). More emphasis is now being put on researching why placebos are so effective, yet the answer is simple. Your mind controls your body. Your mind is what controls the healing power in your body. Why is that a cut on our arm heals without us having to think about it, but we are told we cannot heal from an illness or disease without help? Many in our society rely heavily on medicine to "heal" the problems in their bodies and give little credit to the body's own ability to heal itself. When somebody spontaneously heals from a life-threatening disease or an illness without the use of medicine, doctors quickly credit the results as miracle, giving no credit to the body's ability fight the disease and heal itself. The fact is, we are born with an amazing healing power in our bodies, and when the body is functioning properly, it can innately heal itself. It is becoming more and more essential that the accountability of our health is shifted from "bad genetics" and a "pill for every ill" back to the individual. We need to learn when it is necessary to seek emergency medical care and when our bodies can handle it on their own. Everything you do to your body either takes away from health or adds to it; taking away life or adding to it. If we can accept that we are responsible for how well our body functions, we allow ourselves to live a life of true health, living up to our full potential and taking away the constant fear of sickness and disease. When we accept responsibility, we take back control and allow ourselves to live a life that is truly fulfilling.

References:

American Society of Anesthesiologists- http://www.asahq.org/Newsletters/1999/09_99/beecher0999.html

Mary Robinson Reynolds, M.S. http://www.makeadifference.com/publish/articles.php?c=0d14_PEC

The RAW Truth about Food:

The process of pasteurization was invented by Louis Pasteur to ensure that food was safe for everyone to eat. The problem with this process is that it doesn't just kill the bad bacteria, it also kills the good bacteria and enzymes and takes away vitamins and minerals. Eating some foods raw is actually a great way to ensure that you will get all of the vitamins, undamaged proteins, and unoxidated fats.

Raw food is simply uncooked (never heated about 188 degrees Fahrenheit), unprocessed (as few ingredients as possible), and organic (no preservatives or pesticides). There are several reasons why it is best to eat some foods raw. When a food is cooked over 188 degrees, the enzymes needed to digest your food are killed off, along with most of the vitamins and minerals. It also changes the pH of the food, making it more acidic, and denatures the proteins and oxidizes the fats. A good way to think about eating raw foods is when you pick a living vegetable or fruit it continues to ripen, but once it is cooked it starts to decay.

Incorporating a raw food diet is easy to do and the rewards can be amazing. Some of the benefits that occur when a diet is 75 percent raw include: more energy, requiring less sleep to feel refreshed, weight loss, less susceptibility to colds and the flu, decreased allergies, better functioning immune system, decreases symptoms of PMS, and increased sexual function.

There are many types of raw food diets that limit what you eat or force you to completely revamp your diet. For some people, something like that may be necessary, but for others the most important thing is finding a way to incorporate raw foods into your current diet so that it can become a long term change.

For recipes or ideas regarding raw foods you can check out these websites:
http://www.rawinten.com/
http://www.sustainabletable.org/
http://www.thebestofrawfood.com/