Cure explores the science behind Mind / Body medicine. It investigates the inextricable link between mind and body and looks at how changing your thoughts about events can affect physical symptoms.
Cure is full of real life stories of people who have changed their lives, significantly improved their wellbeing and reduced symptoms of medical conditions by altering their mental viewpoint, changing their relationship with their thoughts and managing issues such as stress. Throughout the book, Marchant backs her stories and findings with scientific research. In doing so she introduces the exciting field of Mind /Body medicine in an easy-to-read format.
I often speak about how your mind can influence your health and wellbeing; of how the way you think can change your body chemistry to produce physical symptoms and also of how physical interventions such as good diet, exercise can change the mind. In the past the mind and body have been regarded as separate entities but there is increasing evidence that they are inextricably linked.
I am reminded of a quote from Tim Cocks of the Neuro Orthopaedic Institute (NOI). It sums this viewpoint up nicely –
“Consider an embodied mind embedded in an
environment and culture.”
Viewing health and wellbeing in this way enables us to look at the wider, bigger picture and to understand how everything we do, our environment, the people we encounter all affect our wellbeing. More accurately, it is our thoughts about these issues that affect our health and feelings of wellbeing.
The first half of the book looks at how we can use our mind to improve ill health. It covers the placebo effect, the degree and nature of human interaction and ways of tricking the mind into fighting disease. Did you know that blue pills have been found to better promote sleep, while red pills are better for pain and green for anxiety? Such is the power of the mind that even if you know the pills or treatment are ‘fake’ they can work! She suggests that rather than swallow down your pills in haste you create a ritual around the taking and imagine the improvement.
The second section looks at how our state of mind influences disease throughout our life. There is a chapter on stress and the importance of managing it on a regular basis. Another chapter entitled ‘Enjoy the Moment’ explores the benefits of mindfulness and how it is thought to work.
A fascinating read.
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