Can positive thinking cure illness?

*This text was written by a TecMundo columnist; finally learn more.

When we are sick or have personal problems, it is not uncommon for us to seek friendly advice so that we can find a solution to the problem or keep ourselves in a positive mental state so that the illness passes quickly. Interestingly, scientists are trying to map out how our brain responds to illness by getting our immune system under control. And some evidence has shown that our immune response may be directly related to our “state of mind,” so to speak.

First of all, it’s worth considering that it’s no exaggeration to say that our brain is one of the greatest mysteries of current science. This organ, which is responsible for many functions in our body, is also one of the main responsible for our emotions. It will be a tremendous discovery to deeply understand and understand how these emotions work and how it can benefit us in the treatment of diseases.

For example, breast cancer patients who have been part of support groups and therapy since 1989 have been found to survive longer than those who have not participated. Therefore, it is already known that the emotional state is linked to the way our body copes with a wide variety of illnesses and adversities.

A report recently published in the American science journal nature reported his research Israeli scientist Hedva Haykin, who studied whether it is possible to alleviate heart attacks by stimulating the region of the brain associated with positive emotions. To do this, he evaluated the hearts of several heart-attacked mice. Some specimens had scars and dark marks from larger cardiac lesions.

The key to understanding the relationship between the severity of the lesions comes when we know that only some mice receive stimuli in areas of the brain responsible for positive emotions, and that the lesions are much smaller in precisely these mice. That is, mice that consistently received positive emotions, such as motivation and reward, were observed to respond better and recover better from heart injuries than mice that did not receive stimulation.

The implications of an observation like this have the potential to be very important. For example, we can understand the workings of popular knowledge about “the true power of the mind over the body.” With this understanding, we can further leverage the use of the placebo effect, in which a patient unknowingly takes a “fake” drug and improves the symptoms of a disease. Also, in a more optimistic scenario, understanding how our nervous system works in conjunction with the immune system could lead to a better understanding of diseases such as cancer and autoimmune diseases.

Scientists have already mapped which neurons in an area of ​​our brain called the hypothalamus are responsible for controlling symptoms like fever and loss of appetite during an infection, for example. Also, the stimulation of these neurons can cause these symptoms even if there is no infection in the body. That is, there may be a way to “hack” our own nervous system so that it can deal with the disease in certain ways.

We are still a little far from the moment when all this is put into practice. For this, a great deal of research is still needed, as well as an effort to understand the role that Psychology can have in our clinical situation. However, in the face of all this, it is always extremely interesting to think how much our brains can comprehend different subjects such as the universe, the formation of stars, the formation of black holes, and how little they know about themselves.

Rodolfo Lima Barros SouzaProfessor of Physics and columnist Technology World. He holds a master’s degree in Physics and Science and Mathematics Teaching in Public Perception of Science from Unicamp. Available on social networks as @rodolfo.sou.