Scientific Proof That Shows The Body Can Heal Itself

Lissa Rankin explores how the placebo effect has spiritual and scientific implications over us in this TEDtalk. She delves deeply into how our thoughts can powerfully affect our physiology. That if we believe we can get well, then we do.  The Placebo effect is solid evidence that the body has an innate self-repair system. 

Image Source: www.humansarefree.com

3,500 people diagnosed with incurable diseases like HIV, cancer, heart diseases, etc., participated in a study to test the placebo effect. Everyone’s illness disappeared without treatment!

In one of the cases Lisa discusses, a Mr. Wright was diagnosed with cancer and was given drugs he believed could cure him. Within days of taking the drugs, his tumors had shrunk to half their size.  A report was released two months later about the drug, saying it didn't work so well and Mr. Wright’s cancer was back. 

His sneaky doctor promised Mr. Wright that he had obtained a higher quality version of the same drug and injected him with distilled water. His tumors went away again because he believed they could. For another two months Mr. Wright was okay until the American Medical Association published a nationwide study that proved the drug was worthless. Two days later Mr. Wright died.

Lisa describes other countless times when people actually healed themselves with measurable proof on this TEDtalk. They heal their ulcers, grow back hair, shrink tumors and reduce all signs of illness! The mind initiates the healing and the body reacts. 



What are your thoughts? Do you believe that we hold the power to heal ourselves? Watch the video below and tell us your thoughts.

After A Horrifying Car Crash, This Australian Man Woke Up Speaking Fluent Chinese. He Had Completely Forgotten English

Ben McMahon was involved in an accident that almost claimed his life and when he woke up from a coma, all he could speak was Mandarin. He remembers how on waking up, he saw an Asian looking nurse standing by his side and told her in Chinese “Excuse me nurse, I feel really sore here.” He then asked her to give him a pen and paper and wrote in Mandarin, “I love my mum, I love my dad, I will recover.”

Image credit: Benjamin McMahon (taken from)

His parents and doctors were baffled by his newly found language skill. Doctors told his parents that it would be a miracle if he survived.

 “We got the call from the hospital and [the hospital staff member] was saying ‘Oh Mark, look I just wanted to ring and let you know that Ben's actually started to come out of the coma’...and she said, ‘I don’t know how to say this...he's speaking Mandarin'," Mark, Ben’s father told Channel 10’s, The Project “Neither of us can speak Mandarin so we just nodded but deep down quite concerned about what’s going on.”

Image credit: Benjamin McMahon (taken from)

Ben had been taking Mandarin in school but wasn't fluent at the language yet. “I wasn't consciously thinking I was speaking Mandarin, it was what just came out and it was what was most natural to me,” he said.

It took him about two to three days to recall his English speaking skills. His new found language has since brought him huge opportunities. He now leads Chinese tours at his hometown and hosts a Mandarin TV program. He has also moved to Shanghai, where he is studying commerce at the University. He is grateful for being alive and that he can speak a second language. 

Image credit: Benjamin McMahon (taken from)

Ben is not the first person to go through such an experience. In 2010, A Croatian 13 year old girl woke up speaking fluent German, instead of her native language. 

Recently, a navy veteran from the U.S was found unconscious in a motel room in 2013. He could not remember who he was but spoke Swedish fluently.

Dr Pankaj Sah, a Queensland Brain Institute neuroscientist believes he has an explanation for what happened to Ben. According to him, the brain has different circuits that assist in language, speaking, breathing and thinking- just like in electronic circuits. It’s possible that the parts of Ben’s brain that could recall English got damaged during the crash while those parts that retained Mandarin got activated when he woke up from the coma. 
[Source: www.dailymail.co.uk]

According To Science, You Will Be Fearless If You Remove This Part Of Your Brain

Researchers in the 1930’s conducted a research on animals and discovered that when they removed a certain part of a monkey’s brain, the animals turned fearless: they could approach snakes and bat them around with sticks without fear. They even played with the hissing tongues of the snakes.  The experiment has been repeated numerous times in animals and the scientists have reached a consensus: when the amygdala is removed, animals lose any sense of fear.

Image Source: www.nytimes.com

The same experiment was conducted on humans and the results were similar, according to a study in the journal, Current Biology. 

Justin Feinstein, lead author of the study and clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Iowa says that,  “There’s not very many humans with this sort of brain damage, luckily for us, we had access to a patient, SM, and we studied her different fear behaviors and we read her personal diaries.”

Patient SM has holes where her amygdala should be due to lipoid proteinosis, a rare condition. According to the researchers, she reacted the same way the monkeys did; she has no fear of creatures like spiders and snakes that alarm most people ordinarily. She also tends to put her life at risk. On one occasion, she was attacked by a man with a knife while walking alone through a park, “the following day, she again walked through the same park,” Mr. Feinstein said.

He and his colleagues are trying to coach the patient into being more careful. They believe that if they understand how SM’s mind works, they may be able to develop therapies for people with excessive amounts of fear, for example war veterans.  “We may be able to dampen the effects of the amygdala. We can do that through psychotherapy and possibly through medication.” he said.

[Source: www.nytimes.com]

10 Mind Blowing Psychological Findings That Will Contradict What You Know To Be True

Psychology is the science of commonsense that most often than not confirms what we already know in our minds to be true. We can however battle this misconception, according to Jeremy Dean, a psychology and master of ceremonies PhD candidate, by thinking “about all the unexpected, surprising, and just plain weird findings that have popped out of psychology studies over the years."

Image Source: www.io9.com

1. Cognitive dissonance
It’s one of the weirdest findings in psychology. According to cognitive dissonance, it’s difficult to hold two contradicting beliefs and so we adjust to one unconsciously, so that it fits with the other. A study done on the same, found that a task is interesting to a student if they are paid less to take part. We reason that since money was not involved then the task must have been interesting for us to do it. A boring task will become interesting because it’s hard to explain the behavior. This theory is unsettling because our minds seem to be performing rationalizations like this many times without consciously knowing. So how can you be sure of what you really think?

2. Hallucinations are common

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We mostly consider hallucinations an indication of some serious mental illness. They are more like dreams you have while awake and in reality, these dreams are more common to ‘normal’ people. In a study done by Ohayon, 2000, one third of the population reported having experienced hallucinations. 20% experienced them once a month while 2% once in a week.
Normal people similarly have paranoid thoughts. In a recent study, 40% of the population experienced paranoid thoughts during a virtual study. Apparently, the gap between the ‘sane’ and the mentally ill is smaller than we imagine.

3. The placebo effect

Image source: www.wired.com

You are having a headache. You take some aspirin and a few seconds later, you are feeling so much better. Have you experienced this? Well, it can’t be as a result of the drug because the drug would need at least 15 minutes for it to kick in. This is what is called the Placebo effect. Since your mind knows you have taken a pill, you feel better. This effect is mostly strongest in medicine where pain is involved. A placebo of salty water (saline) would work just as powerfully as morphine would. 
The word Placebo is Latin for ‘I shall please’. In another study done, 80% improvement from taking drugs like Prozac was placebo. They could as well have taken the sugar pill. The placebo effect can be considered counter-intuitive because the body and mind are not separate.

4. Obedience to authority

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We consider ourselves independent minded. We would not harm another unless undergoing serious duress. But if ordered to electrically shock another by an authoritative figure wearing a white coat, would we?
Stanley Milgram did the experiments to test obedience to authority. He wanted to find out how far people would go if an authoritative figure orders them to hurt another human. 63% of those participants continued administering shock even when the victims cried in pain. They continued administering it until the victims grew silent. The participants were just ordinary people like you and me.
Situations in life dictate how much control we have on our behavior. It’s a power we find hard to notice however until it’s revealed dramatically in studies like this one.

5. Fantasies reduce motivation

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We mostly motivate ourselves by fantasizing about the future. We have this idea that if we fantasize about the future, we will get motivated towards reaching our goals. Psychologists however have found that fantasizing about our success is bad for motivation. When you get the taste of goals coming true in the here and now, your drive to achieve it is reduced. It’s also hard to notice problems we could face in the future when fantasizing. A better way to achieve our goals would be through mental contrasting. With mental contrasting, one is forced to decide whether a goal is achievable or not. If it is, commit and if it's not, let go.

6. Choice blindness.

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Do you have a reason for every decision you’ve made? Like, why you are attracted to a certain person? Don’t be quick to say yes. According to a certain study, people were tricked easily into justifying choices they had not made about those they found attractive. We sometimes exhibit, choice blindness. We tend to have very little or no awareness at all about the choices we make and the reasons as to why we make them. Then we use rationalization to cover our tracks. We apparently have very little access to the inner workings of our minds.

7. More heads are not always better than one
According to psychology, brainstorming should not be a solution to problems. When people are in groups, they tend to be lazy, forget their ideas when others are talking and worry too much about what others are thinking of their opinion. It would be much better if everyone went off and came up with their own unique ideas, then the group evaluates them.

8. Suppressing thoughts is counterproductive.

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Remember when you were worried about something and everyone kept telling you to ‘put it out of your mind’? Well, this is bad advice. It’s counterproductive to suppress your thoughts. When you suppress thoughts, you experience an ironic rebound effect. Whatever you were thinking about becomes even stronger than it was before. A better way to solve it would be looking for a distraction.

9. We all have incredible multitasking skills
We can train our minds to do incredible things despite all limitations we may have. In fact, with practice, one can be able to read and write at the same time. In a multitasking study, two volunteers were trained for a period of 16 weeks. By the end of training, they could read a short story and categorize a list of words at the same time. In time, they could execute as well on both tasks using the same time they could on each of the tasks individually before they started the study.

10. The little things are what matter in life.

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We consider big events like, graduating, getting married or getting a baby as most important. However, the major events in your life are not often directly important to your well-being; little uplifts and hassles of everyday life are. The major events affect us mainly through the uplifts and hassles they produce daily. For example work satisfaction is mostly achieved after one is hit by everyday hassles. Things like quality sleep, little ups and downs at work and friends and family relationships are what affect our happiness: the little things in life make us happy.

[Source: www.io9.com]

10 Amazing Ways Music Affects Our Brains, #5 is Intriguing

Music holds tremendous power on emotions and thoughts. It could make your somewhat ordinary day Magical or spiritual. Music can provide solace, help you purge and cleanse, create a diversion, revitalize you, entertain, and so much more. The influence of music spreads from our genetic codes, through our bodies and thoughts and out into our relationships.

Image source: www.keene-equinox.com

1. Verbal IQ improvement 

When you practice the piano, you improve not only your musical abilities but also verbal and visual skills.  A study by Forgeard et al., 2008 found that, students aged 8 to 11, who had extracurricular music classes over time developed higher visual abilities and verbal IQ when compared to those who did not get any musical training. Benefits of studying a musical instrument therefore are not only purely musical but they extend to visual perception and cognition.

2. Feeling the chills

I bet you’ve felt the chills down your spine as you listened to music. In fact, a study done by Nusbaum and Silva (2010) shows that 90% of people have. How much of the chills, however depends on personality. People high on ‘openness to experience’, one of the five personality dimensions, are likely to feel them more. The study shows that people with this dimension, (openness to experience) will most likely play a musical instrument and will more often rate music as being important to them.

3. Happiness is amplified by active listening.

To get the chills if you are not feeling them, you should try harder. This is because; a recent study shows that when you try to feel happier actively, you do feel happier.  Ferguson and Sheldon (2013) did a research that showed that, participants who tried actively to feel happier while listening to Aaron Copland’s upbeat classical compositions felt their moods being lifted more as compared to those who listened to the music passively. So, engage the music next time you are listening and you will experience that extra emotional power.

4. When we sing together we are brought together

Music is a social activity and when we sing together, we are brought together. Finnish students who took extended music classes were studied and it was found that they reported higher satisfaction while in school even in areas that were not related to music classes. (Eerola & Eerola, 2013). When people sing together, affiliations are increased and people tend to like each other more than they did before.

5. Music as a cure to heart diseases.

It does help reduce the anxiety and stress that’s associated with treating coronary heart disease. In a review of 23 studies that covered almost 1500 patients, listening to music helped reduce blood pressure, heart rate, and anxiety in patients with heart disease (Bradt & Dileo, 2009).

6. Music lifts you up when sad

People love music because it helps them manage their moods. It has a cathartic effect while for some people listening to sad music, under the right circumstances, can improve their mood. A Kawakami et al. (2013) study found that people enjoy sad music because it produces a mix of emotions; some positive, some negative. As we listen to music, we recognize the negative emotions but they are not strongly felt.

7. Improves our judgment

Listening to music for just fifteen seconds could change how we judge emotions on the faces of other people. Logeswaran et al. (2009) discovered that participants in a study perceived other faces as happier when they listened to a quick gust of happy music. The same applied to sad music. They got to see the biggest effect when the participants looked at faces of people with neutral expressions. People tend to project the mood of the type of music they are listening to onto other faces.

8. Music color

People tend to think of certain colors when listening to music. In fact, different cultures relate particular colors with particular music.  Palmer et al. (2013) in a study of Mexico and US people found that they connected duller, darker colors with sad music and vivid colors with happy music. In a follow-up study found that these associations of music to color were due to the music’s emotional content.

9. Could Music bring back vision?

The brain’s visual areas are the ones affected in 60% percent of those who get strokes. Patients lose awareness of the objects on the opposite side where damage to the brain has occurred. (Visual neglect). Studies have however found that when these patients listen to music they love, some of the visual attention gets restored (Tsai et al., 2013). Music can therefore be used to rehabilitate stroke patients.

10. Music For Babies

You’ve seen how infants respond rhythmically to music, even those as young as five months. In fact, it’s more interesting to them than speech! A study by Zentner and Eerola (2010), found that babies spontaneously dance to all genres of music and smile a lot while doing so.  

Maybe we should accept the fact that music is in our genes to stay!
[Source: www.spring.org.uk]

Meditation Could Change Your Brain According To The Neurologists

If you’re still wondering whether to start meditation or not, start immediately because it causes neuroplastic changes to your brains gray matter, which is a good thing.Have you been struggling with “monkey-mind”? Does your brain feel a little restless, unsettled, whimsical, capricious, inconstant, indecisive, uncontrollable, confused or fanciful? Then you need meditation.

Image source: www.paiexplorer.com

Research by Neuroscientists has shown that mind training and meditation can lead to great neuroplastic changes to your brain’s gray matter. A group of them from Harvard, who were interested in the study of mindful meditation, reported that it only takes eight weeks of meditation for the brain structures to change. In a press release, their study senior, Sara Lazar, Ph.D. stated that,

“Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day.”

While testing this idea, 16 people were enrolled in a mindful-based stress reduction course for a period of eight weeks. The course was supposed to reduce their levels of stress and improve their mindfulness and well-being. The 16 each received 45 minutes audio recordings that contained guided mindfulness exercises. They included yoga, body scan and sitting meditation. They were given instructions to practice on a daily basis at home. In order to integrate mindfulness in daily activities, they were taught how to practice it when walking, eating, taking a shower, washing the dishes and many more. In a day, they spent an average 27 minutes practicing mindfulness.

Image source: www.themindunleashed.org

Their brain Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI scans) were taken just before and immediately after they finished the training. A control group that didn’t undergo the meditation course, also had their MRI’s taken. The group reported that after the course, they noticed significant improvement in their measures of mindfulness. They could now act with awareness and were non-judgmental.

The shocking discovery was that their MRI scans showed that the group that underwent the course, increased the concentration of gray matter within the posterior cingulate cortex, the cerebellum, left hippocampus and the temporo-parietal junction. These brain regions are involved in emotion regulation, learning and memory, perspective taking and sense of self!

“It is fascinating to see the brain’s plasticity and that, by practicing meditation, we can play an active role in changing the brain and can increase our well-being and quality of life. “said Britta Hölzel, the papers lead author.

According to Sarah Lazar, the study “demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.”
[Sources: www.mindbodygreen.com]

Here's A Simple Brain Teaser That Will Blow Your Mind

Try this Brain Teaser!Read this through just once and see the outcome. Stop thinking for just a few minutes and relax. Now start reading and answer the following question Silently In your mind. You don’t need any aids to help you get through because this is very simple. It’s a very interesting Brain Teaser and you will see why.

i am not sure about that 98% part, but i literally thought of red color wrench, which blew my mind and i think It works for some and but not everyone!
Don't forget to share with your friends!
[source: www.themetapictures.com]