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PROVEN MIND/BODY MEDICINE (cont.)
"I was surprised by the magnitude of this effect," Surwit said recently. "I had been working in the cardiovascular area. After that experience, I changed my focus entirely to diabetes."
Surwit went on to work with hundreds of other diabetes patients nationwide. In the past decade, he and others have found that many diabetics can control their high blood sugar and related symptoms with techniques such as relaxation and biofeedback.
Today, an increasing number of physicians, surgeons, and medical specialists are making discoveries like Surwit's. Doctors are finding that techniques for treating patients' minds and emotions are reaping unexpected benefits not just in diabetes, but in a remarkable array of illnesses. What is now called mind/body medicine is becoming standard in the pharmacopoeia of doctors across the country.
In recent years, mind/body scientists have uncovered the role of mental stress in exacerbating (if not fully causing) an encyclopedic list of diseases and health complaints, from AIDS, cancer, and heart disease to allergies, back pain, and headaches. Mind/body therapies that help people manage stress often reduce the symptoms associated with these conditions and sometimes spur recovery from them.
MIND/BODY MEDICINE of the last two decades characterized by a somewhat limited pharmacopoeia with seemingly unlimited utility. The pharmacopoeia's more thoroughly tested approaches are: relaxation techniques (including meditation), biofeedback, hypnosis, guided imagery, group therapy, behavior modification, cognitive restructuring, and individual psychotherapy. (See "The Mind/Body Pharmacy," page 89.)
Today's mind/body approaches are founded upon an updated definition of stress itself. Stress reduction a term used less and less, as social scientists realize that work, family, and social pressures are unavoidable and that some stressors - like new challenges at work-can ignite creativity as much as anxiety. Mind/body researchers today commonly define stress as the tension between the demands of our environment and the extent of our ability to cope with those demands. Today's mind/body doctor would say that when a hectic life outpaces our coping ability, we need to cut back the external demands while cultivating new, more flexible coping abilities. Body-oriented techniques like relaxation, and psychological approaches, like changing our attitudes about stressful situations (as in cognitive restructuring) or seeking more social support (as in group therapy), are among the ways we can expand our repertoire of coping skills.
These methods are gaining sway because they work. Among the many developments on the research front, two well-publicized recent findings have lent scientific credibility to mind/body medicine:
- At the University of California, San Francisco, internist Dean Ornish conducted a study of patients with severe heart disease. In addition to their eating a low-fat diet and getting moderate daily exercise, the participants practiced yoga and relaxation techniques, including visualization and meditation. They also met 'in a support group twice a week and shared with the group what was going on in their lives. After one year, Ornish used angiograms (special X-rays using dyes to show coronary arteries) to show that there had been reversals of arterial blockages result never before considered possible without a medication.
- At Stanford University, psychiatrist David Spiegel evaluated supportive group therapy in a study of 86 women with metastatic breast cancer. Half of the women participated in group therapy, in which they were encouraged to become more assertive and expressive. The other half were not a part of any group. Dr. Spiegel's original intent was to determine the psychological not physical-benefits of the therapy. After 10 years, he unexpectedly found that the women who were part of group therapy lived twice as long as the women who were not in any group. Spiegel's publication of the results in the British medical journal Lancet has opened the minds of many to the physical benefits of psychological intervention.
88 NATURAL HEALTH - MAY/JUNE 1993 |
