Chapter 5
Broccoli, Red Wine, and
Church-Going: The Search for the Active Ingredient
Popular books on health by respected authorities inspire us with abundant scientific evidence of the power of the mind upon health. Paul Pearsall, Ph.D., wrote Superimmunity in 1987, a book filled with information from studies revealing the healing power of attitude. In one, an examination of 400 cases of spontaneous remission from cancer found only one factor in common: the individuals had changed their attitudes about life and their disease. Studies of centenarians, reported routinely in newspapers, reveal that attitude and social connections are the clearest indicators of longevity, not heredity or diet and exercise. In Love and Survival, Dean Ornish lists results from dozens of studies showing that intimacy and strong social connections provide more powerful health benefits than diet and exercise—so much so that individuals with strong social connections and bad health habits are healthier than those with good health habits who lack social support.
Despite this strong evidence for the power of the mind-body connection, we prefer studies that can be translated into simple rules for us to follow and health-related stuff we can buy. This preference focuses our attention on studies of "lifestyle" factors like diet, nutrition, and exercise. Such studies result in formulas for health that change constantly as new details are considered, leading to pronouncements that eating broccoli can prevent cancer (unless you eat it with cheese sauce, which sets you up for heart disease), drinking red wine is good for you (whether you like it or not), and exercising 45 minutes daily at a specified percentage of your maximum heart capacity will supposedly protect you from everything except direct meteor strikes.
When mind-body factors are studied, they tend to be squashed into the same literal-minded, formulaic mold. We hear that going to church will save you from heart disease (even if the idea of organized religion makes your blood boil), being married will save you from premature death (whether or not your marriage is a pleasant one), owning—not loving, but owning—a pet reduces blood pressure, and longevity is increased by having sex—not necessarily with someone you love, but just having sex—a certain average number of times per week (three, to be exact—more was found to be indicative of decreased longevity as was less, so keep track).
From this perspective, the healthiest people on the planet are married, moderately sexually active religious (and religiously fat-avoiding) wine-loving pet owners, who belong to a gym and eat lots of broccoli. Last year these exemplars of health would have been avoiding eggs and salt, but using margarine—because science said so. This year, eggs and salt have been exonerated, but margarine is now on the list of health hazards. Oh, never mind the details—the idea is that if you eat and do all the things science finds out are good for you, you’ll live longer.
Or will it just feel longer?
Fixated on food as the key to health
Dr. Dean Ornish became famous around 1990 for creating a program to reverse heart disease without surgery. The program consisted of a stringently low fat diet, meditation and exercise, and support groups. The aspect of the program that most interested the press and the public was the diet. There was a demand for recipes, requests for hints for making such meals more palatable, pleas for tips on dining out on Ornish’s program, and questions about tricks for converting the rest of the family to the eating plan. Ornish published three wildly successful books about the program, recipes from the program, and a related weight loss plan.
Later that same decade, Ornish wrote Love and Survival: The Scientific Basis for the Healing Power of Intimacy (now blandly subtitled 8 Pathways to Intimacy and Health). This is a book about the power mental factors on health. In it, he states emphatically, "I am not aware of any other factor in medicine--not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery--that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness, and premature death from all causes."
In Love and Survival Ornish cites study after study showing rates of death from heart disease are markedly reduced in individuals with strong social ties. The reductions are not minor. Those with strong social ties have two to six times less chance of experiencing chronic illness and premature death than those without these intimate connections. From the evidence in Love and Survival, the most powerful part of Ornish’s program for reversing heart disease without surgery is not the stringently low fat diet, but the change of mind that comes from learning to relax by meditating and becoming more self-accepting with the help of the support groups.
As everyone who studies mind-body factors remarks, if there were a drug that showed these kinds of overwhelmingly positive results, there would be a stampede to use it. But even though the abundant mind-body health information in Love and Survival is practical as well as inspiring, it did not garner the attention received by Ornish’s books emphasizing dietary changes.
Published in 1998, the sales rank of Love and Survival on Amazon in mid-2001 is fairly low at 27,682. (A sales rank of one would be their best seller.) Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease: The Only System Scientifically Proven to Reverse Heart Disease Without Drugs or Surgery, published over ten years ago, has a sales rank of 1542—which puts it quite high on the sales chart.
Eat More, Weigh Less: Dr. Dean Ornish's Advantage Ten Program for Losing Weight Safely While Eating Abundantly, published in 1993, ranks 2944, somewhat lower, but way ahead of Love and Survival. In the lead for sales in his collection is Everyday Cooking With Dr. Dean Ornish: 150 Easy, Low-Fat, High-Flavor Recipes, published in 1996, and ranked 1319 the day I checked Amazon. The obsession with diet and nutrition as the key to health rules our thinking, despite the facts about the power of the mind-body connection.
Even though Ornish seems convinced that nothing affects health more powerfully than the mind-body factor of intimacy, he remains devoted to the dietary approach to health. During interviews when he was promoting Love and Survival, questions about the importance of diet easily derailed him from his message about the power of intimacy. Interviewers who asked whether how we eat is important for health would launch Ornish into lengthy, detailed digressions about the vital importance of diet and nutrition, contradicting his message that mind-body factors are the key to well-being.
Dr. Andrew Weil is another example of how proponents of the mind-body approach are sidetracked by the cultural conviction that external factors like diet are a cornerstone of health. Prior to writing Eight Weeks to Optimum Health: A Proven Program for Taking Advantage of Your Body’s Natural Healing Power, Weil’s books focused provocatively and inspiringly on the natural healing power of the mind upon the body. Leaving this focus behind, Eight Weeks to Optimum Health makes diet and nutrition the foundation of health, laying out pages of detailed nutritional rules to follow, while relegating suggestions for mind-body practices to a scant, simplistic paragraph or two at the end of each chapter.
If these popular promoters of mind-body approaches to health can’t stay "on message" about the power of the mind to heal, it is no surprise that the public so easily forgets the significance of the mind-body connection.
Topics in this chapter:
Sorry, but my mind's already made up!
A paradigm is a worldview is a belief system—but it’s not the truth.
How our inability to see past the current worldview blinds us to evidence that contradicts it.
Don’t confuse us with the facts
Public health, the media, and the public like clear, simple rules for health. Our expectation that others will do the do our thinking for us leaves us limited by our ignorance about health.
How could so many people be wrong?
Following the herd off the cliff of limiting health beliefs is more comfortable than challenging those beliefs, even if it is hazardous to our health.
The consumer appeal of the scientific worldview
We want to be able to buy health. Expectations of effortless living brought about by technical advances makes a more personally engaged approach to health seem unappealingly difficult.
Where we live and what we live for: the myth of scientific objectivity
Astonishing news! Scientists are humans with personal agendas!
Objectivity is not a primary motivation of science. The appearance of objectivity is.
More news! Scientists are products of their times!
The men and women of science are as limited by current cultural beliefs as the least educated person on the planet.
Even more news! Scientists are political animals!
Supporting unpopular ideas, like the mind-body connection, does not get you ahead in your field.
This just in: Scientists do whatever it takes to get funding in order to survive!
Studies that show power over health comes from mental factors do not line the pockets of the drug companies that fund health studies.
Fashions in health theories create the health fads that end up in your refrigerator.
When a scientifically fashionable theory about health meets marketing, it is likely that you will end up believing it is the key to health and buying something new.
Health study results brought to you by the same people who bring you the worried well.
Our culture is focused on fear of disease. It is not surprising, then, that this anxiety-producing perspective biases scientific studies and reports on health.
The small world—and minds—of science
The history of science is the history of resistance to change.
Evidence of the mind-body connection challenges the current worldview, so it is denied, denigrated, or ignored.
Science can’t study what it doesn’t believe in
Instead of the open-minded exploration of reality, science seems to be more about shoring up accepted theories. Exploring the effect of consciousness upon the body requires a truly open mind.
The thighbone’s connected to the hipbone
Science’s mechanistic view of health hobbles clear thinking about what is revealed by evidence of the mind's effects upon the body.
Studying the studies from the mind-body perspective
What do you get for all your trouble?
Eat right and add weeks to your life span! Translating statistics into applicable fact reveals underwhelming health benefits.
Health or hype?
Learning to see the reality behind the health headlines. Media translations of health studies are slanted for high audience impact, not reality.
Think for yourself or science will think for you
Open-minded investigation is a game anyone can play. Remember the injunction of your youth--question authority? It's a health-promoting position to take at any age.
Critical thinking
Today's endless parade of constantly changing health details are the keys to confusion and health paranoia, not well-being. The current mechanistic worldview gives us no big picture of health, while the mind-body approach does.
Looking for the common denominator
What if it’s all about what we believe? Looking at the study results from a mind-body perspective means we ask different questions that let us draw different and more useful conclusion about the keys to genuine well-being.