Video: Social Connections Are Essential for Health
Around the world and in all cultures, the healthiest people belong to some kind of community or at least have close friends. Humans are meant to be in community and the degree of community we experience directly correlates with the degree of…
Video: Mind Moves Matter
When Deepak Chopra was a young medical resident, training in endocrinology, he had a patient with widely metastasized liver cancer. As was sometimes the case fifty years ago, doctors would sometimes lie to the patient about the seriousness of…
Video: Belief Becomes Biology
Norman Cousins helped create the psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) Program at UCLA. He is most known for his book: Anatomy of An Illness, in which he described his personal experiences overcoming a life-threatening illness by increasing his level…
Self-Limiting Beliefs Limit Happiness
One of my mentors, Dr. Jeanne Achterberg once said: “No thought, no emotion, is without biochemical, electrochemical activity; and the activity leaves no cell untouched.” There is an ancient expression that is often said to someone who worries…
Empowered Patients Make Things Happen
The hundreds of studies I reviewed and explain in my book all point to certain specific behaviors and activities that consistently correlate with wellbeing and better health outcomes. The first is autonomy, which refers to courageously taking…
Video: Friendly People Have Better Immune Function
In this study, after controlling for potential confounding variables, research psychologists discovered that the most friendly, openhearted people have the lowest rates of cancer and the most optimally functioning immune systems. In other studies,…
Video: Meaningful Relationships Correlate with Less Cancer
In this prospective study at Johns Hopkins, which was carried out for thirty years, the medical students who in medical school were deemed to be most likely to have meaningful relationships throughout life, were found to have far less cancer…
Video: Social Support Improves the Odds of Beating Cancer
In this prospective study of breast cancer patients, those who confided in others had higher survival rates. There was a clear correlation between social support and higher survival rates. This study was conducted by Dr. Elizabeth Maunsell.
Video: Love May Be the Most Powerful Medicine
In this case study, from the early 20th century, physician William Osler cured a small boy of whooping cough. In the days before antibiotics, whooping cough was commonly fatal. Dr. Osler made an emergency house call to the young boy, who was…