“If there was a patentable product that has those kinds of effects, we’d be all over it; we’d be spending billions of dollars on research and rolling it out in no time at all.”
Until recently mind body research was considered quackery in scientific circles. But with the advent of new technology the scientific fields of psychiatry, neuroscience, immunology, endocrinology and genetics are increasingly coming together to consider how the mind, brain and biological systems work together to affect health. It’s a field of research often called to as Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), which looks at the interaction between different processes in the body that have traditionally been studied separately.
Mind body research is now in a golden age with scientists around the world learning increasingly more about how the mind and body interact. They study things such as the physiology of the stress response and how we can counter its harmful effects with the relaxation response.
Researchers are looking at the biological mechanisms triggered during meditation which can influence the expression of genes, and even the rate at which we age. They’re starting to understand role of belief and the powerful placebo and nocebo responses, how emotions can impact the course of an illness, and ultimately how the mind can affect the outcome of disease.
FEATURED SCIENTISTS
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Herbert Benson, MD
Alice Domar, PhD
Craig Hassed, MD
Damien Finniss, MD
Sara Lazar, PhD
Dean Ornish, MD
David Spiegel, MD
Esther Sternberg, MD
Andrew Weil, MD
Jon Kabat-Zinn
// Prof. of Medicine Emeritus, University of Massachusetts Medical School
// Founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
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“Jon Kabat-Zinn brings to the arena of mind-body science a touch of the poet as well as the pragmatist, giving us the hows and whys of meditation in a language we don’t often associate with the subject.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn is famous for his work as a scientist, writer, and work in teaching stressed out sick people how to meditate. More than 20,000 people around the world have now completed the teacher training program in the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program (MBSR) that he first developed in 1979.
He started out as a molecular biologist, studying under Nobel Laureate Salvador Luria, but his interest in meditation drew him towards the study of how the mind facilitates healing. Now a Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Dr. Kabat-Zinn has focused his research on the benefits of mindfulness meditation in cooperation with clinical treatments for patients with chronic illnesses and stress related disorders.
“The deep structure of these practices, they’ve been around for thousands and thousands of years. It’s not the next fad. If they have value, they’ve had value for a very long time. That’s why they survived.”
One of his groundbreaking early studies showed that meditation in conjunction with conventional medical treatment could help people with the skin condition psoriasis heal faster. He was having lunch with some dermatologists and was listening to them describe how stress leads to psoriatic flare ups and how they treated the resulting skin legions with a course of light therapy. For Dr. Kabat-Zinn, who had set up the Stress Reduction Clinic in 1979 in order to teach people with a chronic illness non-religious meditative techniques in hopes of adding a new dimension to their health approach, this gave him an idea.
He convinced the dermatologists to let him teach the patients to meditate while they were being treated under the ultra violet light. They set up a small randomised trial to compare people getting the light treatment as per normal with people getting the light treatment while they were meditating. It turned out that the meditators skin cleared at four times the rate of the non-meditators. This finding was then repeated in other studies.
“And it is a beautiful example of the mind-body connection because you’re doing something with your mind and something is happening in the skin. So it just doesn’t get any better than that.”
Watch this excerpt from The Connection where Dr. Kabat-Zinn talks about the study.
Dr. Kabat-Zinn is best known for developing the 8 week MBSR Program to catch the people falling through the cracks of the medical system, which has now evolved into Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Recent studies from Massachusetts General Hospital have shown that the MBSR program can produce thickening in particular regions of the brain important for learning, memory, executive decision-making and perspective-taking and that certain regions of the brain like the amygdala, which involves threat and fear circuitry, get thinner.
“We have much more to say over how healthy we’ll be than our doctors.”
Dr. Kabat-Zinn has written 4 books, translated into over 30 languages, including Full Catastrophe Living; Wherever You Go There You Are, Everyday Blessings, and Coming to Our Senses. He is also on the Board of the Mind and Life Institute, a group that organizes dialogues between the Dalai Lama and Western scientists to promote deeper understanding of the mind.
Additional Links
The Connection blog about the US Premiere with Dr. Kabat-Zinn
Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society
Herbert Benson, MD
// Director Emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital
// Mind Body Medicine Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
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“Herbert Benson, MD, is the father of modern mind body medicine.”
The Boston Globe described Dr. Hebert Benson as a medical rock star after he wrote his best selling book The Relaxation Response. The book outlined his research and approach to countering the harmful effects stress has on our body, and was an international best seller. Since then he’s written another 11 books, and sold more than 5 million copies world wide.
Dr. Benson made his major research breakthrough while studying the meditation techniques of transcendental meditators over thirty years ago. He observed they had decreased metabolism, decreased oxygen consumption; their respiratory rate slowed down and their brainwaves were different from sleep. Dr. Benson realized he had found a response opposite to the ‘fight or flight’ response, which was first described in the 1920s by American physiologist Walter Cannon. As a cardiologist he was delighted to have found something measurable, predictable and reproducible and it heralded the beginning of a new wave of mind body research.
“Now we have the evidence-based proof that the mind can heal and it should be added appropriately to drugs and surgeries.”
Dr. Benson founded the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospitalwhich works to integrate modern scientific medicine, psychology, nutrition, exercise physiology and belief to enhance the natural healing capacities of body and mind.
We filmed the mind body medicine pioneer in Boston and met a number of patients who were adding his programs to their chronic illnesses treatment strategy. Diabetes, hypertension and heart disease, autoimmune disease and stress induced conditions like chronic headaches and fatigue are all illnesses responding well to his programs.
“Modern science has shown us that the mind has the power to heal. We should use that capacity.”
Recently Dr. Benson’s work has been extended into researching the effects of his relaxation response techniques on genetic expression. In clinical trials the research is indicating that practicing the relaxation response produces immediate changes in the expression of genes involved in immune function, energy metabolism and insulin secretion.
Dr. Benson is the author of 12 books and over 175 scientific papers that show physical benefits of psychological treatment. He is a frequent guest on national and international television shows and his work has been featured in countless magazines and newspapers.
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Additional Links
Alice Domar, PhD
// Executive Director of the Domar Center for Mind/Body Health
// Director of Mind/Body Services at Boston IVF
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“The Fertility Goddess”
Alice Domar is a leader on women’s health issues specializing in stress, infertility, and self-nurture. She’s also the first researcher to apply mind body medicine to women with infertility.
We filmed with Alice Domar in Boston where she’s the Executive Director of the Domar Center for Mind Body Health, Assistant Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School, and Senior Psychologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Her groundbreaking research looks at the relationship between stress and women’s health conditions such as PMS, infertility, endometriosis, high-risk pregnancy, gynecological cancer, and eating disorders.
“Actually being in a group and integrating those skills into your life is associated with nearly tripling a pregnancy rate, so why wouldn’t everyone be doing it?”
Dr. Domar gained international recognition for her research into the effectiveness of adding mind body medicine in the treatment of infertility. In a 2011 study published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, she found that infertile women undergoing in vitro fertilisation (IVF), using mind body techniques have a 55% conception rate, compared with 20% not using the techniques.
Dr. Domar is the best selling author of Healing Mind, Healthy Woman: Using the Mind/Body Connection to Manage Stress and Take Control of Your Life, Self-Nurture: Learning to Care for Yourself as Effectively as You Care for Everyone Else and co-author of Six Steps to Increased Fertility. She has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, Dateline, CNN, CBS Evening News, and NBC Evening News, and featured in numerous publications including the New York Times, The Guardian, People and Vogue.
“I see mind body medicine in practice every day and I wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t working. It wouldn’t be ethical for me to be doing it if it wasn’t working. But I also do research and so I know it works.”
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Additional Links
Domar Center for Mind Body Health
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Lowering Stress Improves Fertility TreatmentTaking the IVF out of IVF
Craig Hassed, MD
// Senior Lecturer, Monash University Faculty of Medicine
// Inaugural President of the Australian Teachers of Meditation Association
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The ancient Greek physician and father modern medicine, Hippocrates was guided by the principal that the mind and the body are connected. Dr. Craig Hassed not only shares this understanding, but as leading Australian academic and writer he has made it his life’s work to educated medical practitioners and their patients about the latest science proving a mind body connection.
He’s an MD who has published several books and peer reviewed scientific studies that prove the relationship. Dr. Hassed’s studies focus on the cause and effects of stress and immune disease.
“We know that in high stress periods, for example studies on university students show that they get more DNA damage or DNA mutations during high stress periods; and the students who are coping poorly with it lose the capacity to repair the DNA as effectively. So more DNA damage but less DNA repair.”
His ground breaking body of academic work is built on a foundation of science with a focus on proven clinical trials, and he is a leading force in the application of integrative and mind-body medicine, contributing a number of innovations in medical education and practice. In a trailblazing move, Dr. Hassed introduced meditation into the medical curriculum at Monash University as an examinable subject.
“If there was a patentable product that has those kinds of effects, we’d be all over it; we’d be spending billions of dollars on research and rolling it out in no time at all.”
Dr. Hassed has been published in multiple medical journals and has authored several books including New Frontiers in Medicine (Volumes I and ii), Know Thyself and The Essence of Health.
While he has no doubt the mind has a strong impact on our health, such as the ability to repair the immune system, he has a conservative understanding of medicine and argues that the benefit of pharmaceuticals cannot be denied in the treatment of physical ailments.
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Additional Links
Damien Finniss, MD
// Associate Professor
// University of Sydney Pain Management Research Institute, Royal North Shore Hospital
// School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Griffith University
At best placebo used to be thought of as a vague unexplained medical phenomena.
At worst it was thought of as medical trickery.
But thanks to the pioneering research of people like Dr. Damien Finniss, modern research is giving us a greater understanding of the body’s own mechanism to heal itself.
Dr. Finniss is a leading expert in the clinical applications of placebo. He is part of a group of international researchers at the frontier of placebo research, proving that the response is far more complex than sugar pills and deception. For example, researchers have been able to show that morphine is almost half as effective when patients don’t know they received it. In other words, the effect of a drug is the combination of the pharmacology of the drug and the effect of your brain knowing that you’re having the drug and the therapeutic ritual of the drug administration.
“Belief is critical because belief has the ability to trigger part of the overall healing response. In simple terms, belief is part of why we get better. It’s not the complete answer, but it’s one part of any medical treatment, which is important.”
As the lead author of research published in The Lancet, Dr. Finniss sparked international debate by showing there are actually two main kinds of placebo effect. There are the benefits patients receive by taking a pill they believe will help and there’s a white-coat effect – which showed that simply visiting a doctor can make a person feel better.
Dr. Finniss is a Clinical Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney Pain Management Research Institute at Royal North Shore Hospital and Chair of the International Association for the Study of Pain Special Interest Group on Placebo.
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Additional Links
Sydney University’s Pain Management Research Institute
International Association for the Study of Pain Special Interest Group on Placebo
Sara Lazar, PhD
// Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School
“Her amazing brain scans show meditation can actually change the size of key regions of our brain, improving our memory and making us more empathetic, compassionate, and resilient under stress.”
Dr. Sara Lazar is at the cutting edge of research into the affects of meditation and yoga on brain activity and changes in brain structure.
Dr. Lazar came across the benefits of yoga in 1994 when her physician encouraged her to try it after she sustained an injury to her knee and back while training for the Boston marathon. After only a few weeks of practice she started to notice an improvement to her injuries. Her scientific curiosity led her to switch disciplines from microbiology to neuroscience research at Harvard University. She has since made breakthrough discoveries using neuroimaging to examine the impact of yoga and meditation on brain activity and structure.
“We found people who had never meditated before and we scanned them and then we put them through an 8-week meditation program and then we scanned them again. And we were able to show that in just 8 weeks we were able to detect changes in brain structure.”
With a PhD in microbiology at Harvard University, Dr. Lazar has led numerous scientific studies. Her most notable research observes changes in the brain, also known as neuroplasticity in long-term meditators under Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The images demonstrate the impact of meditation on structures in the brain, including the amygdala, a region in the brain known to play an important role in anxiety and stress.
“We know that the amygdala is the flight or fight part of the brain and is involved in mediating the stress response; the racing heart beat, the fast breathing and release of the cortisol.”
She also says that chronic stress is the best predictor of future illness because it floods the body with stress hormones that are deleterious for our health. Dr. Lazar’s research has been covered by numerous news organizations including The New York Times, USA Today, Time Magazine, CNN, ABC Evening News, National Public Radio, WebMD, and the Huffington Post.
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Additional Links
Dean Ornish, MD
// Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California
// Founder and President, Preventive Medicine Research Institute
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“One of the seven most powerful teachers in the world.”
For the last three decades Dr. Dean Ornish’s programs have been teaching millions of people to think about how the lifestyle choices they make directly impacts their health and wellbeing.
In a series of scientific research studies Dr. Dean Ornish has shown that changes in diet and lifestyle not only halve the progress of coronary artery disease, but also they are able to reverse it. As a leader in healthcare delivery, clinical research and medicine Dr. Ornish has also been a physician consultant to former US President Bill Clinton.
In a healthcare game changer, Medicare in the US recently agreed to provide coverage for Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease. This is the first time that Medicare has covered a program of comprehensive lifestyle changes.
We filmed with Dr. Ornish in San Francisco where we spoke with some of the participants of a trial to measure the affect of his programs on prostate cancer. The research found that the program could slow, stop or even reverse the progression of early-stage prostate cancer.
“So often I hear people say, ‘Oh, I’ve just got bad genes, it’s all in my genes, what can I do?’ You know, actually you can do a lot. For the last 36 years I’ve directed a series of research studies showing what a powerful difference changes in diet and lifestyle can make not only in preventing disease, but actually including often reversing it.”
Dr. Ornish also recently partnered with Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2009, to show that his programs lengthen telomeres, the ends of our chromosomes that control aging.
The reputation of Dr. Ornish has been heightened by the publication of six best-selling books, including Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease, Eat More, Weigh Less, and Love & Survival. LIFE Magazine considers him one of the 50 most influential members of his generation.
“I’ve spent my whole life professionally documenting what a powerful difference these simple changes can make. You know, we think it has to be a new laser or something really high tech and expensive, a new drug, a surgical technique. We are showing that these very simple choices that we make in our lives each day have a powerful impact on our lives.”
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Additional Links
David Spiegel, MD
// Willson Professor and Associate Chair of Psychiatry & Behavioural Sciences
// Medical Director, Center for Integrative Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine
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Dr. David Spiegel never meant to stir up a storm when he published a study in The Lancet. He had found that women with breast cancer who attended a support group lived twice as long as women who didn’t.
Dr. Spiegel took women who had metastatic breast cancer and randomly divided them into 2 groups. They all had the same chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, but in addition one group of women met in a support group once a week for a year to talk about what it’s like having breast cancer. Five years later, when he looked at his data he was stunned at the findings. He’d started out expecting to find that the groups didn’t affect thier logetivity but that it did improve their quality of life. Instead, women with women with cancer who participated in professionally led support groups lived twice as long as those who didn’t.
Dr. Spiegel’s pioneering study secured his place into mind body medical history, inspiring a new wave of medical research looking at the role our mind plays in our health. The research done by the members of Dr. Spiegel’s team at Stanford’s Center on Stress and Health has resulted in 12 books and more than 400 scientific journal articles and textbook chapters on hypnosis, psychosocial oncology, stress physiology, trauma, and psychotherapy.
“It is very different to worry about dying at 3am in the morning by yourself than it is to talk about it at 3 in the afternoon with 9 other women who have the same problem you do. It makes the stress different. I have no doubt at all that it helps people live better and I think the evidence is accumulating that it helps them live longer as well.”
Dr. Spiegel has been featured on Oprah, the Emmy Award-winning PBS series by Bill Moyers, Healing and the Mind and the TV show Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer to demonstrate the benefits of hypnosis.
“The power of group support makes tremendous sense to me. We’re social creatures and the brain enables us to form connections with others and build networks of support that help us stay alive, that help us deal with threat, that help us nurture our young and, and create stable and relatively safe cultures. And that social connection, especially in the face of illness, I think is a very powerful ally. It helps us manage our stress responses, help our bodies do better, and help one another get through life-threatening situations.”
Dr. Spiegel is also renowned in the field of hypnosis and the use of hypnosis in clinical settings.
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Additional Links
Esther Sternberg, MD
// Research Director, Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine
// Professor of Medicine, University of Arizona College of Medicine
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“One of 300 women physicians who changed the face of medicine”
Dr. Esther Sternberg is a major force in mind-body-stress-wellness research and also studies the way our environment affects our health.
Having started out as a family Medical Doctor, then becoming a specialist in Rheumatology, she is now a world-renowned researcher, known for her groundbreaking work on the interaction between the central nervous system and the immune system.
The focus of her work is on the science of the mind body connection, how stress can make us sick, how believing can make us well, and how mind body wellness activities like meditation, Tai Chi, Yoga, prayer, a healthy diet and exercise can help us heal. Some of her most groundbreaking research delves into the brain’s stress response and how it makes us susceptible to inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.
“There is no doubt that when you take it to the next level, the mind and the body are connected, and that when those connections are intact and in balance you have health and when they’re broken you have disease.”
She is recognized by the National Library of Medicine as one of 300 women physicians who changed the face of medicine and is the author of best-selling books “The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions” and “Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-Being.” In 2009, she co-created and hosted “The Science of Healing with Dr. Esther Sternberg” for PBS.
Dr. Sternberg has acted as adviser to several U.S. and international organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, Pan American Health Organization and the World Health Organization.
She has also published numerous scientific and review articles and chapters in leading scientific journals including Nature Medicine, Science, New England Journal of Medicine, Scientific American, J. Clinical Investigation and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In her position as Professor of Medicine and Research Director at the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, University of Arizona Dr. Sternberg is looking to the future of mind body medicine and researching smart-technology that can provide real time feedback on mind body interactions.
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Additional Links
Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, University of Arizona
Andrew Weil, MD
// Founder and Director, Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, University of Arizona College of Medicine
// Jones/Lovell Professor of Integrative Rheumatology, University of Arizona (endowed chair)
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“One of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, 2005.”
Dr. Andrew Weil is a pioneer of integrative medicine and is the driving force behind a new wave of doctors practicing evidence based mind body medicine.
Dr. Andrew Weil has been on the cover of TIME magazine twice, which also named him one of the 25 most influential Americans in 1997 and one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2005. His 11 books have been sold more than 10 million times world wide and his website gets an average of 4.1 million monthly page views. So, it’s easy to see why the New York Times magazine says he’s “arguably become America’s best-known doctor.”
We filmed with Dr. Weil in Tuscon, Arizona where he is known for pioneering Integrative Medicine and founding the Center for Integrative Medicine at The University of Arizona. The Center has now graduated more than 1000 Fellows in Integrative Medicine from 15 different countries.
“One day we’ll be able to drop the word ‘integrative.’ This will just be good medicine.”
The Harvard medical graduate is passionate about integrative medicine and believes that adding mind body medicine is key to a well-rounded health care approach. He champions a future where we no longer use the word integrative because incorporating mind body medicine will be seen as just good medicine.
Dr. Weil donates his after-tax profits from royalties from sales of his products to the Weil Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting integrative medicine through training, education and research.
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Additional Links