Eliminating Cancer with the Mind :: Biology Essays Research Papers

Eliminating Cancer with the Mindoer 1 million Americans are diagnosed with cancer each year and everywhere 1,500 lives will be lost to cancer today (1). Many populate undergo grueling hours of chem other(a)apy and radiation to discover that their cancer has spread to other fails of their body and that the treatments need to begin all over again. Unfortunately, in that respect is no cure for cancer at the present time. Modern checkup treatments attack the cancer and treat the organs affected by the disease, moreover pay little attention to the other areas of significance in the persons life. This calls for a new treatment that extends beyond the organs overcome by the disease and focuses on the person as a whole. Guided therapy, relying on the idea that the mind can affect the functions of the body and thus make tidy sum feel better, claims to do just that. But does it really work? end-to-end history, the power of the imagination has sponsored people heal. In Eastern Medicin e, envisioning ones rise being has always been a large part of the ameliorate process. In Tibetan medicine for example, physicians believe that creating a mental image of the ameliorate god improves ones chances for recovery (2). The ancient Greeks, including Aristotle and Hippocrates, also had their patients use forms of imagery to help them heal.People continue to rely on imagery to hasten the healing process. Psychologists and neuroscientists use evidence from Positive Emission Tomography (PET) scans of the star to turn up that guided imagery is effective. In a PET scan, the subject is injected with a small amount of hotly labeled water. When an area of the brain is on the job(p) hard and processing information, more blood flows through it and higher levels of the radioactive water are detected (3). In hurt of brain activity, in that respect is ample scientific evidence that imagining an experience stimulates the visual cortex, the same field of the brain activated by t he actual experience (4). Stimulating the brain with imagery can have a direct effect on the nervous and endocrine systems, which ultimately affect the immune system. Thus, in terms of brain activity, picturing something and actually experiencing it are equivalent. Psychologists believe that relaxation, an essential part of guided imagery, is responsible for producing images and triggering the unconscious, which generates emotions (5). Research has shown that the physiological impact of relaxation is delinquent to its inhibition of cortisol, a hormone released by the body in response to stress.