Mind-body medicine pioneers and leaders in the New Age movement have been spouting off about how the mind can heal the body for decades. As a skeptical, science-minded physician, I was intrigued, but I had my doubts. What ensued was a deep dive into the medical literature to find out if I could prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the mind can heal the body. Seeking to move the notion of self-healing from the realm of the magical or even metaphysical, I also searched for evidence of a clear physiological mechanism that explains how positive thoughts and emotions might translate into cure for the body.

What I discovered blew my mind, shifted my paradigm about modern health care, and became the groundwork for my upcoming book Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof You Can Heal Yourself (Hay House, 2013).  Loads of data proves that the mind can believe itself well. In clinical trials, we call it ΓÇ£the placebo effect.ΓÇ¥ Patients treated with placebos donΓÇÖt just feel better. ItΓÇÖs not just ΓÇ£in their heads.ΓÇ¥ TheyΓÇÖve actually had warts disappear, bronchi dilate, colons become less inflamed, hair growth on the heads of bald men, ulcers heal, and other measurable physiological phenomena.  We also know that the opposite is true, and the mind can think itself sick, which researchers call ΓÇ£the nocebo effect.ΓÇ¥ When patients are given injections with saline and told it is chemotherapy, they vomit and lose their hair.

How do such things happen physiologically?