HEALTH

I am a two needle a day news junkie. I get the light news in the a.m. and the heavy-duty stuff in the p.m. A few years ago the anchor for CBS Evening News introduced a short piece about how scientists had made a connection between male pattern baldness and heart disease. I thought to myself, “My God, they have just killed an untold number of bald men.” Why were they killed? For the same reason voodoo works its magic on those that believe in it. There are enough men who believe so strongly in the power of science that such a news piece acts strongly through the power of suggestion.

Deaths per 100,000 population due to lung cancer are on the decline (except for American women). Many believe that the decline is due to fewer Americans smoking and better treatment modalities for the illness. However, immediately after the US Surgeon General’s warning appeared on cigarette packs in 1966, the rate of deaths due to lung cancer shot up. Now, forty years later, many of us are so conditioned to the advertising about the risks of smoking that the habit is never initiated, and those that have taken up smoking are quitting in droves. Could it be that the number of lung cancer deaths per 100,000 of the general population (not the smoking population) is dropping because of the belief that by not smoking we have developed some immunity to lung cancer? Many are surprised when someone who never smoked dies of lung cancer Steve Reeve’s wife is a case in point. We are told that if we quit smoking our lungs will repair themselves within a few years. Could it be that the quitters believe that they have earned a degree of immunity once they get past the belief that there is a three-year lung-healing process? Science tells us virtually nothing about the impact of our belief system on our health because they believe the psyche is a product of matter, and yet they admit to the reality of the placebo effect. They know that human chemistry changes based on our emotional state, but continue to say that illnesses such as depression are ‘caused’ by a problem with our blood chemistry. They don’t say what is being proposed here; that the change in blood chemistry arises simultaneously with the depression. Maybe it’s time we begin to understand that the depression and the change in brain chemistry are objective manifestations of an inner subjective state. Our illness may be created as a means of communication.

Seth tells us that what we believe about smoking is more important in terms of its impact on our health than the smoking itself. In Sweden, 22% of the male population over the age of fifteen are smokers, and the death rate from lung cancer is 161.4 per 100,000 male smokers. In Israel, 45% of males smoke and yet their death rate per 100,000 male smokers is only 84.7, half the rate of that in Sweden. In Japan, a whopping 59% of males smoke compared to 28% of American males, and yet Japan’s death rate is a low 81 per 100,000 smoking males compared to the U.S rate of 306. The data is similar for females in the U.S. Twenty-three percent of females over the age of fifteen smokes, and the death rate is 157 per 100,000 female smokers. In Spain the percentage of female smokers is higher than that in the U.S., 25%, and yet Spain’s death rate is only 21.6 per 100,000 female smokers.

This gets even more puzzling, or does it? In every developed country the death rates for male smokers is two to three times higher than it is for females, except in Japan, where the death rate to lung cancer for female smokers is higher than for Japanese smoking men. Why are death rates the same for Israeli and Japanese men, but for women the rate is twice as high in Japan? To get an answer in The Forgotten Self’s world our scientists might do studies on variables such as food intake, water content and hundreds of other daily variables except the psychological differences (belief systems) between oriental and occidental women who smoke, which would be a Remembered Self’s investigation. In a world where the predominant idea is that matter creates psyche, is it any wonder we get so much conflicting data as to the cause of things? For now, however, I recommend that if you smoke, keep to the company line and try to quit, but think about how your beliefs drive you and more importantly just try to understand the communication the illness brings.

Our bodies are magnificently constructed in such a way that it will respond to whatever we believe about it. The body has its own consciousness, but is exquisitely sensitive to our own subjective states. The evidence, however, seems to indicate just the opposite. The evidence of one of the central ideas of our time, that of scientific method, tells us that we are vulnerable to a Pandora's Box worth of invaders. We must be forever vigilant- the theory goes - lest some nasty microbe establishes a beachhead, or one of our healthy cells decides to mutate and turn against us. When I believe that consciousness is a by-product of matter it is a small leap of faith to believe that I am vulnerable to just about everything. And since I create what I believe, the evidence that confirms my beliefs will appear in abundance. Through the agency of free will many believe in our vulnerability and so we are vulnerable.

I realize I’m treading on sacred ground here, but our belief in our body’s inability to stay healthy has gotten so extreme that some women are sacrificing their breasts before any evidence of cancer appears, based solely upon a strong family history of breast cancer. Beliefs that deeply seeded are what required my legal disclaimer. Our physicians, as well-intentioned as they are, scoff at the practices of voodoo witch doctors and yet routinely ask us to sacrifice our breasts, reproductive organs, prostate glands, legs, thyroid's, hearts, lungs. Our response to this is that we would die if they were not removed, and we are right. We would die, but is it always by choice and it is never before we are finished. It only appears so.

Changing our understanding of who we are is going to take time, maybe even generations. The result, however, might be a future of high-tech medicine and self healing. When one of us does come down with an illness for the sake of the experience or because we were not listening to ourselves, we might seek the help of a healer who is an expert in symbolism, while our traditional physician buys us some time. We will seek through our own inner wisdom a connection between the ailment and an inner psychic dynamic that we failed to listen to. We will no longer be victims and illness and healing will be understood as a self-creation.

Bill Marshall