All I have to do is think positively and my arthritis or my flu will go away? Neuroscientist Manfred Schedlowski has to laugh at this question: "It's not that easy! We can not answer that from a scientific point of view." On the contrary, however - the negative thinking - it looks different. The fact that negative thoughts or attitudes can influence the course of illness is now scientifically proven.
"Over the past 20 years, we've learned how thoughts, feelings and behaviors can affect body processes like the hormonal system, the cardiovascular system and the immune system," says Schedlowski, who works at Essen University Hospital.
Nevertheless, science still knows too little about the direct influence of positive thoughts on disease progression. Above all, the problem is that positive emotions are very individual and difficult to measure. Negative emotions, on the other hand, are clearly visible in the body. "We can measure people's stress levels," says Schedlowski, "so the psychosocial burden in the broadest sense: how much fear does a person have, how great is the level of depression that a person suffers from?"
"Only think positive" - dangerous advice
Imad Maatouk, Head of the Psycho-oncological Outpatient Unit at the National Center for Tumor Diseases in Heidelberg, is also disturbed by the tip "Thinking only positively". Books with this statement are often in the healing-yourself-corners of bookstores and libraries. But the supposedly harmless piece of advice is fraught with risks: "This fuels false hopes that patients can not fulfill in patients who suffer from a serious illness such as cancer."
In fact, there is no evidence that positive thinking helps with cancer. In addition, put the patients so under pressure. "You then feel that you are not doing everything right when you feel bad," says Maatouk. "They even often forbid addressing difficult thoughts and feelings." This can cause additional mental stress. It would be best to talk to a trusted person or a specialist about which path is best for you.
Because stress is unhealthy, that's for sure. "If we avoid stress in the broadest sense, it certainly has a positive influence on the physiology, ie on the hormone secretion and thus on the functioning of the immune system," says Schedlowski. The evidence of the placebo effect: "Here we see that the expectation can influence the effect and thus the course of the disease."
The placebo effect: this will help you!
The placebo effect is easy to use. If a doctor assures his patient that a given medication will help him very well and alleviate the symptoms, the patient usually has correspondingly positive expectations. "That then changes the neurochemistry in the brain," explains Schedlowski. And that, in turn, affects the effects of pain medications.
But there is also a reverse variant of the effect, the so-called nocebo effect: in this case, patients fear that a remedy does not work - or even believe that they are getting even sicker through a treatment or a medication. "This often happens when we read the package leaflet," explains Schedlowski. "It follows that you can actually imagine diseases."
So is it good to think only positively - or may negative things resonate? Here Schedlowski refers to the experience of life: "In the rarest of cases, everything is only positive, you should develop realistic ideas." That's why he does not like to talk about positive or negative thoughts, but about realistic expectations.
