Advanced Wellness Solutions

Can your thoughts affect your health.  Can a positive mental attitude be the foundation of health and well being?

According to Janet Hilts, they can.  In her blog Healing Yourself Coaching, she writes:

Leave the complaining, the details of pain and sickness, the history of the problem — leave those to people who aren’t yet ready to feel the best they can.   You take the other path — the one that will help you to take charge of your own well-being.  Put your thinking on a strong, healthy body; a clear, focused mind; a peaceful, happy spirit.

This is not just some spiritual belief, or motivational mumbo-jumbo.  Rigorous scientific studies published in highly-acclaimed journals support this truth:  our health is affected by our thoughts.   So let’s think healthy thoughts.

We can boost those thoughts in whatever ways work best for us:  visualizing, talking out loud to ourselves or to others, writing out our ideal health goals, finding magazine or internet pictures of healthy people.  Use your imagination to move you closer to your perfectly healed self.

She’s not alone.

According to Family Doctor.org:

Your body responds to the way you think, feel and act. This is often called the “mind/body connection.” When you are stressed, anxious or upset, your body tries to tell you that something isn’t right. For example, high blood pressure or a stomach ulcer might develop after a particularly stressful event, such as the death of a loved one.

One long standing way to improving your mental health as been to pray.

The Science of Prayer writes:

Prayer is making a medical comeback. Given that 94% of Americans believe in God or a higher power (1994 Gallup Poll), it is not surprising that 75% of patients think that their physician should address spiritual issues as part of their medical care. 

Furthermore, 40% want their physicians to actively discuss religious issues with them, and nearly 50% percent want their physicians to pray not just for them but with them. In a growing trend, 43 percent of American physicians privately pray for their patients.

An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA, May 1995) entitled “Should Physicians Prescribe Prayer for Health, discusses these trends. The mere presence of this article in this highly respected bastion of the medical profession suggests that the barrier between spirituality and health care is crumbling.

Researchers are takign this trend seriously and have begun studying the effects of prayer on healing. Whatever their findings, they will be sure to be controversial.

Do you think positive thinking is the key to health and wellness?

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 9:22 am and is filed under An ounce of prevention, Simple Solutions.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.