Born that way
The September 2001 issue of Nature Neuroscience Journal reports discovery of a gene that makes mice immune to cocaine addiction. Besides giving hope to rodents that have to rob convenience stores to support their habits, this is heralded as good news for research into helping humans addicted to cocaine. It also should serve to remind us why we are so fond of the gene theory of health. If you’re looking for an excuse that justifies a passive approach to health, gene theory gives you Carte Blanc. You were "born that way." You can’t help it, so why would you try?
The reason you might want to try is that there have been indications that this supposedly predetermined physiological fate is not as immutable as we think. The only reason there isn’t more evidence that you can use your mind to change the manifestations of your genetic heritage is that for modern science, the idea does not compute.
Scientists don’t investigate things they believe to be impossible. According to science, genes, by definition, lead to conditions that can’t be changed except by medical treatment of the symptoms or with complex gene splicing, an intervention still in its hazardous infancy. The accepted wisdom about genetic diseases is that you have a defect, something missing or something added to the basic instruction set for your body, which upsets your biochemistry in a way that can’t be influenced by the mind.
Or can it?
In the mid-1950s a doctor under the impression that he was treating a patient for warts used hypnosis on a 16-year-old with a congenital, supposedly incurable skin disease called ichthyosis (fish skin disease), which turns the skin into a hard crust. Within a week or so of hypnosis, normal pink skin replaced the crusted areas on this patient. Although hypnosis does not always result in complete cures for this condition, it can lead to impressive improvement. More important to this discussion, it is a new idea about what is possible.
The human body is malleable in ways we rarely consider because science has told us there is no reason to do so. The examples we find that give evidence of our amazing biological plasticity should not be dismissed because of their rarity, but pursued as indications of what is feasible. When Roger Bannister became the first man to run a sub-four minute mile, that accomplishment was not tossed aside with a skeptical snort because "it’s only one case." Just a single glimpse of this new possibility was enough to change the sports world's belief in what was possible, launching an ongoing reduction in record times for the mile.
Belief fuels our expectations, assumptions, emotions, and imagination, which in turn influence our biochemistry. When you believe something is impossible, you don’t bother to reach for it. When you believe something is possible, you are capable of feats that were out of reach before. If you are certain something is possible, the potential for change is amplified. When you work with someone else who also believes in this possibility, your ability to change is increased even more. In the most practical terms, this means that practitioners and patients who broaden their vision of what it is possible to accomplish with mind-body therapies enter a new world of healing potential.
What’s the best news about your ability to turn changes in belief to your physical advantage?
You were born that way.
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