A Perspective
Several months ago someone shared this TEDx Class with this Blog - TEDx Glasglow Intentional Medicine. Libby McGugan MD in only 12.31 short minutes provides the pathway through Intentional Medicine to Engender Health resulting in Healing Major Diseases. Her presentation is rapid fire, full of important content and information. To facilitate my understanding, for myself, I decided to prepare a transcript of her video content. Following each point she made (putting them in paragraphs) I found it helpful besides looking across the presentation, to look at some paragraphs in themselves and others in combination. I have shaded some paragraphs in this regard. This is the content of this post.
My recommendation, is too view this TED x class on youtube. Then use this transcript to further your understanding. This transcript is close to being exact, only occasion have I changed words or usage to terms common in America. These changes representing paraphrases. I have also omitted some content at the end related to their NHS, and its provision. All omitted materials are on the video.
Should this post find some individual(s) who would like to explore the opportunity to heal Parkinson’s symptoms thorough Engendering Heath by Intentional Processes, I would like to correspond with them [cwmhib@gmail.com].
TEDx Glasglow Intentional Medicine Presented by Dr Libby McGugan MD
Transcription in Part
compiled by BillDavid
Let me introduce you to Kate Alet. Kate was a healthy Mom, who loved running, until she developed a brain stem stroke age 39 that left her with Locked in syndrome. She couldn’t breathe without a ventilator and her only voluntary movement was blinking. It took weeks, before someone (her best friend) worked out that she was actually fully aware, even though she could not move. The medical expectation was that Kate would need full nursing care for the rest of her life.
Kate’s expectation was that she would be back to normal with her family with in a year. Eight months later she walked out of hospital, four months after that she went running.
As a Medical Doctor that really got my attention. There is no cure for Locked in Syndrome, and most people don ‘t survive the initial brain injury. Those who do only rarely regain some limited movement.
So how did Kate do this? The first thing she did was to decide that she was going to recover. Her Mom kept reinforcing the idea that the brain can create new neural pathways, so to Kate, it was possible. In her mind she set a long term goal, and then she broke it down into bite sized chucks. The first of these was actively willing her thumb to move again. She repeated endlessly this mental visualization until five weeks later this was her first movement. Speaker raised up her left hand and moved it’s thumb. She then turned her attention to moving her hands, her arms, sitting up, breathing on her own and swallowing. There were set backs but she stuck to her intentions and she over came them. This was not a random recovery. At each stage, her body responded to her point of focus. Her point of focus was everything and this was within her control.
I got into medicine because of a fascination how astounding the body is. You know we don’t have to worry about what ones liver cells are up to with last night’s wine. Or to remind our cardiac cells to contract 72 times a minute. They are already on it. If you think about the number of functions our cells perform in the course of a day, it is mind blowing. Yet we seem to have lost sight of this. How many of us focus our body’s ability to repair itself when we are sick?
Most of us don’t notice our bodies until something goes wrong. And then we give that problem our full attention. We worry about it which just compounds the stress response.
And then we go to the Doctor to have the problem fixed. What if there is a better way to go deal with things? Doctors cannot fix people unless they want to get better. And it is not so much that they heal people anyway, it is more that they facilitate our body’s own ability to repair and recover.
As a society, we have been conditioned to hand over our control when we are sick.
Our modern view of medicine is not so modern. It dates back to the 17th Century when Rene DesCarte was dissecting things to figure out how they worked. He saw the body as a machine
And we are still very much working under the frame work of mechanistic medicine. Where
Reduction is brilliant. You know it has helped us understand things like molecular biology and biochemistry.
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It has been so effective that the general view in Western Medicine now, is that mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works. It does work, there is no question about that. But it is not the whole story.
You cannot dismantle a computer, and study the wires and expect to understand Computer
Programing. You cannot dissect a neuron and expect to understand what it’s thinking. Einstein said you cannot solve a problem with the same thinking you used to create it.
We understand sickness now, but if we want to engender health, we need to focus on health. We need to look at outliers, who are the outside on the bell curve. Those people who survive, recover and thrive against the odds. And ask what are they doing?
Research is now showing us that thoughts influence physiology. This is so obvious that we have overlooked it. Think of a sad memory and your body produces tears. Think of some one your in love with and your heart rate goes up. And think of the placebo effect. If were working from a mechanistic stand point giving someone a placebo should not affect them, but it does.
Taking a placebo alters brain activity that we can see on functional MRI Scanning. Our brains actually produce the neuropeptides that mimic the drugs we think we are actually taking. So what we think we are taking matters. This is also true for active drugs. For instance, a study by one of the world’s leading placebo researchers showed that Diazipond did not reduce anxiety for post operative patients unless they were told that they were taking it. Expectation is key.
So we are seeing this in research and we are seeing it in real people. I have mentioned Kate, now meet Kathy from Glasgow, who had a developed lymphoma and used a putative visualization to help shrink her tumors. Nine months later they were gone, without chemotherapy. Or Collin from Liverpool, who had an inoperable brain tumor, and was given just a few weeks left to live. When he saw his brain scan, he began imagining his tumors shrinking. That was fifteen years ago, he is still clear. And there many cases like this. Is all this coincidence, I don’t think so. This is not wishful thinking. This is repetitive practiced thought. And it is not a quick fix. It is hard work.
These people are coming from a place of utter disempowerment, yet are finding in themselves to stay focused on their intention. As Kathy said ‘You have to want to live and engage with life.”
Symptoms are a signal from ourselves that something needs to change. Thoughts are our way of talking to our cells, and they are listening. Recent scientific research has shown that neuroplasticity is a fact. Epigenetic research shows that emotion, how we feel, alters gene expression, protein production and cell function.
Hopelessness has been identified as be a strong independent predictor of heart disease. Studies have shown that optimists live longer and have better immunity. And we have control of this. One can become an optimist by practicing seeing the best things. Victor Frankel, was a holocaust survivor.
In the midst of the nameless horrors endured, he found something everyday to give his intention to.
Some act of compassion or kindness and he gave that his full intention.
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Viktor as he said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedom –
to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to chose his own way”. It should be easy
for us to find things that make us feel better. It is just a matter of investing time in them. Listening to
music we enjoy improves dopamine levels and can improve our mood. Watching a comedy we enjoy
improves immune function.
How we think, what we believe, how we feel matters. What a Doctor thinks matters too. There is now strong evidence, that expectations Doctors set, impact patient’s response. And gives practitioners notice.
Well, what about giving false hope?
It is not about making guarantees, it is about identify possibilities.
We will not be asking about abandoning conventional medicine, but enabling it.
If full recovery from Locked in Syndrome and End Stage Cancer were not possible, it would never happen, but it does. So it is. Isn’t our job to inspire patients to better health?
And what if guarded expectations of recovery are actually setting limits on Patients?
What about the Media? Media sets expectations for the public by mentioning only the Public Healthcare failures. It is missing out all the good things in the NHS Health that happen every day.
Medicine itself is evolving, and we have the chance to learn from our Patients. To prove us wrong and stand as examples of what is possible. As Doctors we can empower more people to take charge of their own health.
Our observations are telling us focus, belief and expectation are entangled in Health . Rather then (as Doctors) dismissing them we should be curious. Just as physicts had to concede that classical physics does cut it any more as a method to study quantum effects. We need to rethink the medical paradigms working with Health.
I (BillHib) find this last paragraph most profound. There are others such as Dr Ted Kaptchk at Harvard, whose group has also shown such phenomena having agency in health out comes. Lets explore the Quantum Mechanics of Parkinson’s Disease……..focus, belief and expectation. “WHY NOT NOW”
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