Waiting for a Viral Outbreak of Common Sense

After noting the epidemic of swine flu fear and panic abounding in the press and public, my friend Bryan Rust recently concluded an email with the words, “Waiting for a Viral Outbreak of Common Sense.”

The Seattle Times expects the swine flu to hit up to one-third of Washington State residents, it has already hit Washington State University hard, where 2,200 students have reported symptoms, and WHO (World Health Organization) has labelled it a “pandemic.” An expert on Fox News warned people to be sure “not to hug and kiss.”

I’m finding random friends asking me about the swine flu… what do I think? Do I fear my daughter will get it at school? Am I going to get a flu shot? Etc. etc. etc….

In answer to the questions, what I’m doing and what I think about the swine flu is this:

Nothing.

I’m not thinking about the swine flu.  I’m not reading about it.  I’m not watching newscasts about it.  I’m sorry that so many people are sick, and I’m taking normal precautions such as handwashing, but I hardly see how my fretting, talking about and giving energy and attention to the swine flu epidemic helps anyone “get well soon” or improves my or anybody else’s quality of life one iota.

The last time I checked, didn’t stress and worry only add to potential health problems?  Didn’t Dr. Bernie Siegal prove that laughter is the best medicine with decades of research?  Yes, Siegal’s work confirmed without a doubt that the mind-body connection is a powerful force, and that Faith, Hope and Healing and Love, Medicine and Miracles (titles of two of his books) go together like peanut butter and chocolate.

Like the old newspaper adage says, “If it bleeds it leads.”  What would we possibly think and talk about if not something negative, awful, tragic or worrysome?  Ha!  The sad truth is that the swine flu was only topping the headlines because there was nothing worse to report.  (Today the discovery of the Yale student Annie Le’s body takes precedence in the news, though on Twitter, it’s Kanye West’s interruption of Taylor Swift.)

I’m not clear if it’s the pig-connection or the amount of people ill that make this particular flu headline news and the most-searched topic on Yahoo! today, but in case you missed the news, a lot of people have the flu.

More accurately, a lot of people have a mild case of the flu.  As one Associate Press article observed, “Compared with other types of influenza, the swine flu or H1N1 strain is relatively mild, Garcia said. He said most students suffer three to five days of discomfort, such as fever, congestion, sore throat and fatigue.” (emphasis mine)  It’s not even as ferocious as classic influenza, which will commonly keep people in bed for up to two weeks.  (In bed or in the bathroom, as you ponder how your body can possibly have anything more to purge.)

The good news (or bad news, depending on how you look at it) is that your chances of dying in a car accident today are much worse than your chances of contracting a fatal case of swine flu.

I am reminded of a quote attributed to Mark Twain:

“I’ve had thousands of problems in my life, most of which never actually happened.”

Remember the “bird flu” that had some people paralyzed with fear?  At least we can worry about a real problem now instead of fretting about a threat that never arrives!  But what Twain was pointing out was that most of our problems do not exist in the real world, they exist between our ears.  Worry, fear, distraction, these actually are the real problems!  A mild flu?  More of an inconvenience than a genuine “problem.”

The real problem is how many of us are conditioned to think of the “worst case scenario” first, rather than dwell on possibilities. I believe the simplest and most profound change that anyone can make in their mindset is to focus on what you want vs. what you fear or what you don’t want.

This awareness might or might not save you from a round with the flu, but I’ll bet it’ll help at least as much as a flu shot.  If you are expecting to get sick and fearing getting sick, you actually raise your chances of getting sick.  If you expect to recover and believe that you are getting better, your body will rally to support that belief.

And I’m not just talking “positive thinking” or “Law of Attraction,” I’m talking about documented science as to the connection and integration between mind and body.  No doubt you’re familiar with something called “the Placebo Effect.”  The Skeptic’s Dictionary defines “placebo”  as “the measurable, observable or felt improvement in health and or behavior not attributable to a medication or invasive treatment….”

In a nutshell, the placebo effect demonstrates that the patient’s belief in a treatment can be more important than the efficacy of the treatment itself, to the point where an inert sugar pill has been proven to be more powerful, in many instances, than actual medication.  In 1955, placebo effect pioneer H.K. Beecher studied over 1,000 patients and discovered that a placebo was all that was needed for the patient to get well in 35% of cases!

Even more shocking has been experiments done with “fake surgery”, for instance, one small experiment found that 8 of 8 patients who believed they had knee surgery (an incision was made and stitches left behind) made complete recoveries!  In other instances, such as when dealing with pain or gastric upset, placebos have been found to be helpful in 50 -60% of cases.  (See Skeptic’s Dictionary for details.)

Perhaps more relevant and critical to the swine flu discussion is that of the “Nocebo Effect.”  While placebo can be translated, “I will please,” nocebo means “I will harm.”  From deadly voodoo “bone-pointing ceremonies” to those who go into shock and die from bites from non-poisonous snakes (believing them poisonous), the belief system about what might is harmful as well as helpful is likewise a powerful predictor of experience.  The ultimate in self-fulfilling prophecies, a Washington Post article called the nocebo the “evil twin” of the placebo, citing research that women who believed they were high risk for heart disease were four times more likely to die than women with comparable risk factors who lacked fatalistic expectations.

As Deepak Chopra has asserted in interviews and books, the nocebo effect’s power lies not simply in the negativity of the suggestion, but the perceived authority of the person making the negative pronouncment (or placing the voodoo hex.)  He believes that physicians (the perceived “authority”) actually perpetuate low recovery rates when they, for instance, tell a patient that they only have a 10% chance of recovery from their cancer or illness.  It’s a case of chicken and the egg – which came first, the negative prognosis or the lowered chance of recovery?

I suggest that, if the mind is as powerful as it’s been proven to be (and I believe this is but the tip of the iceberg), that we’d be better off with supportive beliefs of our impending health and wealth than listening to the media’s monotonous, hypnotizing predictions of illness, povery and doom.

No matter what you choose to call it – the Law of Attraction, the Placebo Effect, Positive Thinking… the fact remains that the way we think has a real and measurable effect on the events of our lives and how we experience those events. We don’t just “experience” life like a passive bystander, we also get to co-create our lives and participate in the moment-to-moment birthing process known as “life.”

That all being said, a lot of people have the flu right now.  Sometimes, in spite of the best attitudes, good habits and supportive beliefs, stuff happens.  If you have the swine flu, you probably already know what to do.  Stay home, rest, and drink lots of fluids.  Don’t go kissing and hugging everyone.  And imagine that any moment now, you’re going to start feeling better.  Before you know it, you will.

Oh, and one more critical piece of advice – if you have influenza, swine flu, food poisoning or anything of that nature, remember that you should have access at all times to a toilet plus a large bowl or sick-bag.  If fluids need to exit your body from more than one opening at the same time, it’s a bitch to have to choose which end gets the toilet.

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