Diagnosis versus prognosis
Part of Elizabeth’s journey to healing was reducing her stigma against Western medicine. As a natural wellness practitioner, she was particularly challenged by her conflicting feelings regarding the various medications and procedures she had to undergo.
Some doctors believe that a patient’s feelings about their treatment can change how their body responds to it.
Speaking on this topic, Kelly Brogan, Ph.D. touches on the power of mental and emotional work. After studying radical remissions for more than a decade, Brogan discovered nine tactics that were consistently applied by those who achieved miraculous cures.
They included: radically changing your diet, taking control of your health, following your intuition, using herbs and supplements, releasing repressed emotions, increasing positive emotions, embracing social support, deepening spiritual connection, and having a strong reason for living. Brogan noted that only two of these strategies are physical.
Both Dispenza and Elizabeth testify to Brogan’s findings.
The implications of this? Self-fulfilling prophecies may be more powerful than we are led to believe. Having positive thoughts about recovery rather than fearing dark consequences can influence how the body copes with illness.
To better understand, the film differentiates between the medical terms “diagnosis” and “prognosis”.
Although the diagnosis provides a label for a multitude of symptoms, informed by science and medical observation, it does not define what will happen to the patient. On the other hand, prognosis indicates the likely course of a disease.
When patients receive difficult prognoses, they may identify with them so strongly that their bodies begin to respond accordingly.
Prominent alternative medicine author Deepak Chopra has commented on the danger of patients being guided by prognosis, explaining that other patients’ experiences do not necessarily apply to all patients.
Chopra suggests that it is therefore unproductive and, potentially even harmful, for a patient to expect another patient’s experience with an illness to be their own.
In other words, if patients focused their minds on a healing experience aimed at recovering from an illness rather than subscribing to assumptions about how the persistence of the illness might affect them, they might have more high propensity to recover.
An example of the healing power of the mind has also been cited in many drug trials. Test subjects are given placebos to demonstrate what happens when the drug is not taken, for comparison purposes.
In many trials, doctors note that placebos produce results that are statistically equivalent to those of the people studied who took the drugs.
“Belief itself modifies biology,” said David R. Hamilton, an organic chemist and author.
