What Is Mind-Body Medicine?
Mind-body or behavioral medicine is the area of medical science that deals with the idea of the mind influencing the physical health through approaches or techniques which control the mind and emotions. The concept of mind body medicine is a fast growing one and is generated from the comparatively new theory of Psychoneuroimmunology, or PNI in short, which is basically a study of how the mind and body affects each other. The word 'psychoneuroimmunology' can be broken down into three parts, namely:
'Psycho', concerned with the emotions, mood states and thoughts of a person, 'Neuro', which deals with the neurological aspect, and 'Immunology', denotes immune system of the human body. Therefore the mind body medicine investigates the connection between the mind and immune system of the body and helps toward better health and healing through approaches which affect the mind.
Psychologists and mental health personnel examine the effects of ones mind, attitudes, thoughts and beliefs on the physical well-being and implement various techniques and therapies such as meditation, yoga, deep breathing, relaxation training and guided imagery which coordinate with the immune system and improve illnesses. These curative methods are specially designed to direct energy pulses from the mind to aid the healing process. Although these methods of healing are being used by traditional healers from a very long time, only recently they have gained scientific acceptance as researches done all across the globe have shown positive results which have shown evidences supporting mind-body medicine and thus reinforce its notion.
Clinical experiments conducted under purely scientific conditions have exhibited that mind-body techniques are authentic and they have a very strong remedial effect. Together, these researches and experiments have nullified the separation of mind and body and have validated the idea of the synthesis of the two, leading towards the acceptance of mind-body medicine. As far as patients are concerned, this new concept of synthesis- in other words, mind-body medicine- is a significant one indeed because it means that only by controlling mental and emotional states, diseases can be cured or revived from.
Mind-body techniques can help alleviate health conditions as they are based on relaxation, tension and pain reducing methods and trim down the use of medications. Examples of mind-body techniques being used with medication in cases of treating pain, anxiety and depression are pretty common in general medical science. The following is a list of diseases which can be treated using mind-body medicine:
- Asthma
- High blood pressure
- Obesity
- Coronary heart disease
- Diabetes
- Insomnia
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Stomach problems such as indigestion, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome etc.
- Menopausal symptoms
- Fibromyalgia
Although the researches and application of mind-body medicine are at a rudimentary stage, these approaches can be used to compliment regular medical care for the following reasons:
- There are no side effects of using mind-body medicine and the potential benefits are high
- The economic cost of mind-body medicine is very low; most of these techniques can be learnt from paraprofessionals and requires no equipment.
- These can be used simultaneously with traditional medicine and do not intervene in the curative measures offered by conventional medicines.
