Can a positive attitude help you beat cancer?

"Cancer is the Best Thing that
Ever Happened to Me"

That's the incredibly surprising statement made by some former cancer patients. But they don't say it because they enjoyed the disease. Rather, it's because they triumphed over it and – spurred on by the challenge – found renewed meaning and purpose in life.

These patients have almost always been healed thanks – in part – to an unlikely "treatment": through the expression of gratitude.

But before we dive into it all, here are two facts you should be aware of when it comes to cancer and your health:

1. The options to treat, cure, and prevent cancer are a lot more effective and diverse than most people realize. People who have just learned they have cancer often ask me what they should do. Well, there are about 50 things you can do and at least 20 that you should do.
   
2. You, the patient, are the one in the driver's seat when it comes to your health. This means, of course, you can't necessarily rely on everything healthcare professionals tell you.

Continued below…

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Some surprisingly simple treatments—like the expression of gratitude—may do a lot more good than anybody realizes. In fact, new research shows treatments that include gratitude and other emotional and spiritual processes may be some of the most effective of all time when it comes to healing cancer.

The truth behind "radical cancer remission"

I'm not going to tell you to start singing about sunshine and walk around with a smile on your face. Not exactly, anyway.

But I will tell you this: the simple truth is that there's an undeniable connection between your mind and body. It's most noticeable where fear is concerned.

If you fear something, your body can't heal. Instead of resting and rejuvenating, you're locked in a state of fight or flight, which is the antithesis of healing. The very definition of "stress" is the physical state your body goes into when confronted with something you either have to fight or run away from.

Wherever cancer is concerned, it's almost impossible to avoid feeling afraid. When most people get a diagnosis, they get immersed in fear and then they stay there.

So what do you do to get past the fight or flight problem? According to Dr. Kelly Turner, researcher in the field of integrative oncology and author of Radical Remission: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds, you should practice something called "deepening spirituality."

There's no single way to do this. It can involve a variety of techniques.

One individual interviewed by Turner was given two months to live after having tried all the conventional brain cancer treatments. So he went to Brazil, visited a spiritual healer, and learned how to meditate. He stayed there for two years, meditating three days a week for eight hours a day. When he went for his next MRI, it was completely clean and he's been cancer-free ever since.

Another individual was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 35. She tried surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. When her doctors told her she had only five years to live, she changed course and set out on a spiritual journey, a journey where she focused all her emotional energy on healing her cancer. Eighteen months later, her cancer had disappeared. She's been healthy now for 13 years.

Dr. Turner says the countless individuals she found who had experienced radical remission shared a common link. That link was a deep commitment to positive thinking and gratitude.

If meditation and spirituality don't appeal to you, look at it as a subtle shift in your thought process. Instead of a limited view of things that assumes the material world is all there is, you focus on divinely inspired thoughts that heal your body.

(Just for the record, I don't believe the material world is all there is. While atheists believe this – it's a sort of religion with them – it can't be proved and from a philosophical standpoint it's obvious nonsense. There's no reason to believe that what we can perceive is all there is; it's very unlikely. Every animal – a mouse, a dog, an insect – probably thinks its "world" is the entire world. Animals have an excuse for such stupidity. We don't.)

You can call it an old idea, even a cliché, but I urge cancer patients to practice not only prayer and meditation but positive thinking, or gratitude-based reasoning. However you view it, don't write it off as simple. Making sure your conscious thoughts (what you hear yourself think in your head) are in sync with your subconscious mind takes practice and persistence. You basically have to align your surface beliefs with those beliefs you carry deep down that you're not consciously aware of.

How to heal your body using only your mind

A lot of this has to do with adopting certain thoughts and behaviors that effectively purge your body of toxins. You probably already know you can do this with diet and exercise. Supplements help a lot, too.

But you can also clear toxins from your system with the following:

• Meditation
• Forgiveness
• Releasing repressed emotions
• Feeling love, joy, or happiness
• Engaging in tangible acts of gratitude
• Being of service to others

Medical researchers get themselves in a tizzy when they look at the healing power of emotional therapy because it's hard to measure. Scientific researchers want to break the healing cycle down to measurable quantities and tiny little atoms and molecules.

The results of spiritual or emotional treatments aren't always consistent and predictable. What works for one person may not work for another, and spiritual practice won't heal cancer for everyone. Frankly, it's not going to work for some people. It's one of the 20 things you need to do.

You just can't measure emotional healing. That's why a lot of people describe this kind of remission as "spontaneous." According to Dr. Turner, that gives the wrong idea. It's not about sitting down for an hour and thinking cheerful thoughts about healing, then hoping your cancer is gone. It involves long-term changes to your life that are all steeped in positive thinking and gratitude.

Here are some practical ways to practice gratitude and develop a healing mindset:

1. Start and maintain a gratitude journal. What happened today that you feel grateful for? This simple exercise is extremely powerful. It directs your attention to what's good in your life, and – if you insist on a "scientific" explanation – this generates healthy body chemicals.
2. Find quotes that express the power of gratitude and positive thinking. Read them daily and share them with others. Write them down in your journal.
3. Thank your body daily for responding positively to healing treatments
4. Do yoga or meditation. You can find different teachers and different forms of these practices that fit your religious tradition. There are Christian meditators, for example. Read The Cloud of Unknowing or The Imitation of Christ. Muslims can explore Sufi traditions.
5. Establish a daily habit of showing gratitude for at least three things, no matter how small. (See #1.)
6. Take the time to thank the people on your treatment team and those friends and family members who support you.
7. Pray to whatever God or spiritual power you feel connected to.
8. Write thank you cards to members of your support group and send them via snail mail.

According to Dr. Turner, even spending just five minutes a day feeling grateful will release hormones throughout your body that boost your immune system.

If you use these methods, keep in mind you still have to address the physical side of healing if you want to cure or prevent cancer. That means eating a diet of whole, organic foods, exercising frequently, and getting plenty of sleep.

Your mind/brain runs the whole show

For doubters who frown at this type of thing, consider this: Every time Dr. Turner attended a medical conference, she asked doctors if they'd seen cases of radical remission in their practices. Without fail, hands would shoot up.

But when she asked if any of them took the time to write an article for publication about those cases, those hands would drop. So it's conceivable that this is a much more common thing than previously thought. Doctors view these cases as anomalies and don't bother to report them.

When I first got interested in so-called "spontaneous remission" I soon became convinced there's no such thing. These are nearly always cases where the patient used alternative treatments – including mind-body practices – and didn't tell his doctor. Or he told his doctor and the doctor refused to believe it. In fact, I've come across several instances where a patient told the doctor she'd healed herself with alternative treatments, and the doctor wrote down "spontaneous remission" on the patient's chart.

To read some of the inspiring stories Turner has uncovered, visithttp://www.radicalremission.com/.