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Upbeat Attitude Doesn't Affect Cancer
Reality Master 101 writes "Defying years of conventional wisdom, researchers announced that your attitude doesn't influence your outcome, and 'patients shouldn't feel pressured to stay positive'. I particularly liked the phrase, 'the tyranny of positive thinking'."
It may not save your life to think positive. But if you are skulking and depressed your final days wont be pleasant ones. Everyone, cancer or not, should do thinks that make them happy and think positively all the time. Your lifetime is limited, even if you are very healthy. Make the most of it and don't waste time by being depressed.
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"Wives across the country can now stop asking their husbands if they look fat in this or that article of clothing" claims Harvey Lechbetter, lead analyst for the prestigious Cloth Foundation, which sponsored the clinical trials.
A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself.
The headline and text of this post are, I believe, misleading. It makes it sound as if researchers the world over have all come to the same conclusion, which of course isn't true. This is just one study. Big whoop. There are a bajillion studies out there, and pretty much any viewpoint you want to espouse is represented by at least one of them.
I'm really annoyed with the faith people put in "scientific studies". Many studies (not necessarily this one) are funded by corporations, and the scientists are under pressure to come to whatever conclusion the corporation wants.
Also, IMO, Science definately has *NOT* figured out what affect the human mind can have on human health, and how, regardless of this single study.
-csbrooks
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While this study may be mostly true, psychocematic (sp) healing is a reality though it does not apply to everything. Having a great outlook on life while you have Ebola Ziare is not going to increase your survival rate merely since the virus is extremely deadly and powerful. With something lesser though like a flu, cold, etc, it does help since your body is equiped to deal with the problem in the first place. Cancer is serious; even now we do not fully understand it, and it is not as simple as cells attacking foreign cells in your body. This mental healing seems to apply best when the person sick already has an edge over the ailment. While this is by no means an exact science, do not discredit it merely because 1 study said so for 1 particular problem. There is no garentee that this study is totally correct either, so be skeptical on all levels.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
If you're going to die, you might as well die happy. If I'm diagnosed with something terminal, I'm not going to spend the last days of my life sulking around. What a waste that would be..
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
Religion is the opiate of the masses.
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2) Accept the free gift of salvation from Jesus Christ...
"Free when you convert now. But hurry, this offer must end soon...."
oh, oh, wait..
"Try Heaven free for 30days with JhC as part of our no-risk offer. That's right, absolutely free...."
Getting old may be overrated, but failing to get old is clearly worse.
Timothy Leary took an interesting viewpoint toward his mortality in his last months. Don't know if it was "healthy" or not, don't know if I could take it as philosophically as he did, either.
There's something to be said for trying to leave your loved ones as prepared as you can, and that means emotionally as well as financially.
(I have a co-worker who is probably terminal, so these thoughts have been close, lately.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I know this is anecdotal, but... when doctors found that my mother had a second cancer, they told her when they thought it had started. It happened to be six months earlier, exactly when she had learnt that her brother had a late-stage cancer discovered and v.soon died. The fact that my brother and I spent almost every day with our mother helped her immensely to overcome grief and find the strength to go through cancer treatment, battle depression, and survive. Positive thinking, close support, and adequate medication go a long way; I'm convinced any missing part would be an obstacle to recovery/survival.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." -- Tennyson
A positive outlook does correlate with a higher number of immune system T-cells, increasing resistance to most infectious diseases. (Search Google if you want a reference.) It's not surprising this doesn't help with cancer, since cancer wouldn't be a problem in the first place if the immune system actually recognized it as a problem.
For great justice.
I'm really annoyed with the faith people put in "scientific studies".
What do you suggest people put their faith in when it comes to health matters? Alternative medicine? Prayer/God? Their own gut feeling/experiences? I would argue that all these are obviously much more dubious than scientific studies when it comes to something important like your health. Granted, scientific studies are often wrong. But eventually the truth will come out. People put faith in scientific studies because (1) they are performed by intelligent, cautious people, (2) they're gonna get reviewed by other intelligent, cautious people, (3) people have seen how science has lead to incredible medical breakthroughs in the past.
Also, IMO, Science definately has *NOT* figured out what affect the human mind can have on human health, and how, regardless of this single study.
And what are you basing your opinion on? Your exhaustive search of the medical literature? Your own personal research? A chat with a medical friend over drinks? I'm guessing it's just your gut feeling. I happen to agree with you on this but I find it odd that you decry the faith people put in scientific studies and then follow that up with your own faith-based (not talking reglious here) statement.
If you want to be annoyed with something, then target your frustration at science reporting in the mainstream media. Or direct your anger at our pathetic science education system that gives most people a poor understanding of the scientific process. Don't get pissed off about the fact that people look to science for the answers to life's most vexing questions. It's not flawless but it's the best system we got.
GMD
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Having an attitude that everything is terrible and having an attitude that everything is going to fail, and everything in your life is doomed. are completely different attitudes that often get lumped together. If you com at something with the attitude that something is terrible, then you have a motivation to do something about it that you just don't have while being happy, but if you think that everything is doomed you think that there's no point in even trying.
I was diagnosed with cancer a little over four years ago. Somehow, I managed to take a positive outlook on it. (If you'd asked me to predict my reaction beforehand, and if I'd answered honestly, I'd have predicted that I would have melted down.) I found that if I woke up in the morning committed to projecting a positive attitude, I actually started to feel it.
Where I do think it helped is getting through the discomfort and especially the chemo. I think it also made me more approachable by my friends and colleagues, and their willingness to talk and listen was a significant source of strength through that time.
Nonetheless, even as a new believer in the power of positive thinking, one of the most irritating phenomena I faced was the advice that my attitude was all-important, and the (perhaps unintended) implication that a bad outcome would be my own fault if I didn't smile.
Positive thinking is it's own reward, whether it's medically efficacious (sp?) or not. But one must be very careful about pressuring people to adopt the attitude and becoming part of the problem instead.
Can you verify the accuracy of the writings or the translation you quote?
Anything you say will be held against you.
GMD
watch this
In other words (1) and (2) are not mutually exclusive.
I recall a few months ago that there was an article here on slashdot that said we didn't need 64 oz of water per day, saying that this was probably superfluous, and was dismissed for the fair part as pseudoscience. Perhaps this is Yet Another one of these bits?
This sig no verb.
Have a great day!
Anything you say will be held against you.
Researcher Mark Petticrew, PhD, and colleagues examined 26 studies assessing the role of psychological coping styles on cancer recurrence and survival, and concluded that none conclusively linked any one style to positive outcomes.
Now that is just one huge vague statement full of meaningless words. They didn't even define how many patients were in each study. Because of this, we are forced to assume that only one patient was in each study -- giving too much charity to an arguement is a bad thing.
First, a group of 26 patients is HARDLY enough to make ANY real conclusion. 26 out of how many millions that have had cancer? And what type of cancer did these people have? It would be like asking a small city in the middle of nowhere what they thought about certian world issues... the results would be just as representative.
Second, they say that none "conclusively linked any one style to positive outcomes." Well of course they wouldn't. In a case of 26 "studies", there are probably 26 different unique "styles". This would only allow them to document one outcome for each style... which of course would not be anything to make a conclusion out of.
This type of journalism is horrible... it's on the verge of tabloid.
"We certainly aren't saying that a positive mental attitude is not beneficial," Petticrew tells WebMD. "I think the message here is that while it is good to think positively, it is also OK to feel bad. It is probably not going to influence your outcome."
This statement gives a very broad conclusion, and somewhat contradictory. They say nothing definitively here. You could sum it up by saying, "Positive atitude may or may not have an influence on your outcome."
I think they should have waited untill they made a more conclusive find in relation to this before they went public with their results (which again, really say nothing).
I wholeheartedly agree that there is a distinction of extent. In fact, if the original poster had presented a spectrum of possible types of religions ranging from needing to do very little to get into heaven to needing to do very much to get into heaven, I would not have complained.
But the original poster did not claim a dichotomy based on extent, but rather claimed a distinction in kind. In doing the poster presented a false dichotomy because the second option is included in the first option.
I do not believe that the original poster completely understands the logical implications of what he or she posted.
Three small, inadequately-controlled studies by Lee Burk and colleagues on laughter-related increases in immune system function are the basis of much of the folklore about how great it is for your health.
Research contradicting it rarely gets into the popular press. Provine mentions 7-decade study following 1178 males and females which found, surprisingly, that "cheerfulness (opimism and a sense of humor) in childhood to be inversely related to survival in middle to old age. Oddly, conscientiousness was related to survival..."
Provine also cites an editorial by Marcia Angell in the New England Journal of Medicine (1985) as saying "the current evidence for mental states' affecting the cause or cure of disease is largely folklore..."
One of the vital functions of science is to make us pay attention to things we don't want to hear. We can rely on the media to tell us what we want to hear (You deserve a break today, a new car will make you sexy), but the role of science is different.
BTW most of Provine's book is a lot more fun to read than the parts I quoted--he's done a lot of scholarly research, including going up to strangers in malls and asking them to laugh, that is great fun to read about. If I ever have time, I am definitely submitting a book review on it, because it is the definitive nerd book on laughter.
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
With that hope, dying isn't as big a deal.
But would it even be a big deal *without* that hope? I mean, really --- is nothingness really so ghastly that the only solace that can be achieved before it is belief in some doubleplus sequel to life? Why does non-existence haunt you?
Natch, eventual obliteration is much scarier if you posit that you might end up in some eternal barbecue pit... which is why I don't posit such dark fantasies. When I'm dead, I intend to be a lump of putrescing organic molecules, thanks. No rent, no irascible nerve endings, no eight-thirty class... Hot damn, I'm surprised no one is selling tickets.
- undoware.ca
If we just look towards the future, all of this "having a positive attitude doesn't matter" stuff will pass - we just need to stay strong and keep the faith. I personally have eight forms of a cancer myself, as well as the Ebola virus and AIDS. The doctors say that I should be dead already. Even as I write, my medula oblongata, my heart, kidneys and lungs are currently functioning at .01% of normal. Though the power of positive thinking, I've been able to stay alive this way for the past 30 years on a diet of raw eggs and hamster bedding, and I can do everything a normal person can. Plus, I can fly and move things with my mind. You just have to know how to fight it- with smiles.
You too can live past the pain of cancer with the right attitude! I've outlined it all in my book, which can be yours for only 129.95. Don't delay - your life is waiting for you.
Just send $129.95 to...
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
This is actually an important subject, as trite as it sounds, because what i think they are getting at is NOT that laughter doesn't help, but that, in the words of one survivor, "Cancer doesn't give a rat's ass whether you have a positive mental outlook."
The point isn't that people with good attitudes don't have a better chance; the point is that the general public for a very long time has been encouraged to believe that cancer is affected more by the mental than by the physical, and this leads to a lot of misconceptions about cancer. There's no question that laughter, or even the anticipation of laughter, is good for you. It boosts endorphins, it helps the immune system, but while these things may make cancer easier to deal with symptomatically, they don't address the underlying causative issues, and the implied connections encourage people to believe that you just aren't playing or praying hard enough.
The point here, of this article and the growing movement behind it, is that people feel guilty- horribly, horrendously, unnecessarily guilty- when they get sick or have to watch someone else get sick, and it's going to take a lot to make that social environment change. I volunteer time to help a group of people online who deal with chronic illnesses, and this study is of unimaginable relevance to them. It means that for once, someone in the medical community is shaking their head and saying- by the way, it's not your fault that you have cancer. You should do everything you can to stay upbeat, but the 'cure' doesn't exist yet, it's not your failure to utilise this particular 'cure' that is keeping you from being healthy.
And that's important. That's important on a lot of levels, and treatment is one of them, because when a patient knows that they don't have to fake their way into a smile every day, they can get down to processing the very real grief and loss that go with a chronic illness- and this can substantially increase their quality of life, however long that life may extend. I've had to watch people day in and day out coping with this, and feeling worse because those around them feel that they must stay cheerful in order to survive. It becomes the last defense for a lot of family members who can't otherwise deal with having someone near them sick- to blame it on the patient, to try to make sense out of it by describing it as a failing- they were sick and they just lost hope, so they didn't get better... Just as it's beginning to be recognised in the medical community that depression is a symtpom of, and not the cause of, many other illnesses. Remember when ulcers were entirely attributed to stress?
I'm all in favour of a positive mental outlook. But i'm not in favour of letting our prejudice for cheerful patients create a false image of what it takes to get through it- good cheer and optimism are only a part of the puzzle. Bad things really do happen to good people, and being a better person isn't always going to make it stop. I think this article is a good start- and i think it's true. Cancer doesn't care. We care, so we will cling to anything that we can. And miracles do happen, but not necessarily because of the reasons that we attribute them to. As we come to understand illnesses better, there may be more studies like this, just to remind people that while we hold a lOT of power to change things, we need to know where the buttons are before we can press them- and a smile apparently didn't do it for an illness like cancer.
However, i'll keep reading the funny pages and slashdot comments, because passing the funny ones along seems to at least have cheered people up. (and there are occasional ward uprisings... do you hear a sound, as of somebody playing with the wiring? um- gotta go check and see what folks are feeling energetic enough to be destroying today!!!)
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.