Quantum Health Newsletter - Feb. 2022, Issue 2

The power of the placebo comes down to the power of the mind and a person's skill at harnessing it. If a patient gets a tension headache and their trusted doctor gives them a medicine that they feel confident will treat it, the relief they expect is likely to decrease their stress. And since stress is a trigger for tension headaches, the magic of the placebo response is not so mysterious anymore.

Part of the beauty of placebos is that they activate existing systems of healing within the mind and body. Elements of the body once thought to be outside of an individual's control are now known to be modifiable. A legendary example of this is Tibetan monks who meditate to generate enough body heat to dry wet sheets in 40-degree Fahrenheit temperatures. In the field of Mind Body Medicine developed from the work of cardiologist Herbert Benson, who observed those monks and other experts mastering control over automatic processes of the body. It's well understood in the medical field that many diseases are made worse by the automatic changes that occur in the body under stress. If a placebo interaction reduces stress, it can reduce certain symptoms in a scientifically explainable way.

Furthermore, multiple brain imaging studies demonstrate changes in the brain in response to successful placebo treatments for pain. And emerging research suggests that even when people know they are receiving a placebo, the inactive treatment still has effects on the brain and reported levels of improvement.

In addition to the ever-increasing body of evidence surrounding their effectiveness, placebos offer multiple benefits. They have no side effects. They are cheap. They are not addictive. They provide hope when there might not be a specific chemically active treatment available. They mobilize a person's own ability to heal through multiple pathways, including those studied in the field of psychoneuroimmunology. This is the study of relationships between the immune system, hormones and the nervous system.

By defining a placebo as the act of setting positive expectations and providing hope through psychosocial interactions, it becomes clear that placebos can enhance traditional medical treatments. The placebo effect is recognized as being powerful enough that the American Medical Association considers it efficacious to use placebos to enhance healing on their own or with standard medical treatments if the patient agrees to it.

Clinically, doctors use the principles of placebo in a more subtle way than it is used in research studies. A 2013 study from the U.K. found that 97% of physicians acknowledged in a survey having used some form of placebo during their career. This might be as simple as expressing a strong belief in the likelihood that a patient will feel better from whatever treatment the doctor prescribes, even if the treatment itself is not chemically powerful.

QUANTUM HEALTH TIP: Belief is perhaps the strongest of medicines. Enhance the power of the mind-body system with our super-charged Success & Achievement Crystals.

Research into the inner lives of animals--their feelings and thought processes--is only just beginning. For much of history, biologists and behaviorists presumed that animal intelligence could be neatly organized into a hierarchy. Homo sapiens was placed all the way at the top, followed by our fellow primates. Then came the other mammals, the birds, reptiles, and insects.

Regardless of our rapidly changing conception of animal intelligence, it is best recognized when the behavior of an animal resembles our own. Take, for example, elephants, which are said to remember and return to the gravesites of diseased members of their herd. A literature review and study from 2019 revealed that they also exhibit an unusual interest in the dead bodies of other elephants that persists throughout the stages of decomposition--signaling their fascination with death and perhaps even hinting at consciousness of their mortality.

Dolphins are a particularly popular test subject for intelligence studies. As early as 2006, researchers suspected these aquatic mammals use whistles that act as analogues for human names, with a unique frequency being assigned to each member of a pod. Whereas many insects communicate via pheromones that always induce the same, predetermined responses, dolphin communication--like human language--seems more flexible and context-dependent; a study from 2017 determined that dolphins in Laguna in southern Brazil had developed a distinct accent after more than 100 years of sustained interaction with the local fishermen.

Displays of high intelligence are not restricted to mammals. Many birds, including parrots, organize themselves into complex social groups where fellow members of their species are treated differently depending on their relation to one another, a behavior that suggests an aptitude for associative learning, one of several markers of intelligence. And insects, however minuscule their brains, possess an entire repertoire of impressive cognitive skills, from tool use and face recognition to numerical competence and learning via observation.

Research suggests that intelligence, far from being organized into a hierarchy, is actually distributed in different ways across the animal kingdom. Namely, a survey from 2020 found that most animals displayed "exceptional skills in single cognitive domains while performing poorly in others." Chimpanzees, for their part, have a better short-term memory than humans, presumably because short-term memory is more useful in the wild, where life-or-death decisions must be made on a daily basis and in the blink of an eye.

The study of animal intelligence is greatly informed by developments in neuroscience. A good many animals are known to possess semantic memory--the ability to associate one thing with another, like the pain of a bee sting with the appearance of a bee. However, recent studies suggest that some animals like rats and pigeons are also capable of episodic memory--the ability to recall previous experiences by briefly reliving them inside their minds.

Intelligence is connected to other mental qualities that were long considered to be distinctly human, including sentience and self-consciousness. Most of the great apes already demonstrated their ability to recognize themselves in a mirror, and so too have dolphins and elephants. In the past, Rhesus macaques were successfully taught to recognize their own reflection when they aren't naturally inclined to do so, suggesting that, perhaps, self-awareness is a skill that can be trained.

QUANTUM HEALTH TIP: Animal communication is an increasingly acknowledged skill and service. Use the Cosmic Eye Elixir to amplify telepathy and stimulate the 3rd eye--vital in establishing non-human communications.

Spiritually: Promotes altruism and brings wisdom.

Emotionally: Helps bring stability to life. Encourages peacefulness and develops trust.

Mentally: Stimulates the intellect, clears depression, and promotes a positive mental state and creative self-expression.

Physically: Absorbs negative energy and helps draw disease out of the body. Helps to imbue the body with vitality; assists the stomach, spleen, kidneys, bladder, liver and gallbladder, helps alleviate joint problems and strengthens the mucus membranes. Traditionally, Amber has been used as an excellent natural antibiotic.

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