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GOD SAID, Proverbs 23:7:

For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he:

GOD SAID, Psalm 119:49-50:

49 Remember the word unto thy servant, upon which thou hast caused me to hope.

50 This is my comfort in my affliction: for thy word hath quickened me.

GOD SAID, Romans 5:3-5:

3 And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;

4 And patience, experience; and experience, hope:

5 And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.

GOD SAID, Hebrews 11:1:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

GOD SAID, Hebrews 6:18-19:

18 That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us:

19 Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil;

MAN SAID:  Where are all the “marvelous truths” these believers say they have found in their Bible?  Show me just one! 

Now THE RECORD.  Suppose, just suppose, that between your ears existed a pharmacy that big pharmaceuticals could only dream of duplicating.  Suppose this pharmacy could produce needed medications for the body—even before sickness became apparent.  And suppose that all the medicine produced was exactly what your body needed, that it was properly administered and that there were no negative side effects.  Now, suppose the medications were free of charge.  Sounds incredible, but it’s true—and the medical world is trying to tap into this phenomenal power.  This GodSaidManSaid feature will publish staggering confirmation from the medical community that God''s Word is true and righteous altogether. 

A host of features on GodSaidManSaid address the reality that we and all that we see are made out of words, as well as the creative and destructive power of the words we think and speak.  A few paragraphs from GodSaidManSaid features concerning the placebo and nocebo effect follow:

• From the GodSaidManSaid feature, “Nocebo, Placebo, and You:”

E. J. Langer, Ph.D., in Psychology Today, identifies how the medical world inadvertently creates the nocebo effect by the use of the word “remission.”  She reports how two people being examined for cancer are diagnosed differently if one of the individuals had previously had cancer.  If the batteries of tests for both individuals show identical readings in that both parties are free of cancer, the one who has had cancer in the past will be diagnosed as “in remission,” while the other patient who had never had cancer will be given a clean bill of health.  The word “remission” certainly fits into the classic nocebo paradigm—a kind of "waiting for cancer to return."  Dr. Langer said:

Language has the interesting property of being able to increase and decrease our perceptions of control.  Different word choices can direct our thoughts about a single situation in many different ways. 

How important, then, is Proverbs 4:23-24:

23 Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.

24 Put away from thee a froward mouth, and perverse lips put far from thee.

• From the GodSaidManSaid feature, “Secrets and Demonstrations of Power-Speaking:”

Dr. Howard Brody, M.D., Ph.D., titled an article in a 2000 issue of Psychology Today, “Mind Over Medicine.”  Part of the subhead reads, “Diseases and disorders are hardly ever ‘all in your head,’ but often, the power to heal is.”  The power of words is immeasurable. 

You’re aware of the placebo effect.  In clinical measurements, for instance, a proposed medical remedy is measured by taking a group of people and distributing the correct medical product to part of the group and a harmless sugar pill—or placebo—to the other part.  Results are then tabulated.  According to the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, the placebo (sugar pill) clocks in with a cure rate of 33%, which is sometimes higher than the proposed remedy that was administered.  They also discovered that the benefits of the fake placebo spikes measurably upward if the doctor talks the benefits of the fake placebo up.  It’s a matter of words.  Converse to the placebo effect is an effect now known as the nocebo effect, which is the simple, measurable result of negative words.  In one experiment, 13 teenagers were told that the harmless leaves that were rubbed on their arms were poison ivy.  Nearly half of the group developed poison ivy rash and one developed blisters—a simple demonstration of the nocebo effect.  It’s all a matter of words. 

• From the GodSaidManSaid feature, “Empowering Words:”

The power and effect of words is all-encompassing.  The following paragraph is from Science News, March 14, 2009:

Think positive!  People who attended a few sessions on how to focus on positive words or images had at least four months of freedom from anxiety disorders.  [End of quote]

An estimated 6.8 million Americans suffer with generalized anxiety disorders which involves constant, exaggerated worries about impending disasters regarding health, money, or other issues.  According to Science News, about 15 million have been diagnosed with social anxiety disorder.  This disorder is characterized by a debilitating dread of everyday social situations and a fear of being watched and judged by others. 

The following paragraph, found on ScienceNews.Org under the header, “Don’t Worry, Get Attention Training,” demonstrates that word and image therapy are at least as effective as psychotherapy and drugs.  It reads:

In these studies, both published in the February Journal of Abnormal Psychology, attention training alleviated anxiety disorders just as effectively as cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy and anti-anxiety medication had in earlier investigations.  Yet attention training requires minimal professional supervision, causes no side effects, and could be completed over the Internet. 

Science has now arrived at the conclusion that words are consequential and a whole lot more consequential than could ever be imagined. 

GOD SAID, Proverbs 18:21:

Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

GOD SAID, Philippians 4:8:

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Every thought must be brought into alignment with Jesus Christ.  When thoughts are brought into subjection to God’s Word, abundant and dynamic life is the product, even to where God describes it like unto days of heaven upon the earth (Deuteronomy 11:21).  Once an individual enters the miracle of the new birth (see “Further With Jesus” on this website), God gives power to transform the mind’s thoughts.  This process is akin to a blood transfusion.  We replace the bad, carnal thoughts with God’s thoughts.  The procedure is called the renewing of the mind—putting on the mind of Christ.  [End of quotes]

Positive, uplifting silent and spoken words release the power of the placebo effect.  What medical science calls the placebo, the Word of God calls hope.  The placebo is spawned in hope—or rather, it is hope itself. 

Hope is dramatically different than wishing.  The basic definition of the Biblical hope is looking forward to something you are certain will come to pass.  The certainty in the equation is called faith.  Hebrews 11:1:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Example:  The blessed hope, which is eternal life in Christ Jesus, speaks of a city that Christ is preparing for those who love Him, called the New Jerusalem which comes down out of God’s new heaven to His newly created earth.  Our faith in God’s Word gives substance to this city of hope.  Faith gives it its foundations, walls, gates, and dimensions.  Romans 15:13:

Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.

What science calls placebo, the Bible calls hope.  Medical researchers are shocked at what they’re finding.  Discover magazine’s July/August 2014 publication, in an eight-page spread, addresses the subject of the placebo effect..  The subhead of the feature reads, “Once dismissed as a psychological curiosity, the placebo effect is now recognized as the key to the brain’s ‘inner pharmacy.’  If only doctors knew how to open the medicine cabinet.”  Excerpts from the article follow:

After starting her doctorate work in neurology in 2003 at the University of British Columbia, Lidstone led a rather odd brain-imaging experiment.  She brought 40 patients with mild Parkinson’s into the lab for a simple drug therapy and explained that some would get their usual dose of Parkinson’s medication, which boosts the brain’s dopamine levels.  The others, she said, would get a placebo—an inactive pill that looked just like their usual drug.  Then they would lie in a high-resolution positron emission tomography (PET) scanner for a grueling 90 minutes while the machine took pictures in 2-millimeter increments of their nucleus accumbens, a region deep in the brain that (among other things) controls reward and motivation. 

When Lidstone’s patients emerged from the scanner, many of them moved easily, as one would expect after a dose of their medication.  One older patient with a tall, stooped frame arrived in a wheelchair.  He took the pill, sat through the scan, and then walked out past the wheelchair and up a flight of stairs to the debriefing room.  There, Lidstone dropped a bomb on him:  There was no drug.  Everyone in the trial got the same thing—a simple placebo pill.

“When I told him he actually got a placebo, he laughed at me,” Lidstone says.  “He was like, ‘Are you serious?  I can’t believe I was able to do this on my own without my medication.’”

Whether he improved “on his own” is open to interpretation.  Parkinson’s patients are especially susceptible to the placebo effect—a phenomenon by which a condition improves solely because the patient believes treatment has occurred.  When Lidstone’s team analyzed the patients’ brain activity, the PET images showed dopamine flooding the synapses in the crucial motor control region of their brains, just as surely as from a dose of medication.  It was the first time placebo responses in Parkinson’s disease had been definitively linked to a natural burst of dopamine. 

The new evidence has established that placebos trigger the brain’s “inner pharmacy”—in essence, a warehouse perpetually stocked to deliver active drugs to itself.  In addition to improving Parkinson’s symptoms, that same inner pharmacy can affect conditions like pain, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, anxiety, schizophrenia, and more.  As the placebo effect emerges from a long history in the shadows, the new question is: How can we use this age-old brain trick to our advantage?

When Wager analyzed subjects’ brain activity, he found that the people who reported the greatest relief after receiving a placebo also showed the strongest reduction in activity in the ACC, the thalamus, and the insula, all evolutionarily primitive brain structures that respond to physical pain. 

Suddenly, it was clear that when a patient improved on placebo, it wasn’t just some delusion or an effort to please a person in a lab coat.  It was a measurable brain event and reflected an actual reduction in the experience of pain.

Could there be something permanently, physiologically distinctive that makes some people especially prone to the placebo effect?  Do some people harbor a sort of permanent medical optimism that makes them hyperprone to placebos? 

Today, placebos are widely recognized not as a psychological mirage, but as a potent inner pharmacy that we might someday even harness.

But the real placebo revolution may be in reshaping clinical practice.  Jensen says many doctors cripple their chances of leveraging the placebo effect by acting disinterested or lacking confidence with patients.  She would know: When she started out, she had trouble eliciting a placebo effect.  It was the doctor, not the patient, who had to change in order to boost the placebo. She learned to exude confidence and crafted a warmer manner, and her patients began to respond.  [End of quotes]

Genesis 1:26:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

Releasing the power of the God-like brain between our ears is a Biblical directive.  We know this concept as putting on the mind of Christ, and it yields life-changing benefits—whether it is the opening of your pharmacy’s doors 24/7 and the healing of the flesh or a myriad of other marvelous blessings.  The human brain was created by God to flourish when faith and hope are lifted high.  What science calls placebo, God’s Word calls hope.  Today’s science is knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door. 

GOD SAID, Proverbs 23:7:

For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee.

GOD SAID, Psalm 119:49-50:

49 Remember the word unto thy servant, upon which thou hast caused me to hope.

50 This is my comfort in my affliction: for thy word hath quickened me.

GOD SAID, Romans 5:3-5:

3 And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;

4 And patience, experience; and experience, hope:

5 And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.

GOD SAID, Hebrews 11:1:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

GOD SAID, Hebrews 6:18-19:

18 That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us:

19 Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil;

MAN SAID:  Where are all the “marvelous truths” these believers say they have found in their Bible?  Show me just one! 

Now you have THE RECORD. 

 

 

 

References

Authorized King James Version

GodSaidManSaid, “Empowering Words”

GodSaidManSaid, “Nocebo, Placebo, and You”

GodSaidManSaid, “Secrets and Demonstrations of Power-Speaking”

Vance, E., “Why Nothing Works,” Discover, July/August 2014

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