May 22, 2024 – When it involves your health, attitude is essential – whether you’re just having one other migraine or have received a serious cancer diagnosis.
This is the consensus of a growing variety of research studies that find that our Mindset – fundamental assumptions that result in expectations and behaviors – affect the outcomes.
In some of the recent studies, researchers told some migraine victims that they were going to take part in a study on migraine headaches. Other migraine victims were told that they might be the “healthy controls” to research dizziness. After watching roller coaster videos, patients in the primary group reported more dizziness (which many migraine victims complain of) and said they suffered from headaches more days monthly than patients within the “healthy control group.”
In other words, patients with migraines reported fewer headaches one month after watching a video which will have triggered their migraines.
The conclusion, in response to study leader Hauke Basedau, MD, of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany, shouldn't be to attenuate the very real pain of migraines, but that each researchers and medical staff should Effects of suggestion, and the impact of the expected roles on each research and health outcomes. The results, he said, provide insights “that are not only critical for academic purposes but also have practical implications in clinical settings.”
The effects of mindset on migraines, cancer, exercise, carpal tunnel surgery, chronic kidney disease, and lots of other conditions have been studied.
The link between a healthy mindset and higher outcomes is so strong that researchers at Stanford University developed a training program called Medicine Plus Mindset to show healthcare providers how one can assess and improve their patients' mindset. And in case your doctor isn't aware of the importance of mindset, you may learn to enhance your individual.
Mindset matters: Research summary
Numerous studies examining the connection between mental attitude and health include:
- Recently diagnosed cancer patients who accomplished an interactive online program called the Cancer Mindset Intervention had higher overall health-related quality of life, coped higher, and suffered fewer physical symptoms than patients in the standard care group. Stanford researchers The program featured videos of cancer survivors talking about their challenges and changing their mindset.
- In one other study of 273 survivors of breast or gynecological cancer, those that had their Cancer diagnosis a catastrophe, health-related quality of life was lower 4 years after diagnosis than amongst those that viewed the disease as either manageable or as a chance (e.g., a time to face a brand new challenge or embark on a brand new life path).
- Patients undergoing wrist surgery that is taken into account Carpal tunnel release who had high expectations of treatment and knowledge in regards to the disease had higher outcomes after 6 months than those that didn't. Depression and extreme fear of pain were already known to predict poor outcomes.
- Mindset predicts whether individuals with knee osteoarthritis will develop an exercise habit as really useful. In one study, individuals with knee osteoarthritis Exercise described as fun, nice, sociable, or indulgent were more more likely to report exercising when the survey was repeated 3 weeks later. Attitude was related to higher activity levels even when health, osteoarthritis symptoms, and demographic characteristics were controlled for.
- The right attitude is crucial to reducing weight and maintaining it, says one Opinion poll of greater than 6,100 participants in a national weight-loss program who lost a median of 54 kilos and maintained their weight for 3.4 years. They reported that they persevered despite setbacks and, after reducing weight, had less pain, higher body image and health, and more confidence to remain the course.
Stanford's Medicine Plus Mindset program
Stanford researchers who've long studied the results of mindset trained 186 health care providers and staff at five primary care clinics within the San Francisco area using the university’s Medicine Plus Mindset program after which reported in a recently published Report. While many training programs give attention to helping health care providers develop empathy and communication with patients, “I don't know of any other physician training programs designed to help physicians use patient mindsets in their clinical practice,” says Dr. Kari Leibowitz, a health psychologist in Amsterdam who conducted the study with colleagues while she was an undergraduate at Stanford.
The goal, she said, is to coach health care teams to “dig deeper” into a number of the specific mindsets that help patients, resembling understanding the diagnosis, and likewise what they will do to enhance their health outcomes. Health care providers and their staff attended a two-hour session to learn more in regards to the impact of mindsets on health outcomes and techniques for influencing patient mindsets of their practice. They reported back on that in a one-hour follow-up session.
The key areas, Leibowitz said, are the patient's attitude toward diagnosis and illness, toward treatment, toward their body and feelings, and toward caregivers. Health care providers can influence all of those areas, she said, and sometimes with quite simple gestures or conversations. For example, “When a doctor hands a patient over for a blood draw, [saying about that team member]”You are in good hands. She is the very best.”
The training involved the entire practice staff, she said, and it had a big impact on health care providers who were not physicians. She recalled one physician assistant telling researchers, “It made me realize that I, too, am a part of the patient's healing process.”
In real life: Patients talk about their changed mindset
In 2010, Jenn Powell of Orange County, California, woke up unable to speak or move. “I assumed it was a stroke,” she said. An emergency examination and tests by a neurologist yielded the sobering diagnosis: multiple sclerosis. At first it was a so-called relapsing-remitting disease with phases of relapse and then recovery, and then it became secondarily progressive, with the condition steadily worsening.
The pain and loss of mobility were a big challenge, Powell said. And she knew life would never be the same. She made one change in her mindset early on: “I'm not going to Machu Picchu (a lifelong dream on my bucket list). But I'm not going to throw the bucket away.” When necessary, she also uses what she calls a mantra for the day, for example: “My legs hurt. But I actually have them.”
When she became nervous about having to take another medication, she decided to look at the additional medication as a roadblock. “I didn't know what that roadblock was, but it surely was higher than the roadblock [of the medications she was on not working well enough.]”She also used to disapprove of the need for any kind of aid. “Now I see it as a tool for freedom.”
She also has a new goal: As a writer for Multiple Sclerosis News Today, part of BioNews, an information resource for rare disease patients, she provides insight to others who share her diagnosis. “As a healthy, robust person, I used to be much unhappier in my 20s than I'm today at 55 with MS.”
The right attitude and mindset also help Steve, a Southern California resident in his 60s, manage multiple diagnoses, including type 2 diabetes, arthritis, weight issues and polycystic kidney disease. He asked that only his first name be used for privacy reasons. One major challenge is multiple kidney cysts that require treatment.
He said that on seven occasions, “I actually have had long needles stuck in my side to empty several cysts in my kidney.” Under ultrasound guidance, the cysts are suctioned out and then injected with alcohol to prevent recurrence. His attitude: “I'm overcoming all adversities. I'm alive.” He also stresses how lucky he is to have his doctor, whom he describes as a “class doctor.”
Change your mindset, change your health?
One of the simplest strategies for improving our mindset, says Leibowitz, “is to simply say out loud the mindset you want to adopt.” For example: “This [diagnosis, treatment] is manageable. I feel bad now, but I will feel better later.”