Everything we are is a result of our thoughts.
—BUDDHA, DHAMMAPADA
The birds of worry and care flying over your head you may not be able to change. But you don't have to let them build nests in your hair.
—CHINESE PROVERB
Everything that seems to happen to me I asked for.
—DEEPAK CHOPRA
T rilok Nath was admitted to our hospital with severe chest pain one evening. He was thirty-eight years old, tall and handsome. He never smoked, and consumed alcohol only occasionally and in strict moderation. He had a history of high blood pressure but no heart disease in his family. Nevertheless, the pain was typical of a coronary event and both the ECG and echocardiograph showed definite evidence of a mild heart attack.
His wife Pritima, a good-looking young woman, was the only person who accompanied him to the hospital, and she continued to look after him after he was shifted from the intensive care unit to his room.
16 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
Trilok Nath made an uneventful recovery with no complications and no residual damage to the heart. We scheduled him to come for a checkup two weeks following his discharge. Instead, he landed in the hospital after only a week, with chest pains lasting longer than the previous time, along with a fall in blood pressure, excessive sweating, and his ECG showing marked changes with a significant missing of beats. This time he took longer to recover from the attack, and seemed very anxious and depressed when he was shifted to the intermediate care room.
As I entered his room the next day on my rounds, I saw a woman with two young children. She was introduced to me as Geeta, the wife of Mr Trilok Nath! Pritima, the woman who had been with him before, was not present, though I had seen her that morning as well as during the four or five days he had been in intensive care.
On subsequent days, I noticed that even during visiting hours, only one of the two women would be present in his room at a time. I didn't know whether they organized it that way or it was coincidental.
I soon discovered that indeed our patient was suffering from “Two Wives Syndrome." He was in a state of constant depression in the presence of either of the “wives," and when neither one was with him.
I knew that any anxiety or grief lurking in his mind was not good for him and could be very damaging to his chances of a full recovery, so one day when he was alone in his room, I asked him if he knew what was causing his depression. After a little hesitation, he broke down and told me the story.
"I married Geeta fifteen years ago,” he said, “and I had two fine children from her, the boy and girl you saw with her this week. She was a simple, good housewife, a good mother, and she loved me quite devotedly. We lived in Punjabi Bagh [an exclusive suburb in west Delhi].
“Not long after we were married, I became friendly with Geeta's younger sister Pritima. She was a lecturer in a college in south Delhi and lived in an apartment there, all by herself. At
first we were just friends. But in due course the intimacy developed further, and we began living together as husband and wife.
In the morning, I would leave my house early and spend some time with Pritima on my way to work. Then I would stop and spend part of the evening with her before returning home. After some time, I started staying some nights in her apartment. I would tell Geeta that I had to go out of Delhi on business."
For thirteen long years, Trilok Nath successfully fooled his wife and lived with both sisters. Gradually his attention to his wife dwindled to a minimum. Then, one evening, when he was supposed to be away in Bombay on business, Geeta paid a surprise visit to her sister and found them together. From that
moment onward, Geeta knew that her husband had no concept of loyalty to her.
Though Trilok Nath now lived almost entirely with Pritima, he never really thought of getting a divorce from Geeta and remarrying. "I was never sure I really loved Pritima, or if it was only sensual pleasure, he admitted. I asked him if he was happy living with her. Again, he wasn't sure.
Happiness is not in the object, it is in the mind. A dog chews a dry bone until he hurts his gums and blood comes out. He licks the blood and thinks he is chewing on some juicy meat. Trilok Nath was licking that juicy blood, knowing in his heart of hearts that he was not doing the right thing. How could he really be happy?
It is a legal offence in India to marry a second wife, although some people do it anyhow when they realize that the first wife is too timid to move the court. Geeta was not very educated and Trilok Nath knew she would not confide in her relatives, not even her parents. They wouldn't be able to support her if her husband left her in the lurch, and she was worried about the future of her two children.
None of the three persons involved was at peace, but the worst sufferer was Trilok Nath. "All along I felt guilty underneath, but ever since things have been out in the open, I've realized that I've followed a wrong path by living with my
18 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
sister-in-law. I've cheated my wife and neglected my children, and the feelings of guilt are with me all the time, day in and day out.
I had noticed earlier that whenever his wife Geeta visited him, he felt his heart missing heats, and the bedside monitor too showed a missing of heartbeats and ECG changes indicating lack of blood supply. The feeling of bearing a heavy weight on his chest sometimes got so bad that he felt as if an elephant was sitting on him.
I knew now that his feelings of guilt were eating him up, and that this was the cause of his two heart attacks. Unfortunately, we didn't yet know the solution; he appeared to be caught in a web of circumstances, a web that he had created.
Coronary angiography revealed that there was a 70 percent narrowing of one of the three major coronary arteries. Apparently stress caused a spasm in the blocked part of the artery, causing further narrowing; this reduced the blood supply to a portion of the heart and precipitated the attacks. The situation warranted dilation of the artery by balloon angioplasty, and we decided to go ahead with it. Trilok Nath wanted to go home for three days to sort out some affairs. He was sent home on medication and was asked to return to the hospital on the fourth day for the procedure.
In those three days, a lot of problems arose for Trilok Nath. Pritima demanded that he marry her immediately, so that in case something happened to him during the operation she would inherit part of his property. She brought her lawyer to demonstrate the urgency of her position. The lawyer told Trilok Nath that if his first wife went to court after he married for a second time, nothing would happen.
"But the law says the husband can go to prison for seven to ten years for bigamy," Trilok Nath protested. "How can you say nothing will happen?"
“Most of the judgeships in India are still held by men, not women," the lawyer explained. “Therefore the courts behave in a lenient manner and arrange things so the husband gets out of the mess lightly. Some sort of compromise is always worked out."
Geeta didn't want to be a party to any discussion. She knew that as things stood, if anything happened to her husband she was the legal heir to the property, and she was not interested in making any changes to her status.
Then Pntima's lawyer suggested a way out. All Trilok Nath would have to do was convert to Islam, since a Muslim in India is permitted to have more than one wife. Then he could legally many Pritima.
With great reluctance, Trilok Nath succumbed to the pressure and agreed to the proposal.
The day before he was due to go to the hospital, but before either the ceremony of conversion to Islam or the marriage to Pritima took place, Trilok Nath suffered a severe heart attack and died on the way to the hospital. His already heavy burden of guilt had increased, as he did not feel it was morally right for him to convert to another faith simply to circumvent the law of the country and work his way out of his personal dilemma, rather than out of belief. But he didn't have the courage to tell Pritima he would not do it. The only way he found to escape his overwhelming guilt was to have a heart attack and die. He was his own judge, he was the jury, and he alone condemned himself to the punishment.
The Power of Choice
As the story of Trilok Nath so clearly illustrates, our thoughts and feelings can lead either to happiness or unhappiness, sickness or health. Our thoughts determine whether we are marching in the direction of misery or heading for health and happiness.
It's no secret that thoughts and feelings influence behavior. Self-doubt, guilt, hopelessness—thoughts like the ones that must have gone through Trilok Nath's mind in his final hours, "There is no solution to my problem, no way out, I don't even deserve to find an answer because of what I have done"—such thoughts lead to disaster.
Researchers say that if a person devalues himself or sees
20 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
himself as a failure, that is how it will be. Visualize and anticipate failure, and you will almost certainly fail. This is called a self fulfilling prophecy"—if we don't believe we will succeed, if we don't believe we can be truly happy, we don't really try; thus we prove ourselves correct.
On the other hand, positive thoughts, self-confidence, faith in life and in God, a belief that we can discover or create a way to fulfill our needs or desires—such thoughts fuel us with energy for creative action. So our thoughts determine our direction and our likelihood of success.
There is also a direct link between our thoughts and our health. Until recently, the Western scientific model of the connection between mind and body was rather vague. Descartes and other famous philosophers of the seventeenth century helped build walls between the body and mind. They asserted that the two are segregated, divided into separate realms, one abstract, one material, with nothing connecting them. Over the years this became the accepted dogma of science.
But many people before and since did not entirely agree. Aristotle, nearly 3,000 years ago, was among the first to suggest a connection between our mental state and our health. He said that "soul and body react sympathetically to each other.” Charles Darwin believed the mind-body connection was important. And Sir William Osier, one of the founders of modern medicine, declared about one hundred years ago that our mind has a lot to do with recovery or failure to recover from disease. People everywhere intuitively sense the truth behind statements like "There is no physician like cheerful thought for dissipating the ills of the body."
However, it is only in the last ten to fifteen years that medical scientists have started seriously rethinking this question. A series of discoveries has demonstrated that three aspects of the body
— the central nervous system, which is the seat of thoughts,
ideas, perceptions, emotions, and memories;
the immune system, which defends the body from infection;
and
— the endocrine system, which secretes powerful hormones
are not separate from each other as hitherto believed, but are intimately linked and interconnected. Professor Howard Friedman at the University of California at Riverside analyzed one hundred scientific papers that studied the relationship between people's state of mind and their physical health. He found that certain states of mind are very dangerous: If you are depressed, anxious, chronically pessimistic, angry, or irritable, your chances of getting a major illness are doubled. The stress hormones and other brain chemicals generated by these negative states of mind flood the body and reduce the ability of the immune system to fight disease.
Because of such findings, leading scientists such as Candace Pert, formerly of the US National Institute of Mental Health, believe that the walls erected between mind and body by materialistic science are crumbling. Pert asserts that there is no strong distinction between mind (the abstract thinking center), and the material, physical brain. Rather, there is "mind" or intelligence in every cell of the body. Even immune cells are "thinking" cells.
The quantum physicist David Bohm is of the opinion that the word "psychosomatic" should not be used any longer, as it perpetuates the concept that mind and body are different. Health and disease are never entirely physical or entirely psychological. A number of writers today are using the term "bodymind" to demonstrate this new understanding.
Important clues to confirm this view have come from recent advances in brain imaging techniques. Using these methods, scientists can now map and photograph the brain, revealing the workings of your mind, your thoughts and feelings.
Brain-scanning devices exploit the fact that when the brain goes to work performing the tasks that create our subjective world of thoughts and awareness, it consumes energy. The fifty
22 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
billion or so neurons in the brain are metabolically so active that while the brain accounts for just 2 percent of our body weight, it demands 15 percent of our blood supply and 25 percent of all the oxygen we breathe. Being conscious may feel effortless, but it is the single most energy-consuming thing we do.
Every thought we have involves the generation of electrical and magnetic fields, due to the firing of nerve cells. Every wave of this activity is accompanied by telltale surges of glucose consumption, local blood flow, and the activity of neurotransmitters. The brain-scanning imaging devices can "see," photograph, and map these microscopic fluctuations in the brain. What they see is that as our thought patterns change, so do the patterns of brain activity.
Thoughts as Events
The significance of this is simple but very profound: thoughts are not merely some kind of transient, purely mental abstraction; they are concrete, physical, electromagnetic events.
In the 1980s the technique of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) was first used to record brain activity during the thought process. Glucose tagged with radioactive isotopes was injected intravenously into volunteers while they were lying in the scanner, carrying out various mental tasks, such as solving a puzzle, recalling a happy event, or remembering a moment of anger. A ring of detector crystals then picked up the emitted gamma rays to create a photographic pattern, showing which parts of the brain were undergoing more and less activity.
As research evolved, it became quite clear that different parts of the brain are involved in different mental processes. When the mind is busy focusing careful attention, for example, a part of the frontal lobes (known as the anterior cingulate) "lights up." What is most important for our concern here is that the pattern made by the recall of anger is completely different from the patterns made by thoughts of compassion and love.
This is borne out by research into neurotransmitters (also
known as neuropeptides). Thus far, more than a hundred of these powerful biochemicals have been discovered. These molecules, sometimes called messenger molecules or "biochemical words," communicate to the entire body. At one time it was believed that these molecules just "talked" to the brain and nervous system. Now it is known that not only do they also talk to the immune system and the endocrine system, but those systems also produce messenger molecules, which talk to each other and to the nervous system.
The three systems are interlinked, which is why the science growing up around these discoveries is being called "psychoneuroimmunology." Clusters of receptor cells in the brain, stomach, and intestines, in the kidneys, in the heart, and throughout the body, all send and receive messages and talk to each other.
These messenger molecules don't travel in straight lines down the trunks of neurons; they circulate freely through the body's inner space. As Deepak Chopra points out, brain researchers have found cascades of these biochemicals, but unlike a stream these cascades have no banks; they flow anywhere and everywhere. Fearful thoughts produce cascades of fearful chemicals, angry thoughts produce angry chemicals, joyful, loving thoughts produce loving, joyful chemicals.
What this means is that it is harmful to your health to hate someone, to be jealous, or to harbor or foster any negative feelings and thoughts. The person you hate does not suffer. He or she may not even know about it. Not only are the thoughts of hatred or jealousy in you like a cancer, eating you up all the time, but also at the same time, the negative and unhappy thoughts are also being translated into "unhappy" neuropeptides, molecules that immediately signal the body to produce chemicals like adrenalin and noradrenaline, which in turn increase heart rate and blood pressure, raise cholesterol, and lower immunity. These stress the body, increase anxiety, and lead to disease.
Positive, happy thoughts produce neuropeptides that are the precursors of chemicals such as endorphins, which give us
24 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
a feeling of well-being and happiness. When such “happy molecules are flowing throughout your system, "talking to trillions of your cells, you manage stress well, raise your immunity, and thus prevent, retard, and even reverse disease.
Health and the Mind-Body Connection
Research has brought forth many examples to demonstrate how our thoughts profoundly affect and determine our state of health and happiness. One recent study, published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, on the ten-year survival of patients of breast cancer, revealed that survival was much longer in patients who had a "fighting spirit."
Patients who give up, or who have low self-regard, tend to succumb more readily than those who remain optimistic. Clearly an individual's self-esteem and "hope factor" play a very important part in one's life. One of my own cancer patients told me, "I have cancer, cancer does not have me. I am confident I can get rid of it." He has been doing very well now for many years.
It is truly amazing how our thoughts—even our subconscious attitudes—can influence our lives. One of the more remarkable statistics I have heard is that more heart attacks occur on Monday mornings than at any other time. Apparently there are many people who would rather die, or at least go to the hospital, than go to work. After an enjoyable long weekend, they simply don't want to go back to work, so they "decide" to have a heart attack. Of course other people, perhaps even with latent heart disease or other illnesses, love their work and enjoy it; this attitude generates neurotransmitters that increase their immunity and help keep the underlying disease in check.
Researchers are now trying to clone and synthesize the helpful, positive neuropeptides. I hope they succeed. But I believe that you can heal yourself more effectively by changing your lifestyle, and by engaging yourself in activities and relationships that raise waves of love, happiness, compassion, and other positive thoughts and emotions. Then, in a natural way, the right
type of molecules will be released in your system at the right time and in the right amount, without any side effects.
Our Thoughts Can Even Influence Whether We Live or Die
Deepak Chopra tells a moving story that occurred when he was still a medical student. He had developed a quiet rapport with an elderly patient, a peasant farmer who was dying of liver disease. When Deepak was to leave the hospital for the next stage in his studies, he went to the patient s room to say goodbye. “Now that you are leaving, I have nothing more to live for, and I shall die," the man said. It was probably true, as he had wasted away to about eighty pounds, but Deepak with all good intentions blurted out, “Don't be silly. You can’t die until I come back to see you again."
When Deepak returned a month later, he was surprised to see the patient's name on one of the doors, and rushed in to find the emaciated man curled on the bed in a fetal position. When the young doctor gently touched the old man, he turned his huge eyes toward him. " 'You have come back,' he muttered. 'You said I could not die without seeing you again—now I see you.' Then he closed his eyes and died."
This remarkable story reveals the power of the mind not only over sickness and health, but also over life and death itself. I have witnessed more than a few such instances in my medical practice over the decades. One of them involved a friend of mine.
Hari Nath was chief pathologist at our hospital. In earlier years we had been colleagues at the medical college in Pune, and I knew him well as an excellent pathologist, a conscientious worker, and a gentleman. He took a lot of interest in academic activities and got on well with all his colleagues. He was a home bird and spent all his spare time with his wife and two children, a boy and a girl.
One evening I was informed that there was an emergency in my waiting room. Upon opening the door I was shocked to find
26 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
Hari Nath lying on the floor, unconscious. I was told that he had been sitting in a chair waiting to talk to me when he suddenly fainted.
In a short while he came around. Apparently he had suffered a “vasovagal faint," which generally occurs either when you have been in a stuffy room for quite some time, or when you hear some very bad news.
When he entered my office, much to my surprise, Hari Nath started crying. He told me that his wife, Suraya, had had a fever and a sore throat for the last few days, so he tested her blood that afternoon to see if she had any bacterial infection. To his shock and horror, he found that she had acute myloid leukemia. Of several types of blood cancer, this is the worst, a type that strikes suddenly and with great force.
“I've just come from the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences," he told me. “I showed the slides to Professor Raman, an expert in blood cancer, and he has confirmed the diagnosis. Now I want you to please take over her treatment.”
I was flattered by his faith in me, but I am not an oncologist. “No," I said. "The best thing would be to take her to Tata Memorial Cancer Hospital in Bombay."
He did not agree. He felt that he couldn't leave his two children in Delhi and be away in Bombay for weeks at a time. Instead, he caught the evening flight to Bombay and returned the next day with a protocol of chemotherapy treatment laid out by the expert in blood cancer at the Tata Cancer Hospital.
Normally, blood cells are produced in the bone marrow. In this case, instead of normal cells, cancer cells are manufactured at great speed. The treatment consists of knocking off all the abnormal cells with very potent chemotherapeutic agents. In the process the normal cells also get destroyed, but it is hoped that the bone marrow will then start producing healthy cells instead of cancer cells. In some cases this very drastic form of treatment succeeds; a long remission may occur and the patient may become normal for a varying period of time.
During the procedure, as the few protecting white cells are
destroyed, the patient has to be isolated and the room kept sterilized to prevent the very real possibility of a severe infection. We created such a facility for Suraya, and treatment was started. After the first round of chemotherapy there was some improvement, but after the second round the bone marrow could not regenerate any white cells, and a few days later Suraya died of fulminant septicemia.
Hari Nath was a broken man. Everything had happened so quickly, and it was very difficult for him to believe that his wife was gone. In due course he found courage, or at least showed a lot of it. This helped his children pursue their studies. His son became an engineer and moved to the USA, and within about five years his daughter became a doctor and married a young man who lived in England.
Hari Nath was a lonely man now. He started losing weight, and one day, passing his hand over his abdomen, found that his liver and spleen were enlarged. He examined his blood himself, and found that he was suffering from chronic myloid leukemia: the same type of blood cancer that had taken the life of his dear wife Suraya, but not in the same acute form.
He went to England and visited his daughter for a few days. While there he consulted a top Harley Street specialist, who made some recommendations and advised him to watch his blood count; aggressive treatment did not seem to be called for at this point. Then he proceeded to the USA, visited with his son, and returned to Delhi—all without mentioning anything to anyone about his condition.
A few days later he suddenly became quite ill, and died of acute myloid leukemia. It seems that not only did he carry the disease in his mind for many years, but he also knew that his body was suffering from it for quite some time. But he postponed his death by pure will, harboring the dreaded cancer for years in a milder, chronic form until his children graduated and settled in life; then he paid them a last visit, and let go.
This is not as fantastical as it sounds. According to a study from the University of California at San Diego, mortality rates in
28 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
China dropped 35 percent the week before the Moon Festival, one of the most auspicious days in the Chinese calendar. When the festival ended, death rates climbed up again, and by a week later were 34 percent higher than the days before the festival.
Does this suggest that people can postpone their death (at least for some period of time) if they have a compelling reason? It seems so. Then, when the important situation has passed, or they think they have completed their mission in life, as Hari Nath believed, they yield to death willingly.
Faith and Healing
The ancient physician Hippocrates said, "Even though a patient may be aware that his condition is perilous, he may yet recover because he has faith in the goodness of his physician.” Faith in the doctor or in the treatment can indeed produce tremendous results for a patient. This has been proven by the administration of "placebos" and "nocebos."
A placebo is a dummy drug, such as a sugar pill, that is given to a patient, who is told that it is a powerful new medicine that will cure his condition. Research has clearly shown that a large percentage of patients respond to the "drug,” presumably because the doctor has told them it will work. A nocebo is exactly the reverse: it is a viable, proven drug that is given to a patient, but the patient does not respond because the doctor has signalled that the medication may not help him.
This research shows what many people have realized, that doctors have to be very careful when dealing with their patients. The fear in a doctor's eyes, Deepak Chopra writes in Quantum Healing, can be a terrible stroke of condemnation. The impulses from the patient's brain, which may have been telling him that he is definitely going to recover, will now convey that he may recover, which is quite a different thing. On the other hand, a doctor's reassuring words make all the difference in his recovery.
Medical statistics appeal to the head, but they can sometimes cause a great deal of trouble. I know of a cancer patient
who, after surgery and chemotherapy, had a long period of remission and was doing very well until one day his family physician showed surprise. He told the patient he was amazed to see him do so well for six years, because according to the statistics patients like him don t survive for more than two to three years. Within the next two weeks the patient started to feel unwell, and was soon found to have a recurrence of his cancer with widespread metastases.
An apparently healthy, normal man with no symptoms went for a routine checkup. His stress test showed some minor changes, and his doctor suggested a diagnostic coronary angiogram. Although the angiogram showed a not very significant narrowing of two of the coronary arteries, the cardiologist told him that it would be safer to have bypass surgery than to be on medication, as he could have a heart attack at any time.
That night, the patient couldn't sleep because of the anxiety, and from the next day on, he started having angina. It was real angina, because emotional upsets can cause severe spasm of the coronary artery with even a small underlying narrowing.
Adi Shankara said "we grow old and die because we see other people grow old and die." Once the patient knows he has heart disease or cancer, he becomes worried and anxious, because he has heard of or seen people die of their disease. If, on top of that, doctors start telling him statistics, who knows what can happen? That is why the doctor must be careful to uplift the patient and provide encouragement and love.
Positive Thinking Helps
In addition to faith in the doctor or the treatment, other mental factors seem able to activate the body's healing intelligence, factors such as belief in one's own powers of self- healing or the sheer desire to continue living, perhaps in order to care for one's children. The mental/emotional framework is central to the person's recovery.
One of the main themes underlying Deepak Chopra's
30 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
teaching and research is that emotions are not just fleeting events in mental space, they are expressions of the fundamental stuff of life. In all ancient traditions, the breath of life is equated with the spirit, and to raise or lower someone's spirits is correspondingly reflected in the body. The body is capable of producing any biochemical response once the mind has triggered the appropriate suggestion; wherever a thought goes, a chemical goes with it.
What, then, is the link between belief and biology? We have just begun to explore what will surely be one of the great themes of medical research in the upcoming decades. And what could be more important? For each person holds in his hands the unbounded potential for shaping his health and aging process. He only has to free himself from his preconceptions regarding disease and the eventual degeneration of the body, liberate his mind from conditioned concepts. Then he can, as the Rig Veda says, move with the infinite in Nature's power, hold the fire of the soul, and life, and healing.
Zest for Life is Healing
During my more than half a century of medical practice, I have often seen the power of the mind help in healing and recovery. Quite a few patients, after an acute heart attack that could have crushed their spirit and their zest for life, have demonstrated a fervent will to live and gone on to live long and well.
Arun Gupta, thirty-seven years of age, was rushed to our hospital with a massive heart attack. His pulse was thready and irregular, and his blood pressure so low it could not be recorded. He was also in a state of cardiogenic shock, a dangerous condition that more often than not ends in death.
Cardiogenic shock occurs when one of the major coronary arteries is blocked with a clot. A large chunk of the heart muscles is without blood supply and oxygen, and its function is grossly impaired. Because of the clot, not enough blood is thrown into circulation during the heart's contraction. The brain gets
insufficient blood, and thinking is impaired. The kidneys also don t receive enough blood supply, so urine output falls and eventually a complete kidney shutdown can occur. The heart itself doesn't receive enough nourishment and oxygen, and unless the jeopardized area is salvaged by restoring its blood supply, the heart may stop working and the patient can die.
Medications were given to Mr. Gupta to relieve his pain and raise his blood pressure, and streptokinase was administered to dissolve the clots in the clogged artery of the heart. But there was no response, no improvement.
After three hours I walked out of the intensive coronary care unit to find his wife and relatives waiting. One of the relations was a doctor. After listening to my report on Mr. Gupta's condition, the doctor said, "I know that once a heart attack patient goes into a state of cardiogenic shock, his chances of recovery are remote. But could you tell me what percentage of such patients recover?"
I told him that according to the statistics available from various studies, 90 percent of this type of patient don't recover.
"Then the outlook seems obvious, chances being almost zero,” he said. Listening to the pronouncement made by the wise doctor, Gupta's wife started crying.
I have never been one to be carried away by statistics when faced with a seriously ill patient. He may be one of those ten in a hundred who come out of cardiogenic shock, and if he is, as far as he is concerned, the statistic is 100 percent recovery.
I admonished the doctor for pronouncing the prognosis on our behalf, and assured Mrs. Gupta that we never give up and were providing her husband with the best intensive treatment available. I also urged her to invoke God's grace for her husband's recovery.
After another few hours, Mr. Gupta started showing signs of improvement. From the second day onward, although there were episodes of pain and some breathlessness, he was definitely on the road to recovery.
I learned that he was generally in good health but that he
32 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
had developed some unwise habits. For two years he had been smoking, and although he was a vegetarian, he consumed a large quantity of deep-fried "junk food" such as samosas and pakoras, as well as sweets. He also never did any exercise and lately had been under great mental stress because his business partner had cheated him.
Before he was discharged, we had a long chat, and I saw that he was one of those people who would readily comply with suggested lifestyle changes. In addition to his own willingness to change his habits for the sake of his health, he had the complete support of his wife, brothers, and friends.
On the basis of our talk, Mr. Gupta started regular morning walks, and leaned heavily toward a sattvic diet, free from fat and sugar, full of fruit and green vegetables. He started regular daily yoga asanas, pranayama, and meditation.
The stress factor in his life was further reduced when his brothers helped him sort out the problem with his business partner. His life was smooth sailing now.
"While I was in the hospital it was like traveling in a dark tunnel, with no light in sight. Now it is sunshine all over," he remarked a few weeks after his heart attack. I wanted to do a treadmill test on him, so that we could plan his further management and treatment. I thought a coronary angiogram, and then a balloon angioplasty or bypass surgery might well be in order.
"Give me at least three months to consolidate my gains and then you can do any tests you want on me," he said. "I am sure you'll find that I won't require any surgery."
We tested him three months later. Just before his discharge from the hospital, a color Doppler echo had shown a clot lying inside the heart. A repeat of the test now showed no clot at all. And his treadmill test was only mildly positive. He had been correct: surgery was indeed unnecessary, and I congratulated him on his achievement.
Mr. Gupta persisted in his changed lifestyle, and a year later repeated the treadmill test, which this time was completely negative. Now, nine years later, he continues to enjoy his routine
of exercise, meditation, and simple sattvic food. He has been off medications of every kind for the last six years.
Mainstream medicine's official position is that a sick artery follows its own course of degeneration. No matter what you might believe, think, or do—so goes the official gospel—such arteries relentlessly pursue their grim course, worsening a little every day, eventually becoming blocked and strangulating the heart muscle.
But Dean Ornish (author of Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reveising Heart Disease ) had his patients use simple yoga exercises, a daily walk, meditation, and a low-fat diet and proved scientifically that heart disease can be reversed. A deposit of cholesterol plaque looks solid, but like everything in the body, it is alive and changing. New molecules drift in and old ones drift out; new capillaries may develop to bring oxygen and nourishment to the heart muscle. Purification and healing can take place.
Mr. Gupta has been entirely successful in reversing the state of his heart arteries by effecting some simple changes in his lifestyle. You can do it too.
Your Life is in Your Hands
Every year, half a million Americans, 180,000 Britons and three million Indians die from heart attacks as a result of atherosclerosis, in which the coronary arteries that carry blood to the heart are progressively clogged with fatty deposits until insufficient blood reaches the heart, and the person has a heart attack. The only widely accepted "cure" for this dangerous situation today is to increase the flow of blood through the arteries either by balloon angioplasty or bypass surgery.
For years now, I have been prescribing lifestyle changes to my patients, trying to impress upon them that if they adopt the regimen outlined in Dean Ornish's book, they stand a good chance of avoiding bypass surgery. Some give the program a try, adhere to it well, and benefit tremendously. One sixty-five-year- old man with triple vessel disease who would not agree to have
34 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
bypass surgery is doing very well on this regimen, showing steady improvement over two years. He and other patients have understood how lifestyle changes can benefit their heart and their overall health, and are acting on their understanding.
There are, of course, patients who argue that these lifestyle changes are all right in theory, but not in practice. Some complain that the regimen is too drastic, a charge made by many “mainstream" physicians attached to the high-tech (and wellpaying) surgical methods. Replying to an interviewer who brought up this issue, Dean Ornish replied, “I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered too drastic, but it is medically conservative to cut people open."
These natural recommendations—a lighter, purer diet, some meditation, regular exercise, and simple yoga stretches— are gentle and noninvasive. Compared to surgery or even to the side effects of cholesterol-reducing drugs, these practices are safe, natural, and simple. But they do require that the patient do something more than pop a pill or lie down on a table and surrender to the surgeon's knife.
Many patients, conditioned to swallowing pills, continue to want a quick fix. Some simply won't agree to change their lifestyle. They don't want to learn the art of meditation, or alter their familiar diet even though it has given them heart disease; they don't want to take the trouble to walk for half an hour every day. They want "a pill for every ill.”
Those who willingly adopt a healthier new routine usually start enjoying not only how they feel, but also the program itself, and they soon begin to benefit from it. It is clear to me that this program, especially meditation, can prevent, retard, or even reverse heart disease.
As I mentioned, plaque in the coronary arteries may look solid, but it is actually alive and changing. When “negative" molecules are replaced by “happy" molecules through yoga asanas and meditation, the body's biochemistry changes and you can begin to unbuild the blocks previously built in the arteries of your heart.
The low fat vegetarian diet may well be a major factor in the success of Dean Ornish's program. But I believe that what you eat matters, but what is eating you up matters much more. From that perspective, the main role in reversal of heart disease is played by a quiet mind, attained and maintained by regular meditation, which puts you in touch with the finer levels of consciousness and opens the channels of healing.
Your health, as with so much in life, happens the way you want it, the way you set it up. The choice is yours. Your life is in your hands.
. | |