“DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY, FEEL GOOD”
These six words are printed across the top of the calling card of actor Larry Hagman, who portrayed the nefarious, pugnacious character “JR” in the popular television series Dallas. After spending fifty years of his life drinking champagne and orange juice for breakfast and lunch, then continuing throughout the afternoon and evening with vodka and orange juice, Hagman finally burned out his liver, which collapsed and ceased functioning as a result of chronic alcohol toxicity. His only hope of survival was to have a complete liver transplant, an operation with statistically slim chances of success, especially for a life-long alcoholic in his late-sixties.
Nevertheless, Hagman survived the ordeal, and today he still flashes that winning roguish grin that made “JR” famous. Having restored his vitality and reformed his lifestyle, Hagman continues to enjoy his new way of life as much as he did his old ways. By applying his “Don’t Worry, Be Happy, Feel Good” philosophy as much to his present therapeutic recovery stage as he did to his former recreational drinking days, Hagman has managed to survive the hazards of both and enjoy one as much as the other. As Norman Cousins, another man who laughed his way to a complete recovery from a supposedly “incurable” disease, wrote in his memoirs, “The will to live is not a theoretical abstraction, but a physiologic reality with therapeutic characteristics.” So potent is the “power of positive thinking” that it can stimulate the body to cure itself of conditions that modern medicine regards as irreparable and fatal.
The “JR Attitude” of carefree, happy-go-lucky hedonism reflected in Hagman’s motto is a lot more than just a cheerful slogan. When you “don’t worry,” your adrenal glands don’t secrete stress hormones, such as cortisone, which suppress immune response and enervate the nervous system with hypertension. When you “be happy,” your brain secretes neuropeptides, the “happy hormones” that communicate directly with the glands of the endocrine system and signal them to “turn on the juice” of healing responses and other immune factors. The invariable result of this biofeedback between the neuropeptides produced by a happy mind and the healing hormones required for a healthy body is that you “feel good” both in body and in mind. This balanced state of health and happiness is sustained by specific neuropathways and endocrine channels through which these secretions communicate in every part of the body.
While the right attitude is without a doubt the most fundamental factor in health, as it is in all aspects of living, some things in life require technique and discipline as well, and detox is one of the most important of these practical matters. Detox is no tea party. The process is a tiresome, sometimes grueling experience, especially if you’re highly toxic when you start. As the internal cleansing process moves progressively into deeper layers of tissue and releases more and more toxic residues into the bloodstream for excretion, all sorts of unpleasant detox symptoms can manifest, including headache and body pain, insomnia and fatigue, fever and chills, irritability and anger. It is reassuring to know that the worse you feel during detox, the better the program is working for you and the more toxins you’re draining out of your body, but you still have to endure the process. It is also rewarding to realize that the cumulative toxicity from years of indiscriminate eating, drinking, chemical medicines, and other careless habits can be completely flushed out of the body, and much of the damage may be repaired with just a week or two on an intensive, disciplined detox program. Of course, following a detox program requires more than just the right techniques—it also requires the right attitude. And it calls for time, patience, and a period of real rest and relaxation.
Activating the complementary relationship between a happy mind and a healthy body is one of the great achievements made possible by the power of positive thinking. Today, the neuroimmunological link between a positive state of mind and a positive state of health has become known in modern medicine as psychoneuroimmunology, or PNI. In traditional, holistic medicine it has been recognized as a basic fact of life for thousands of years. The two thousand-year-old Chinese medical text known as the Internal Medicine Classic states, “If one maintains an undisturbed spirit within, no disease will occur.” In Maximum Immunity, Dr. Michael Weiner echoes the same premise in more technical terms when he writes, “By learning how to control our mind, subtle hormonal changes emerge that control our biochemical reality.”
Among the subtle hormonal changes stimulated in the body by the mind is the so-called placebo effect, whereby a patient who’s given a sugar pill, but is told that he’s taking a marvelous new medicine that will cure his disease, becomes so hopeful and happy that his mind triggers his own internal healing responses, and he completely recovers. The placebo effect is produced entirely by the healing biofeedback between “happy neuropeptides” from the brain and “healthy hormones” in the endocrine system. In many double-blind clinical trials to test new drugs, the placebo cures the patient just as often as the drug itself. Pharmaceutical companies regard this all-too-human healing response as an unfortunate nuisance and are quick to discount it as an insignificant quirk, but in fact a positive outlook is the first and most important step in curing any ailment, and the main “active ingredient” comes from the mind, not from a pill.
The corollary principle to the power of positive thinking is the power of pessimism and negative emotion, which is every bit as destructive to health and longevity as a positive attitude is constructive. Stress and all the negativity it engenders in the mind have become primary causes of disease and degenerative conditions throughout the Western world, as well as in many newly developed Asian societies. Cortisone and other stress hormones set the stage for heart disease, cancer, stroke, hypertension, chronic infections, ulcers, immune deficiency, and many other crippling conditions. Stress factors like cortisone have also been linked to high rates of suicide in modern industrialized countries. As Dr. Weiner points out in Maximum Immunity, “Psychological stress releases powerful hormones that suppress our immune defenses.” In Eat Right or Die Young, Dr. Cass Igram cites stress and negative emotions as the main causes of cancer and immune deficiency:
The role played by stress in the causation of cancer is so great that it would not be an exaggeration to say that 80 percent or more of cancer cases have their immediate origin in some form of mental pressure or strain. Grief, distress, fear, worry, and anger are emotions that have horrible effects on the body’s functions. Researchers have discovered that these emotions cause the release of chemicals from the brain . . . [that] have a profound immune-suppressive action. Scientists have traced a pathway from the brain to the immune cells proving that negative emotions can stop the immune cells dead in their tracks.
Just as the powers of positive and negative thinking have decisive effects on human health and longevity, so the “power” of proper pH has a strong influence on balance in body and mind. Alkaline blood and cellular fluids support a healthy body and promote a happy mind, while acidosis of the blood and tissues paves the way for disease and decay and gives rise to depression, tension, anger, fear, and other negative mental and emotional states. A good example of this response is the extreme state of acidosis suffered by many children today due to excessive consumption of refined sugar, starch, and dairy products. Not only does this sort of diet cause diabetes, obesity, tooth decay, and other physical defects but also the high acidity it produces in the blood and tissues is also a major factor in hyperactivity, attention deficit disorder, violence, depression, suicide, and other debilitating behavioral disorders experienced by so many Western children today. Doctors in the United States have responded to this growing blight of childhood malaise by giving these children powerful amphetamines and antidepressants to suppress their symptoms, but this chemical drug therapy only further aggravates the root cause of the problem and does nothing to cure it. Usually in such cases, a thorough detox and a complete realkalization of the blood and tissues, followed by strict dietary reform, are all that’s needed to correct both the physical and the mental and emotional disorders caused by chronic acidosis in children as well as in adults. For any real healing to occur, the state of the body and the state of the mind must be considered as two sides of the same coin and treated as inseparably linked aspects of the same conditions.
Almost everyone likes to “eat, drink, and be merry,” but few of us wish to “die tomorrow.” The human body is a complex engine that serves us both as a work horse and as a vehicle for enjoying life’s pleasures. It is therefore important to learn how to operate and maintain the body properly, so that it doesn’t break down in the middle of life’s journey and leave you stranded in a wheelchair or sickbed. The human body is genetically designed to last for about 120 years, and barring accidents and other unforeseen events, the body can remain fully functional for the full term of its natural 120-year lifespan—as long as it has been properly cared for along the way. There’s no point in living long unless you are able to remain active and continue enjoying life until the end, and that requires careful attention to the basic facts and functions of life.
One of the most important factors, and the one upon which everything else depends, is the right attitude, without which health cannot be maintained for very long and healing can never be achieved. Patients who have an “attitude problem,” whether it be cynical, resentful, angry, paranoid, pessimistic, or any other form of psychoemotional “disease,” must first purify their thoughts and detoxify their emotions before they can benefit much from any sort of physical cleansing therapies. Negative emotional and mental states, not only block the body’s detox and self-healing responses, they also produce a constant stream of toxic metabolites and acid-forming reactions, thereby negating the positive benefits of any healing therapy.
The human experience suggests that positive mental factors such as joy, love, and hope are even more decisive than therapeutic physical factors such as diet, herbs, and exercise in determining the state of human health and the length of human life. People who know how to relax and enjoy life, and who take “Don’t Worry, Be Happy, Feel Good” as their guiding motto, often live longer, healthier lives—even while eating, drinking, and living precisely as they please—than people who constantly worry about their health and dread death. With the right attitude, you can push your body to amazing limits in the pursuit of fortune and pleasure, then pull back from the brink of disaster and repair the damage just in the nick of time to enjoy your sunset years as well. Celebrating her ninetieth birthday in California in 2005, Cynthia Williams, still full of pep and the joy of living, offered her well-wishers this piece of sage advice: “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken.”
If you still have any doubts about the importance of “attitude” and the power of mind over matter in renewing one’s lease on a life nearly lost, write a letter to “JR” and ask him to explain the real meaning of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy, Feel Good!”