According to it defines Oakley Ray, professor of Psychiatry and Psychology of the Vanderbitt University (the USA), which we called mind is the result of the operation of the brain: the thoughts, the beliefs, the ideas, the hopes, and even the emotions and feelings, are from electrical and chemical activities that take place in the nervous cells of the brain.
The mind (or the activity of the brain) is forward edge that has the body to defend itself against the disease, the aging and the death, and in favor of the health and the well-being.
Everything what we thought and everything what we create it as much has positive effects as negative on our physical health.
The most recent investigations give to unquestionable evidences of the interactions mind-brain-body at molecular and cellular level (neurotransmitters, hormones, citoquinas) that can hit on the health and the quality of life of the individuals.
Hipócrates said that it is more important to know the patient who has a disease that to know the disease that has the patient. Indeed, from the classic medicine it is recommended to put the approach in the patient, in each patient in particular considering it like a unique and unique individual.
The quality of the good medicine is in the quality of the human interaction, that one that arises from the relation between the doctor and his patients.
Another great one of the medicine, Galen of Pérgamo, observed more ago than 1800 years that the majority of the people consulted who it did not have any bad physicist.
Much more recently, in a study realized in the American Medicine Academy (1991) thousand consultations to clinical doctors were analyzed and it inquired that only a 16% of those people had some objetivable physical problem.
People do not only go to the doctor because she hurts something to him. They want that they pay attention to them, listens to that them they include/understand and them in some suffering that not very often it has to do with something objective of the body.
The mental attitude of the individual has much to do with its situation before the disease or the possibility of dying. Four centuries before Christ the Greek chronicler Tucídides observed that the most terrible thing is the desolation in which falls people when account occurs that contracted a disease since in those circumstances it adopts a desperate attitude and it loses the resistance power.
A clear reference to the different possibility from fight against the disease between the optimist that surely will live more, and the pessimist is seen in it that will see worried the process of its death.
And that is because what we create and what we felt influences our corporal state like increasing strongly or diminishing our defensive biological resources and with them our possibilities of health or death.
The roll of the patient in the process of its treatment has changed because it has won in importance at the same time as the roll of the doctor no longer is the one of the “supreme being” who all cures, but must interact with the patient: explaining, teaching, transmitting abilities and contained forts of hope. The doctor transforms itself into a collaborator of the patient to face together the disease.
Studies realized during the last decade demonstrated statistically that whichever major is the education and instruction reached about the patient, minor is their index of mortality. The existence of religious beliefs has even meant important reductions in percentage of complications or deaths in patients submissive cardiovascular surgeries.
This test once again the power of the mind: the beliefs, the effects produced by the idea that God loves to me, the support of the bonds (friendship-family) are all powerful forces when to fight against the disease because they increase to the security and the self-esteem.
The influence of stress is well-known also on the health and the disease. In investigations realized with medicine students submissive the usual stress during its examination periods, its immune defensive system studied and it concluded that during that east period system is depressed and consequently raises the possibility of contracting infections.
Another test of the influence of the mind on the affections of the body gives this simple game it of equations before diseases defined as incurable (like AIDS)
1) To accept diagnosis + OK the prognosis = reduced Time of sobrelife
2) To accept diagnosis + Defying and to reject the prognosis = prolonged Time of sobrelife more
Bond to say that the patients of the second group who rejected the bad prognosis of their disease from having the conviction to fight to live, unquestionablily live more.
A data than cannot more be ignored is that the people who have more connection with their friendly, their family or support battalions, have a lower index of mortality. She is that certain: the friendly mean good health and increase the longevity. And this note much more after the 60 years of age: the old women isolated without friendly or family, have the double of probabilities of dying before those that frequent friendships.
From all the exposed one it arises like conclusion that the power and the influence of the mind on the body before the health, the disease and the same death, is something absolute that is outside discussion.
The medicine and the doctors, if really we want to help our patients, we must have a superspecialized vision less, to move away than excessively it is centered in the biological thing and humanitarian to return our glance towards the mind and the heart from our patients.

Source:
Based on my experience of almost 29 years like doctor and on notes taken in the conference of Professor Oakley Ray in the Symposium the International of Psychiatry realized in Cordoba (Argentina)

Graciela E. Prepelitchi

“Six honest servants taught whatever I know to me; their names are how, when, where, what, who and why.” - Rudyard Kipling