I took this photo on top of Whistler Mountain in British Columbia, Canada. Known as the ‘walls of ice’, these towering corridors of snow are carved out each spring, as crews clear the alpine access roads for summer sightseeing. It felt surreal and it elevated my expectations of the hikes I was about to embark on. I was richly rewarded!
Today’s Brain Booster is Elevate your expectations!
Last week I spoke about how our beliefs become our biology — especially how negative ageist stereotypes actually drive how we age. And I provided a 4-step plan to ACE your senior years — ACED being an acronym for Awareness, Curiosity, Evidence, and Doing things that make you feel you’re thriving rather than merely surviving.
Today we’re going to build on that and discover how our mind can mend our maladies.
When you let go of limiting labels and assumptions about symptoms, pain and disease, you boost your brain’s ability to activate healing. And the most direct way to do that is to elevate your expectations.
In every situation you find yourself in, ask yourself, ‘What would be the best possible outcome?’ And imagine it happening to you — because it could.
You’re not trying to convince yourself that the best possible outcome will happen. You’re entertaining the possibility that it might happen.
Even a small glimmer of hope can significantly boost physical healing by reducing stress, and changing how your brain processes pain and illness.
HOPE reduces cortisol and adrenaline, which calms inflammation, and strengthens your body’s natural immune system. Expecting a positive outcome triggers the release of endorphins and dopamine, which naturally block pain signals, and produce measurable symptom improvement in people with Parkinson’s disease. Optimism shifts your brain away from a constant fight-or-flight survival state, and into a rest-and-repair state. And feeling hopeful gives you the mental energy to eat better, stay active, and take whatever steps you can towards your recovery.
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Today’s HEALTH HEADLINE is placebos prove that our body holds a latent natural power — an innate ability to heal — that simply requires the right stimulus to awaken.
By changing what we believe, we trigger a cascade of chemical reactions that can restore our health and wellbeing — because the most powerful pharmacy on earth is already inside your mind.
In the 1940s, Dr Henry Beecher was serving as a military medic and anaesthetist in the United States Army, and during World War II, he was treating severely wounded troops on the front lines in Europe and North Africa. During a period of intense combat, the field hospital ran out of morphine, while heavily mutilated and traumatised soldiers continued to pour in and require immediate surgery.
Desperate to calm a soldier in agonising pain, Dr Beecher decided to inject the soldier with a saline solution (sterile salt water) and tell the soldier that it was a highly potent dose of morphine. To the medical team’s astonishment, the soldier immediately calmed down, his pain subsided, and he didn’t go into shock. So Dr Beecher started to use saline more often, and was actually able to perform surgeries on soldiers, using only saltwater and the power of suggestion. Over the course of his battlefield experience, Dr Beecher observed that roughly 40% of the soldiers reported significant pain relief from the fake morphine.
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What’s missing from modern medicine is recognising — rather than rejecting — the power of placebos to promote healing.
Now this is NOT about deceiving patients and prescribing fake medications, or pretending to operate on them instead of performing real surgery. It’s about telling patients how placebos work so the patient can use their own mind to mend their maladies. Because placebo pills can be effective even when the patient is told they are receiving a placebo! This is known as ‘open-label placebos.’ Doctors prescribe a completely fake treatment but tell the patient exactly what it is.
For decades, scientists believed the placebo effect depended entirely on deception. It was assumed that if a patient discovered their medicine was just a sugar pill, the illusion would shatter, and the physical benefits would instantly vanish. However, pioneering research by Dr Ted Kaptchuk at Harvard Medical School completely upended this assumption through his studies of open-label placebos (OLPs) — ie honestly prescribed placebos — where the bottle is actually labelled ‘placebo.’
Clinical trials showed that OLPs provide significant physical relief for chronic conditions like Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), lower back pain, migraines, and cancer-related fatigue — even when patients know exactly what they’re taking.
How on earth does this happen? You’ll have to tune in to find out.
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Today’s Whether Report is another question I’m frequently asked: I’ve heard that we only use 10% of our brain. Can you tell me whether this is true?
The short answer is NO. Brain scans show that we use almost all of our brain over the course a day. Even when you sleep, large parts of your brain are active. The 10% brain myth originated from a mix of misquoted psychology, early neuroscience limitations, and self-help marketing.
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Click here to watch the episode on my YouTube channel, or listen to Healing with Dr Helena on your preferred podcast platform. I’ll publish a new episode every Monday, and you’ll receive an email notification that morning. Please subscribe to my podcast or YouTube channel so that you don’t miss an episode, and send your whether questions to: podcast@drhelenapopovic.com
If you’re happy for me to play your voice on my podcast, you can provide an audio file. Otherwise, you can type your question for me to read out.
I very much look forward to answering your questions, and exploring how we can all build a smarter brain, stronger body and deeply fulfilling life.
Please share this Health-e-Byte with anyone who is interested in brain health!
