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1-Page Summary of The Brain’s Way of Healing
Overview
Modern medicine has made incredible progress in the past few decades. More diseases can now be treated and cured than ever before. Compared to a few centuries ago, there are many more options for people who have lost limbs or organs due to an accident. However, some diseases still cannot be treated because doctors don’t know how to deal with them. This doesn’t mean that nothing can be done about such ailments; they just need new treatment methods that haven’t been discovered yet.
Alternative medicine is a hot topic. The author will discuss miraculous cures, and how we can stimulate the brain to encourage healing.
As you read this book, you’ll learn why less physical exercise is better for your body; how our tongues can help us rewire our brains; and how Broadway singer Ron Husmann regained his voice.
Big Idea #1: Chronic pain is a neurological disease that can be reversed with visualization exercises.
Chronic pain is a serious problem that affects millions of people. It can be debilitating and difficult to treat, which makes it hard for patients to get relief from their symptoms. Doctors are also challenged in treating chronic pain because they don’t know the source of the pain or how to treat it effectively. The main cause of chronic pain is neurological damage, where damaged nerve cells continue sending out signals even after the body has healed.
Chronic pain can last for a long time. However, there is hope to treat it successfully. The author found that the brain areas responsible for processing pain are also stimulated by visual information. This knowledge led him to develop a visualization technique as an alternative to pain treatment and reduce chronic pain in patients who were unsuccessful with traditional treatments.
In order to reduce the pain he felt, Moskowitz would visualize a map of his brain and focus on areas where there were more neurons processing pain. He’d then visualize these neurons being transformed back into regular ones. This worked for him, so he started sharing this with other patients.
Big Idea #2: Parkinson’s disease can be defeated through moderate walking and conscious movement.
Our brains can overcome diseases. For example, John Pepper was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and believed that he could fight the disease by exercising more. He started to exercise every day but had to lower his weight and time on the treadmill because of fatigue.
But John wasn’t wrong to think that exercise could help with Parkinson’s disease. It just took him a while to realize it. He eventually found out about Walk for Life, and when he first heard about it, he thought the program was too easy, but his wife convinced him otherwise.
John had Parkinson’s disease, but he was able to alleviate his symptoms by focusing on the way he moved. He did this during a moderate walking program in which he walked eight kilometers per session at an average speed of 7 minutes per kilometer. John also found that conscious movement is especially good for Parkinson’s because it enables the brain to fight degeneration. During those walks, John paid close attention to how he moved and taught himself how to correct his gait by straightening out his arm posture, coordinating arm swings, and putting more weight on his left foot.
Parkinson’s disease primarily targets the basal ganglia, which controls automatic functions like walking. So, by thinking about them consciously, the patient can move control of those movements to other areas of the brain associated with conscious actions.
Parkinson’s disease caused problems with the basal ganglia, which is responsible for motor control. However, it didn’t matter because he was able to compensate by using his frontal cortex to function normally.
