Health - The Chopra Foundation

Multi-institutional Collaborative Clinical Trial to Examine Health Benefits of Integrative Lifestyle Practices at the Chopra Center for Wellbeing

Self-Directed Biological Transformation Initiative (SBTI) study will use latest mobile health sensors and genomic/cellular/metabolomics biomarkers

Scientists and clinicians from seven research institutions have joined together for a first of a kind clinical trial on a whole systems approach to wellbeing. Such an in-depth clinically focused study is unique because previous research studies have typically examined the beneficial effects of individual wellbeing practices – such as meditation, yoga, or specific herbal preparations – few have taken anything like a whole systems approach which simultaneously includes a number of such practices to promote improved mind-body functioning. The Chopra Center for Wellbeing has been in the forefront of integrating whole systems approaches such as Ayurveda, meditation, yoga, massage, herbal treatments, and nutrition into programs for improving health and wellbeing.

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Getting Real About Brain Science – A Challenge to the Current Model (Part 2)

By Deepak Chopra, MD, Bernardo Kastrup, PhD, Menas C. Kafatos, PhD, and Rudolph E. Tanzi, Phd

Brain research could someday hit a dead end if we do not address the basic question of what the brain truly is. Assuming that we know what the brain is won’t work—not forever. In the first part of this series the assumptions of neuroscience were held up to the light, and it turned out that almost everyone in the field believes, without question, that the brain is a physical object that produces thoughts and feelings. Without this physical object ticking away inside our skulls, we wouldn’t have a mind–so the currently dominant belief system goes.

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Getting Real About Brain Science – A Challenge to the Current Model

By Deepak Chopra, MD and Bernardo Kastrup, PhD

It’s time to make up our minds about the brain. Every day, it seems, neuroscience announces new findings that uncover more and more of the brain’s secrets. The day cannot be far off, we are told, when the deepest mystery of all—how the brain produces consciousness—will be solved. At the risk of raining on everyone’s parade, such a claim may be entirely wrong. Let’s see why.

A recent paper, published in the prestigious journal Cell , poses a central question: “Why does a relentless stream of experiences normally fill your mind?” No one in neuroscience claims to have the answer—yet. This is a very familiar “yet,” a promissory note that says, “Stay tuned. Once we have enough data, consciousness will be explained once and for all.” This promise is the whole point of the Cell article, which sets its sights against the notion that consciousness is a “miracle” whose explanation is ultimately outside scientific investigation. It argues that by using a more sophisticated understanding of brain function, today’s progress will turn into tomorrow’s solution (the authors speak, for example, of awareness arising as the product of “a reciprocal exchange of information across multiple areas in the cerebral cortex.”)

If such steady progress is being made, why was it necessary to write an article defending the whole area of brain research as the key to unraveling the mind? Because the most basic assumption of neuroscience, the platform that supports all the talk about information, neuronal signals, activity in the cortex—literally the whole shebang—is wobbly. Everyone is assuming that the brain produces the mind in the first place. Knocking down this assumption isn’t likely to be funded by the federal government the way it is funneling $100 million into the Brain Activity Map. The only proof that the brain=mind assumption is wrong comes from philosophy, which most scientists, including brain scientists, dismiss out of hand.

How can thinking about the mind be better than gathering hard facts about the brain? Because data only has meaning given a certain way of seeing it. This point was made in the one book almost every college student reads (if they read any) in the philosophy of science,Thomas J. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, published in 1962. Kuhn shattered the notion of objective progress in science by arguing that given their starting assumptions, every scientific scheme for explaining Nature—what he called a paradigm—is right on its own terms.

This seminal insight went back to 1947 when Kuhn, then a graduate student at Harvard, was wrestling with how wrong Aristotle had been. Aristotelian physics was the first systematic explanation of Nature in mechanical terms, the cornerstone of Western science that made Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein possible. And yet a brilliant mind like Aristotle’s arrived at completely wrong conclusions about such basic things as why objects fall to earth or what heat is. Suddenly Kuhn had an epiphany: what we call Aristotle’s mistakes in fact weren’t mistakes. If you accept the starting assumptions behind Aristotelian physics, its description of Nature was valid.

Kuhn seemed to be saying that Aristotle was just as right as Newton, which to most people, including probably every scientist, makes no sense. In our time, the acceptance of scientific progress is all but universal, and the triumphs of modern technology are undeniable. Yet no one has rebutted Kuhn’s point that we view Nature through our own paradigm, our worldview, and that the history of science is a constant stream of shifting paradigms, one after another. There is no way to step outside the paradigm you totally believe in.

But what if our current paradigm happens to be absolutely right? A Theory of Everything has been on the horizon for decades, and we are told that it’s only a matter of time before the theory is complete. Kuhn’s point is that an absolutely correct theory, no matter how much data you feed into it, cannot be achieved. All you can achieve is the fulfillment of the paradigm you believe in. Eventually problems will arise that cannot be solved without shattering the present paradigm so that a new one can be formed.

The authors of the Cell article, along with the entire field of neuroscience, anchor their faith on the starting assumption that the mind must be explainable through the brain. They are turning their backs, then, on what the philosophy of science teaches.

1. Theories are right about what they include and wrong about what they exclude.
2. There is no such thing as direct, objective proof about any theory of existence (known in philosophy as ontology).
3. Data has no meaning unless it is interpreted, and interpretations are bound by the observer’s starting assumptions.

These three points are enough to level the playing field when it comes to competing worldviews and scientific paradigms. In a word, everyone has a story, and everyone believes their story. Even contradictory stories can be valid and fit the same data. This startling conclusion applies to any situation where competing stories are told: marriages when they break apart, defendants protesting their innocence in court, and the most sophisticated theories in science. Sticking to your story convinces you that you’re telling the truth when in fact you are just defending a way of seeing.

The starting assumption of neuroscience, that brain=mind, is particularly weak, but that’s the nature of paradigms as they start to crumble around the edges. Their proponents defend them more stoutly. There is absolutely no data to indicate that neurons can think; they merely light up on an fMRI as thinking occurs, which isn’t the same thing. You could construct a setup so that a 100-watt bulb lights up over your head every time you have a bright idea, but that doesn’t mean the light bulb caused the idea. Neuroscience ignores this obvious flaw when it arrives at the same false conclusion, using neurons instead of a light bulb.

The current state of confidence in neuroscience powerfully illustrates the inability of many scientists to step out of a particular way of seeing, regardless of how limited or problematic it may have become. Has science been making progress in understanding consciousness as an outcome of brain function? The authors of the Cell article think so, pointing to promising recent empirical results, all the while ignoring the fact that their interpretation of these results is entirely based on assumptions about the underlying nature of matter, metabolism, and consciousness itself. Thus the authors appear to take for granted that matter exists fundamentally outside consciousness; that metabolism is a purely material process; and that consciousness is somehow generated by metabolism. Were they to set aside their hidden assumptions and look again at the very same results, very different – and no less valid – conclusions could be extracted.

To give a simple example: It is assumed that when a person sees a red apple, the red light is real, in the sense that it exists outside our awareness. Moreover, one can point to activity in the visual cortex when the wavelengths of light corresponding to red strike the retina and get transmitted along the optic nerve. With precise, minute examination, the specific neurons that process color can be described in detail. And there you have it, a red apple is seen as a red apple.

It would baffle many neuroscientists to be told that nothing in this chain of reasoning actually tells us how the color red is perceived in our minds. To begin with, the redness of an apple doesn’t exist independently in Nature. To quote the eminent British neurologist Sir John Eccles, “I want you to realize that there exists no color in the natural world, and no sound – nothing of this kind; no textures, no patterns, no beauty, no scent.” Without a human observer, redness has no existence, nor any other quality we perceive “out there” in the world. This criticism of materialism is bolstered by another realization: No one has made the slightest progress in showing how the brain, a totally dark place filled with electrical and chemical activity, produces the sensation of light, including its colors. Photons are invisible. The quality of brightness is a mental creation. The brain isn’t bright; the visual cortex doesn’t contain a photo album of the images you see; the movie in your mind is projected on no physical screen.

The only thing that keeps alive the promise that the brain will one day explain consciousness is neuroscience’s blindness to any explanation other than the one assumed to be true in advance. The latest experiments in quantum physics have rendered all but untenable the notion that reality exists outside consciousness. (See Kim, Y.-H. et al. (2000) “A Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser,” described in detail in a Wikipedia entry devoted to it. An even stronger stand is taken by Gröblacher, S. et al. in “An experimental test of non-local realism,” which physicsworld.com discussed under the header “quantum physics says goodbye to reality.”). If all of reality is in consciousness, then obviously the brain – as part of reality – is also in consciousness, not consciousness in the brain. As such, a different way of seeing is required under which the brain is merely the image of particular processes in consciousness; the brain is not the generator of consciousness.

We said that the same data about the brain can be fruitfully interpreted through a new way of seeing, or what Kuhn would call a new paradigm. The next post in this series will explain how a new interpretation might work. Until mind comes first, neuroscience is like a car speeding downhill, exhilarated by the ride but not seeing the brick wall it’s heading toward around the next bend.

Photo Credit: Viktoriya via Shutterstock

(To be cont.)

Bernardo Kastrup has a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering and has worked as a scientist in some of the world’s foremost research laboratories, including the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the “Casimir Effect” of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). He has authored many scientific papers and four philosophy books: Rationalist Spirituality, Dreamed up Reality, Meaning in Absurdity, and Why Materialism Is Baloney. This latter book is a grand synthesis of his metaphysical views. Bernardo has also been an entrepreneur and founder of two high-tech businesses. Today, he holds a managerial position in the high-tech industry. In parallel, he maintains a philosophy blog, an audio/video podcast, and continues to develop his ideas about the nature of reality. Bernardo has lived and worked in four different countries across continents. He currently resides in the Netherlands.

A Better Way to Approach Pain, and America's Pain-Pill Epidemic

By Deepak Chopra, M.D., FACP, and P. Murali Doraiswamy, MBBS, FRCP, Professor of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina

You may have noticed headlines about the rise of prescription drugs as a major cause of addiction and death by overdose. Pain pills are overshadowed by illegal drugs like heroin and their dangers masked by a certain air of respectability. Yet America is in the midst of an epidemic of painkiller overuse as well as addiction. As a nation we constitute only about 5% of the world’s population, but we consume some 80% of the prescription drugs called opioids, the strongest and most addictive pain pills, that go by names like Vicodin, OxyContin, Dilaudid, codeine, and Percocet. We consume 99% of the global supply of a particular opioid called hydrocodone, which is used in combination with other drugs for pain relief but also cough suppression. In 2014 the FDA approved a new version of a pure hydrocodone despite the objections of its own medical advisory panel (which voted 12 to 2 against approval) and 30 states. Today opioid overdose deaths (one every 30 minutes) exceed deaths from motor vehicle accidents as well as the combined total of deaths by heroin or cocaine overdose.

How did we get here? The pain-relieving properties of opium have been known for thousands of years, but because of its dangerous side effects and addictive properties, it has generally been reserved for more severe forms of acute pain. This changed in the mid-90s when doctors became more lax about prescribing opioids over a longer period of time. Pharmaceutical companies launched marketing campaigns, and medical use of opioids in the US increased tenfold over the next two decades. This was a gamble between relieving the pain of patients and the risk of overuse, a gamble that obviously hasn’t paid off. Mounting evidence suggests that long-term opioid drug use triggers a vicious circle of continued pain and addiction. Citing the predictability of such an outcome, some counties in California and Illinois have sued the makers of opioid drugs for misinformation campaigns.

Pain has become the most common reason that people see doctors–more than 100 million Americans are reported to suffer from chronic pain, a number that exceeds the combined total of people suffering from diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia and stroke. Is there another way to resolve chronic pain besides the disastrous course we’re on?

The first step toward an alternative is to view pain as a mind-body experience that is highly subjective. As such it can often be approached through a phenomenon called “self-efficacy.” The brain contains many pain-relieving chemicals, and these can be triggered mentally, which is why taking a placebo leads to pain relief in a significant proportion of people. (The reverse is also true through the nocebo effect, where a harmless substance induces pain or fails to relieve it when the subject is told that this is the expected outcome.)

In a related example, people who thought they were getting expensive pain pills reported more pain relief than those who thought they were getting generic drugs even though both groups were given the same inactive placebo. Likewise, bigger placebo pills work better than smaller ones, and injected placebos work better than oral ones. In all of these findings, subjects are unwittingly calling upon the self-regulation of pain.

Nor is this just the mind playing a trick of us. Brain scans show that a placebo, when effective, changes the brain in the same way as do active pills, and these changes can be found in the spinal cord, not just the brain. The implications are strong for chronic pain over an extended period, too. Studies in arthritis patients have shown that the placebo effect can last over two years. In sum, self-efficacy is more powerful and more long-lasting than is generally realized, even among physicians.

If you suffer from chronic pain, where did it originate? Our latest understanding is that about half of our pain sensitivity is thought to be genetically determined and the other half by a mixture of variables: cultural and religious background, mood, past experiences with pain, and the surroundings (e.g. having a good support structure or not). Women feel pain differently from men, even as newborns, and are more likely to report painful medical conditions. African Americans tolerate experimental pain less than Whites, perhaps due to greater vigilance.

Some astonishing recent experiments at Oxford University have shown us a new way to treat pain using the inverted microscope, an instrument makes objects look smaller. The researchers showed that when people viewed their injured hands through an inverted microscope, they experienced less pain and even reduced swelling. What we see modulates how much pain we feel, more evidence that pain originates in the mind.

The point is that subjectivity plays a key role in the degree of pain each of us feels from the same stimulus. As the Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius noted in the second century A.D., “if you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” That’s why a child who’s about to have some blood drawn can be distracted with a new toy and feel no pain, and why long-distance runners can work through their pain from a desire to win. Pain can thus serve as a strengthening activity, the “no pain, no gain” motto of athletes.

Religion and spiritual background play their part, too. Researchers at Oxford University used brain scans to study how religious beliefs affect the pain response. Subjects were shown either an image of the Virgin Mary by a 17th-century Italian painter or a nonreligious painting by Da Vinci (Lady with an Ermine). After looking at each image for half a minute, they were given mild electric shocks and asked to rate their pain. Devout Catholics and atheists responded to pain similarly after seeing the Da Vinci painting, but devout believers rated their pain lower after seeing the Virgin Mary. Brain scans showed that the devout Catholics were engaging more of their ventromedial cortex, a brain region known to be involved in the placebo effect, which apparently made their pain less threatening.

In Hinduism pain affects the body, arising from a person’s karma, but it doesn’t touch the soul or higher self. In the Bhagavad-Gita Lord Krishna tells the warrior Arjuna that “weapons do not cut it, fire does not burn it…the self is indestructible and timeless.” An understanding that all pain is temporary gives believers mental strength to put it in proper context and to cope without falling into depression or self-blame. The nonreligious can achieve similar levels of coping through mindfulness, yoga or various forms of meditation. A 2011 randomized controlled three-month study of Iyengar yoga in 313 patients with back pain showed that how their backs functioned at 3, 6, and 12 months was superior to the usual medical-care group if they took up yoga.

Love is another potent pain reliever. Studies have shown that a 20-second hug can relieve pain and stress as effectively as prescription drugs; it also acts on nerve cells to release pain-relieving brain chemicals such as oxytocin and endorphins.

The upshot is that pain management has come a long way since the era when the placebo effect was shrugged off by most doctors as “not real medicine.” Placebos trigger a person’s own brain to relieve pain, but this happens unwittingly–the element of self-deception is present. Removing this element ruins the placebo effect, but it opens the way for conscious, self-aware techniques. Clearly we are not suggesting that anyone should take pain lightly or that you should treat any medical pain entirely on your own. No one should stop taking prescription opioid painkillers abruptly, either. What we are suggesting is that the long-term solution to America’s opioid drug epidemic lies in changing the self-efficacy environment. Painkillers should come after a patient has explored the power of the mind-body connection, keeping up the search for the best and most efficacious techniques. The field of self-care is burgeoning, and pain should become a central part of that if we want to end our dependency on drugs whose prolonged overuse is so dire.

Photo credit: heartcurrents.com

Deepak Chopra, MD is the author of more than 80 books with twenty-two New York Times bestsellers including Super Brain, co-authored with Rudi Tanzi, PhD. He serves as the founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing. Take a moment to check out ‘Self Directed Biological Transformation Initiative – SBTI’ on Indiegogo and share it with your friends. Get perks, make a contribution, or simply follow updates. If enough of us get behind it, we can make ‘Self Directed Biological Transformation Initiative – SBTI happen!

P. Murali Doraiswamy, MBBS, FRCP, Professor of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina and a leading physician scientist in the area of mental health, cognitive neuroscience and mind-body medicine.