The pink teddy bears were what really got her. Here she was, a 59-year-old woman with breast cancer, and a stuffed animal was supposed to make her feel better.<\/p>\n
No thank you. \u201cThat did not go down well with me. It seemed like an insult to my dignity,\u201d says Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America<\/em> (2009). She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000.<\/p>\n So maybe she didn\u2019t want a teddy bear. But the intent is fair, right? Cheer up, because we all know positive thinking and a fighting spirit will help cure this thing.<\/p>\n Actually, no, we don\u2019t know, Ehrenreich says. And scientists are backing her up.<\/p>\n Guilted into Laughter<\/strong><\/p>\n The cancer world is steeped in messages to think positively and employ your fighting spirit. \u201cFIGHT like a girl!\u201d reads a bright pink T-shirt from Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a breast cancer nonprofit. \u201cNever Give In,\u201d implore dog tags from the Prostate Cancer Foundation.<\/p>\n A company called MedTees sells humorous shirts for all sorts of problems. Burn victims can declare, \u201cI used to be a tour guide for Chernobyl.\u201d Think dementia has no upside? Not so. Another shirt reads, \u201cThe nice thing about being SENILE\u2026you can hide your own Easter eggs.\u201d<\/p>\n Laugh or fight. They may seem different, but the ideas are similar, Ehrenreich says. The message is that changing your mind will change your outcome.<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible that optimism strengthens the immune system. But explanations are elusive. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n There\u2019s nothing wrong with laughing or taking a fighting stance\u2014if that\u2019s your natural way of coping. The problem, scientists say, is that the message is taken too far. Positive thoughts alone are no cure. And not everyone can manifest them.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you just aren\u2019t that kind of a person or you can\u2019t summon up that upbeat attitude when you\u2019re in the throes of retching from chemotherapy, you\u2019re set up for feeling terribly guilty,\u201d says Richard P. Sloan, PhD, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center and author of Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine<\/em> (2006).<\/p>\n What the Science Shows<\/strong><\/p>\n Though scientists generally believe your thoughts alone won\u2019t cure you, some studies have found that optimism could lead to a healthier immune system, make wounds heal faster and lower your risk of heart disease and stroke, among other things. But the reasons remain somewhat elusive.<\/p>\n In February 2010, the scientific journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine<\/em> devoted 47 pages to a debate about positive thinking and health. Arguing for the benefits, researchers Lisa G. Aspinwall, PhD, and Richard G. Tedeschi, PhD, wrote that optimistic people are more likely to take better care of themselves\u2014exercise, eat healthfully and not smoke. They also may adhere better to medical instructions and rehabilitation. So the actions, not the thoughts, are what account for at least some of the good health outcomes.<\/p>\n \u201cPositive feelings are signs of health; they do not cause<\/em> good health,\u201d says Howard S. Friedman, PhD, coauthor of The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study<\/em> (2011). \u201cThinking positive thoughts will not cause your cancer cells to decide to self-destruct, but it might help you get up and out of bed, eat your spinach, complete your chemotherapy, improve your digestion and get a good night\u2019s sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible that optimism strengthens the immune system. But for cancer in particular, the evidence is \u201cquite limited and unconvincing,\u201d wrote researchers James C. Coyne, PhD, and Howard Tannin, PhD, in their skeptics\u2019 argument for the Annals<\/em> debate.<\/p>\n Plus, then you have to prove that it matters. \u201cIn some instances, tumors may even enlist the immune system to accelerate development,\u201d they wrote. So strengthening it may not always be a benefit.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if you were to accept that the connection between optimism and better health is plausible, and that\u2019s a hypothetical, we don\u2019t have any evidence that people changing\u2014becoming more optimistic or more positive\u2014reduces their risk of disease,\u201d Sloan says. \u201cFor example, some third factor, perhaps a genetic factor, could cause both.\u201d<\/p>\n When Belief Means Hope<\/strong><\/p>\n The idea of changing your mind to change your health has been around in America since the mid-1800s, Sloan wrote in a 2011 New York Times<\/em> op-ed. In 1952, Norman Vincent Peale popularized it again in his bestseller, The Power of Positive Thinking<\/em>. Today, we have Rhonda Byrne\u2019s runaway hit, The Secret<\/em> (2006), with its \u201cask, believe, receive\u201d philosophy.<\/p>\n Despite the popularity of messages that you can cure yourself through thoughts, researchers generally contend that the science doesn\u2019t back them up. Yet many people continue to believe\u2014and they say they have seen it work.<\/p>\n Patricia Wagner, a cancer patient in Arizona, is one such believer. Scientists look at this issue \u201cstrictly from the perspective of matter and scientific proof,\u201d she says. \u201cI am looking at it in a more holistic way.\u201d<\/p>\n Wagner employs positive thinking, visualization, meditation and other complementary and alternative methods to help fight myelofibrosis, a bone-marrow disorder. She has had it since 2004 and has outlived the average life expectancy of about five years. While Wagner credits her doctors at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale with good medical care, she gives her fighting spirit a lot of credit too.<\/p>\n Some people die feeling their death was their own fault because they didn\u2019t have enough of a fighting spirit. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n It led her to educate herself and to seek out what she believed was the best treatment, she says. And when her doctor told her she wouldn\u2019t live much longer without physical therapy, visualization helped her start the process.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think I would have had the frame [of mind] to do that had I not already been working on those positive images,\u201d Wagner says.<\/p>\n The medical world can be a negative one, Wagner says. When she told a doctor about her alternative treatment methods, he responded by saying there was no evidence to support what she was doing. \u201cYou have a terminal disease,\u201d he reminded her. \u201cWe can continue to provide palliative care, and we can hope for the best and see how long this lasts.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a very positive frame of mind, is it?\u201d she says. Though she still gets appropriate medical care, she sees it as mainly precautionary.<\/p>\n \u201cI have been working with my mental images so thoroughly that I really don\u2019t believe that I could possibly have a physical problem anymore. I would just love for that moment to arrive where they say, \u2018Gee, Pat, I think we must have misdiagnosed you.\u2019 Because they\u2019re not going to admit there was a miracle cure,\u201d she says, laughing.<\/p>\n Scientists who don\u2019t believe in the curative power of the mind don\u2019t necessarily tell people like Wagner to stop believing. They advise them to do what\u2019s right for them.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople get through illness in many different ways,\u201d Sloan says. \u201cSome people become furious at the illness, and other people become very upbeat, but there\u2019s no one right way.\u201d<\/p>\n The Dark Side of Positive Thinking<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIn the old days a man could just get sick and die. Now they have to \u2018wage a battle,\u2019\u201d comedian Norm Macdonald quipped in his 2011 Comedy Central special Me Doing Standup<\/em>. \u201cThat\u2019s no way to end your life. \u2018What a loser that guy was. The last thing he did was lose.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n That is how the positive-thinking movement makes some people feel.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ugly thing is, if someone\u2019s cancer is metastasizing, and she is being told, \u2018If you just had more of a fighting spirit, you\u2019d beat this thing,\u2019 that\u2019s a terrible thing to say because it\u2019s blaming her,\u201d Ehrenreich says. \u201cI\u2019ve heard also from a lot of individuals about their sisters or their mothers who died, but died feeling that it was their fault.\u201d <\/p>\n Her advice to cancer patients: \u201cDon\u2019t let people tell you how to feel. You know how you feel. You need people who are strong enough to hear that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The pink teddy bears were what really got her. Here she was, a 59-year-old woman with breast cancer, and a stuffed animal was supposed to make her feel better. No thank you. \u201cThat did not go down well with me.…<\/span><\/p>\n