What if manipulating the mind can create massive reductions in cancerous tumors? In a recent study on mice led by a team at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, results showed that activating the brain’s reward system can cause a cancerous tumor to shrink in both weight and size.
Of course, there is no proof that the results will have the same effect on humans. While most studies are often done to show the impact of stress and depression on illness and immune system, this study proves that manipulating the mind’s psychologically positive pathways can directly impact malignant cells. The team only focused specifically on melanoma and lung cancer.
The study said that “given the central role of the immune system in fighting cancer, and given the effects of reward system activity on immunity, we hypothesized that reward system activity could also affect tumor growth.”
In addition, they discovered that “the reward system can affect anti-tumor immunity and tumor growth introduces a new mechanistic insight into the epidemiological connection between mental states and cancer progression.”
Overall, the study proves how connected the physiology of an emotional state and an illness might be to one another. Perhaps the results offer the idea that there might be a more holistic, less invasive way to better manage and understand how cancerous cells behave in the human body.
