Buff Up Your Brain Healing Power

There is a very interesting article in the March 2007 issue of Readers Digest, titled "Tap Your Brain's Healing Power."

Here's an excerpt from page 123 in the section titled: "Buff Up Your Brain."

"Studies like Glaser's and Dr. Tracey's have
'given credibility to mind/body approaches, which
had been rejected and ignored by the scientific
and medical communities,' says Esther Sternberg,
MD director of the Integrative Neural Immune
Program at the National Institute of Mental
Health.

Now scientists and doctors have begun taking the
next step, harnessing the immense powers of the
human brain to help people heal themselves.

For example, using special fMRO scanners and
software that allowed patients to see their own
brain activity, scientists at Stanford University
and Omneuron, a biotech company, trained
participants to reduce chronic pain by just
visualizing it and learning to control it.

Some were able to decrease it by more than 40
percent, says pain expert Sean Mackey, MD, one of
the study leaders.

Dr. Mackey foresees a day when doctors might use
such imaging to train us to ease depression, battle
addiction or overcome phobias.

And years from now, he says, we may head to a
real-time brain-imaging center the way we go to
fitness centers today, and buff up parts of our
brain that improve performance, memory and even
intelligence. Now, that will be a real no-brainer."