"Why don't you hear more about the revolutionary healthcare options and treatments that take into account the mind-body-spirit connection from your local doctor or hospital?"

Because they don't bloody well work. And write this out a thousand times: 'The plural of anecdote is not data'.

Next!

Ahhh, so this is how the good the bad and the ugly are passed on! It's the luggage tags!

Reminds me of a girl I once knew.

She told me her method of contraception was to lie there after unprotected intercourse and *will* the sperm away.

Needless to say, this belief turned out to be good for getting genes into the next generation.

Dear Jon,

<<Because they don't bloody well work.>>

That's all relative to what one wants to achieve.

I don't know enough about the paradigm described in the article and it may well be that this paradigm fails to repair one's body as it claims, but it seems that it does give peace to those who take its approach - and isn't this what we all actually want?

Most importantly, it keeps people away from the doctors, whose mechanical and atheistic approach to life is often harmful to one's spirit.

It would help if Kay had actually done some research on epigentics before coming to the bogus conclusion that epigenetics means that the mind controls what happens in cells.

A start would be here http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/epigenetic-influences-and-disease-895

The placebo effect has been noted by western medicine for a long time. It is a real and amazing effect, but using it is a moral minefield.

Doctors don't generally discuss placebo treatments with patients because their efficacy is patchy, what works for some will not work for others. It is generally thought to be seriously unethical to prescribe treatments that the doctor knows is mechanistically null (i.e. intrisically bogus).

They sometimes appear to work, but whether it is taking a sugar pill or having a herbal tea, drinking 'treated' water or praying, they all (sometimes) work by the same mechanism, but that isn't epigenetics.

Those who aren't actually looking, don't hear about it Jon J.
Moreover, it's not easy to hear anything, with your determinedly desperate fingers plugged deep in your ears singing, La, la, la, la, la, etc/etc!
And given Kay is right and you are wrong, a huge reason to exclude the negative imperative, and water hazard thinking/limitations.
I mean, focus on want you do want rather than your fears or what you don't want, and see where that takes you?
If nothing happens, how can you be worse off? Well?
And if you receive a positive benefit, or even just an improvement in you golf game, football conversions average etc?
You've gained something of value, but none more so than being able to confront a future with hope in your heart, even when all about you are saying, give up, it won't work, you'll never do it!
And if you go to your death, with nothing changed, which death is the better/preferred one, the one approached with undying hope and a cheerful attitude/disposition, or a completely despairing tormented one?
Your time here is never wasted when you're trying, but a complete waste of time, when you have stopped trying, or indeed, stopped believing in yourself!
Thankfully, people like the never quit Wright brothers/Edward Hillary etc/etc, weren't made from that lessor mold.
Look, there is great power in visualization, coupled to the power of belief!
I mean, if a pointing witch doctors bone can kill a completely healthy strong tribesperson, in just days, what would then happen if the same belief (in a higher force,) were applied to medicine?
Yes sure, it could be just the placebo effect.
But how much better would it work, if we invested just as much as a grain of mustard seed of belief behind it?
And what's to lose, particularly, if all other things have been tried.
And or how much better would conventional medicine be, if coupled to belief in a cure or cures!?
Hypnosis, Acupuncture? Ha, ha! You can't be serious! That'll never work Jon J!
Rhrosty.

To me it feels like the general population is often ahead of the media, and with due respect some medical professionals, when it comes to talking about the connection between consciousness and health. Perhaps they think about it, but are so tied up with meeting financial demands, for one, that the thought stops there. You refer to Kuhn and to the 19th Century mind-body-spirit pioneer, Mary Baker Eddy. Your reference to “Kuhn’s hypothesis”, reminds me of a paragraph by Eddy in her book, ‘Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures’: “Agassiz, the celebrated naturalist and author, has wisely said: "Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next, they say it has been discovered before. Lastly, they say they have always believed it." Great stuff for real thinkers! thanks.

Jardine K. Jardine that young ladies ideas on contraception would most certainly have frightened me away, I'm not too sure it would have had the same effect on my sperm.

Yuyutsu, I am quite sure that "doctors, whose mechanical and atheistic approach to life" you decry, worked quite well for my spirit.

My religious beliefs tell me that if they had not stuck that artificial stent in the artery in my heart, my spirit would have been buried along with the rest of me, quite a few years ago.

Why not also check out the work of Bruce Lipton too. Lipton's work confirms Kay's general hypothesis.

I'm not qualified to comment on scientific issues but 30 plus years of nursing taught me that not everything can be explained away by science. "Miracle cures" happen from time to time, confounding both medical staff and patients.
Sometimes it wasn't even a matter of being cured but the reality of terminally ill people surviving years, even decades beyond their expected time of death.
The fact that many of these people had incredibly positive attitudes, or the child was a "fighter" may well have been coincidence but over the years I have sometimes wondered whether in fact the mind did have some influence over physical diseases.

Actually Big Nana, I am a scientist and I think that what you are saying is of course absolutely true. I acknowledge that the mind has influence over peoples health outcomes.

The thing is, so does science. They have for a long time. It's called the "placebo effect". Most people think that it is dismissed as a "background" effect, when the reality is that it is the biggest effect there is when administering any treatment. The placebo effect is the most effective medical treatment there is. Understanding what exactly that means is the trick...

It also means that silly treatments like homeopathy will always be with us, because they work for some people, just like sugar pills.

Dear Hasbeen,

<<if they had not stuck that artificial stent in the artery in my heart, my spirit would have been buried along with the rest of me, quite a few years ago.>>

No wonder it was they who stuck that artificial stent in your artery - for the laws of Australia prohibit anyone else from doing so or any other act that resembles a medical operation, hence you had no choice.

Registered doctors who fail are not punished, while others are punished severely even if they succeed. That is not a plane-level field!

There will soon be (if not already) signs at the next Hippy Market/Fair advertising Epigenetics courses and if combined with Aroma Therapy, you'll not only feel good but smell good as well.

Hasbeen's example is one condition that could not be fixed by the mind
as it is a physical action to push open a blockage. Having had one myself in 1994.
However I have often wondered about whether the mind (software) could
communicate with the brain logic (hardware) and request a change in
some function, eg order the liver to produce more/less of a particular
chemical.

Now that sounds way out, but as we do not know much about the computer
between our ears what I suggest may be a crude explanation of reality.