The power of your thoughts for a healthy life

[Music]

when

sarah came to my clinic a couple of

years ago

with her eight-year-old son tim

and she had a problem because her son

was bedwetting

and that’s not a good problem if your

child is eight years old because

he wants to go and sleep over they want

to take school trips so we had to take

that issue seriously but what surprised

me more than that

was that sarah was in my clinic again a

couple of days later

and this time she was there with her

daughter emma who was 10.

so i was surprised i said sarah you were

here

now you’re here with emma what’s going

on

and sarah was really devastated she said

look doctor israel

emma is losing her hair and i said what

do you mean she’s losing her hair

she goes well when i comb her hair just

comes off and the whole brush is full of

hair and

she showed me the head and

this was what we could see you see sarah

had a

kind of a hole in her head we call it

alopecia areata

and i was surprised i said what is going

on in your family because we know that

uh when you lose hair it could be some

kind of form of stress that causes

autoimmune

disease and there was

no bacteria involved nothing else than

what we were thinking actually and i

said to sarah what is going on

in your home and she started to cry and

to sob

she was completely devastating said dr

eastworn something’s terrible has

happened you know my husband

philip has been diagnosed with a brain

tumor

and it’s been going on for three months

and and his surgery

is for scheduled for

two weeks and which is all terribly

devastated

and our family’s not doing well so

think about this you have two kids at

this age

and you have a father who has a

diagnosis a tumor diagnosis and

a mom who’s breaking apart what can be

scarier for them

than to actually think of losing their

parents

and it’s sad to say that yes

thoughts can make us sick

and in this case it was not a virus or a

germ it was the thoughts it was the

stress that was causing this problem

well what can you do about it why do

this why does this happen

how are we formed and why is this going

on

so that’s going to be the topic of our

talk today and that’s what i’m going to

talk about

and i am a medical doctor with my

clinic in cologne germany and i’ve been

working for over 20 years in medicine

and we have we got a lot of progress

in the medical field we have wonderful

vaccinations that

prevent disease we have medicine that we

can prescribe

and we have surgery diagnostics and

and a lot of different forms of therapy

and

but there is still so much that we don’t

know about the body

and so much that we don’t know about the

healing system and there is so much that

you

can actually do to influence your health

so thinking about this i thought well

if thoughts are formed in the head it

would be interesting to describe how

your head is formed

so i said to sarah sarah come sit down

let me explain to you my method i call

the beneficial thinking method

and let me show you the house that you

have on your head

that he calls the beneficial thinking

house

so imagine you have a house that you

carry on your head

and this house has three floors and five

tenants so there’s a basement and you

can see a crocodile in the basement

and there’s a mid floor and in the mid

floor you have a lady with her

back turned to us that’s lady amy and

she has a friend that’s a seahorse

and there’s a fairy and on the top floor

there is a scientist so what do they all

do we’re going to start off with the

most

important part that i think should be

discussed first and that’s

the ground floor in this house

and you have three tenants there and the

most important tenant that you have to

remember

is this lady amy with a yellow hat she

is

she represents the amygdala that we have

in our brain the two pieces that look

like

like almonds and her job

is to detect danger so you have a

personal bodyguard in your body

that is responsible to recognize danger

and to save you from danger so how does

amy know what danger is

well she has her detectives and those

are your sensory organs

so your eyes and your ears and your nose

and your skin they were not made to

enjoy perfume

or caviar or ice cream they were

originally made to remind

amy if there is any danger going on and

what we have discovered also is that

what you think

actually affects amy too so if you think

that there’s some danger going on

and if you think someone’s coming up

this might hurt you

well amy is going to be aware of that

and is going to react so what does she

do

well she does something that’s quite

simple she presses a button

right and this button goes sends an

elevator to your cellar where you have

that crocodile so this

crocodile the cellar represents your

brain stem

and what happens actually that she sends

with this elevator that goes down

substances like adrenaline cortisol that

form some sort of energy and are like

fuel for your crocodile

who senses that the strength and then

starts fighting or make gives you energy

to run away

so it’s very important to understand

that this is what we call the

fight-or-flight response in our body

and this was has been with us for

millions of years and this is what

protects us

at the end of the day from danger we

sort of abuse it though

and um we kind of think about all kinds

of different things

that are dangerous that are actually not

even dangerous at all like let’s say

you have a fight with your spouse

because the spaghetti was overcooked

right and that’s amy doesn’t really know

that that’s

danger or not she just understands that

you feel that way

and she just sends down that elevator

with

all those unnecessary hormones and what

you have to understand though

and this is the point that i have to

make is these adrenaline cortisol all

this fuel

that you use for your energy that you

use for your crocodile

unfortunately makes you sick right

they they’re the main course cause of

modern

stress-induced illnesses in our society

so

you can get heart disease from that your

immune system suffers and that’s what

happened to

to emma who lost her hair and um

you can have your immune system your

metabolism you can become obese or you

have

problems with sugar uh metabolism you

you can really get ill from these

substances so if you are stressed a lot

you become sick

and it’s interesting to understand that

there is something you can do about it

and there is this thing you know before

amy presses that button you have this

little space

that nature has given you to stop her

you can really tap her on the hand say

amy stop

and how would you do that so you know

when you get excited and your heart

beats and

and you know that you maybe you’re upset

or angry or you have to run and get the

bus

or whatever it is that you need energy

for your

body calms down again after a couple of

days and or a couple of hours and

minutes

it’s because you have a system in your

body that excites you

but you also have a system and it’s

exciting it’s called

sympathetic nervous system but you have

a system also that cools you down

right you have to understand that and

this system that cools you down

has a nerve and we call it the

parasympathetic nervous system but this

this special nerve is responsible also

for your breathing so that is why

when amy starts pressing the button you

feel

oh my god i don’t feel good and in this

case it was sarah who was so upset with

everything then sarah can just take a

deep breath

and this deep breath will help her come

out of the cellar

because when you breathe your whole body

calms down

and what happens you can just touch your

pulse and

i’m breathing now because of course my

aim is working too because i’m doing

this talk

and i just understand i can just feel

the tension getting lower

and i can feel my muscles relaxing

and i can just feel my voice calming

down so it’s worth understanding

and a very intelligent neurologist put

it this way

between stimulus and response there is a

space

his name is by the way viktor frankl and

he went on and said in that space is our

power

to choose our response and our response

lies our growth

and our freedom so it’s

a scientific thing that you can do in

this moment

where you notice that you’re going to

scream at someone or you notice that

your thoughts are taking you in a very

non-beneficial direction that you can

tap amy on the fingers and say stop take

a deep breath

and think and then act this will support

you

and help you from getting ill but there

are other things too that you can do so

i said to

sarah you know what let me show you

other parts of the brain

and i showed her that the mid part of

the brain

you know we have amy and by the way that

little seahorse in there is responsible

for all the

memory and it’s represent the

hippocampus i said you know what

remember happy things you can you can

actually activate your memory center to

ask them do happy

memories that you have that will make

you feel good

and this fairy this little fairy is

something i really love she’s my

best tenant in the whole building

because she makes us feel good

and people think feeling good is a

luxury but it isn’t

it’s a responsibility you are

responsible for your happiness and you

can induce it you can talk to your fairy

and say you know what i want to be happy

and she does

work and she likes to do so one thing

that

helps the fairy to to understand that

you’re doing okay

is gratitude so when you say i’m

grateful for something

then she kind of starts making

your dopamine and your exorcism flow or

if you hug someone and you give this

person a warm feeling what happens

actually that she produces some oxytocin

and that flows in your brain and you

feel comfortable

so these things are quite interesting

and what’s even more

is that if you’re happy fairy you know i

said to sarah go home

and take a look at a nice movie

sit down with your kids and watch a

movie

a funny movie though and what happens is

that she produces more that

funny stuff that makes you happy called

dopamine

so the happy fairy has a responsibility

she calms down amy

and what she does above all is when

you’re feeling good the elevator goes a

bit higher

to your top floor and that’s where you

have your power that’s where your

scientist sits

and watches and helps you and if you ask

yourself how did we

humans manage to go all the way up to

the moon and back

it’s because we have the scientists it’s

the result of evolution

it’s the result of all the years of

knowledge that we have

and unfortunately unfortunately a lot of

us

just don’t know that it’s there and use

the scientists so seldom

so how can you activate your scientists

you just tell them what you need to say

i’m in trouble

i need to find my way out help me

and it kind of organizes the algorithm

in your brain

and all your sensory organs kind of form

themselves together and

look out for the help that you’re

looking for so it’s worth thinking of

so if we get back to the beginning of

everything when you were born

and like this little boy called henry or

twozie came to my clinic after four days

and i look at these kids and i say to

myself

they’re so friendly they’re so happy

they’re so healthy

and they’re so without fear

what happens to you and you looked like

that each of you

looked just as cute just as friendly

just as smart as henry so what happens

is when you grow up

you learn what fear is you you collect

fear

and this value of the thought that makes

it fearful thought or a dangerous

thought is what you

learn by growing up and

i was lucky as a child i took when i had

to survive ethiopia with an ethiopian

mom who used to drag me to the ethiopian

church on sundays and i listened to

these singing enchanting

and then i’d go home and my indian

father could curry

and the household of korean you tell me

stories about my

chinese great grandmother who was i

never met

but i had so many cultures in my life

that made me

free of all this fear which helped me

actually because the war broke out and i

had to

leave the country and go to hungary a

completely different nation with

completely different culture

and a completely different language that

i had to learn by the way and then i

started to

eat hungarian goulash and admire that

and enjoy that

and i ended up in in germany and um

now i speak german and i do have my

trouble with that word der

and the d and the das and i enjoy worst

but

still life has been good to me because i

have been exposed to so many different

things and i’m so

less of fear so

there’s one important thing that i would

like to make

you aware of

when i see all of this and my life and i

i think of

now that i there’s one thing i have to

ask you because

my little friends and that i call the

little children of this world

would like to grow up and in a happy

healthy and friendly environment and to

do this they need you grown-ups to

change the way you think

and to be aware of the thoughts that you

have and to understand that your

thoughts

have an effect on the world they grow up

in so i ask you

in the name of my little friends and the

name of the children of the world

to consider your thoughts to be aware of

them

to understand what amy does to stop her

pressing the button please train her

you can do that tame make her tame her

crocodile

understand your fairy make your fairy

dance and most of all

please keep your scientists on the top

floor

busy thank you so much

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