Just reading medicines’ side-effects can be unhealthy - apparently!

For his Texan blog my colleague Keith Womack has written an article called Reading medicines’ side-effects can be unhealthy based on an article in the UK's Daily Mail by their health and science and tech writer Fiona Macrae.Have you ever listened to the possible side-effects of a drug as advertised on TV and then felt queasy? Reading about those effects can make you feel bad as well, it turns out.Fiona Macrae’s recent Health post, The health alerts that make you ill: Negative thoughts ‘can induce sickness’, at the Daily Mail, recently got my attention. In the post, she writes:

A series of studies from around the world has shown that if you believe something could make you ill, it might well do just that.Simply reading the side-effects on a bottle of tablets raises your risk of experiencing them.And, taken to its extreme, patients who believe they will not survive surgery, are more likely to die on the operating table.

Those taking medication have a quandary: It’s important to use medicinal products wisely. Yet, studying their labels could cause even more problems. You’re in trouble no matter what you do, it seems.Doesn’t this quandary tell us something? Doesn’t it show that our health is affected by our mental nature? If what we think causes what we experience, perhaps we should explore a new way of thinking.In her guidebook on spiritual healing, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy relates:

A man was made to believe that he occupied a bed where a cholera patient had died. Immediately the symptoms of this disease appeared, and the man died. The fact was, that he had not caught the cholera by material contact, because no cholera patient had been in that bed.

Eddy found that there was no better and healthier way to think than with a spiritual mindset. Pondering spiritual things, — God’s power, His presence, and His ever-available law, heals us and keeps us safe.An inspired prophet, the apostle Paul, understood this important principle:

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. (Philippians 4:8)

Spiritual thinking – prayer – helped me when I was young (read post). Today it helps me help others (read post).Again, it’s important to use medicinal products wisely. But more importantly, if you want to be healthy and stay that way, watch what you read, consider, and ponder. A spiritual mindset will make all the difference in the world.Thanks, Keith!