Instead of focusing on your sore arm after your next vaccine, you might want to think good thoughts. A new study that trained people in the power of positive thinking showed that the practice can significantly boost antibodies created by the jab.
You've certainly heard of the placebo effect, the idea that believing in a cure actually makes it work – even if it's nothing more than a sugar pill. Researchers at Tel Aviv University recently decided to see if that very effect – basically, thinking positively about a treatment – could affect actual medicine, which, in this case, consisted of hepatitis B vaccines.
Working with 85 participants, the researchers first trained everyone to increase the activity in their brains' ventral tegmental area (VTA), a region that is part of the brain's reward system. To do this, they placed the participants in fMRI machines and imaged their brains as they tried out different strategies to "light up" their VTA or another brain area involved in the reward system known as the bilateral nucleus accumbens (NAcc). These strategies included things like imagining a future trip, anticipating something exciting, recalling pleasant bodily sensations, or using visual mental imagery chosen by the participants.
After four training sessions in which the participants learned to activate the reward systems in their brains, they were each given a hepatitis B vaccine. Blood was also gathered before the injections and after for immunological assessments.
The researchers found no significant differences – on average – between the test group and control group. However, what they did find is that those who were best able to activate and maintain activity in their VTAs saw statistically significant increases in their antibodies. In other words, VTA activation didn't work for everyone in terms of increasing antibodies, but those who got the knack of it definitely saw some benefits.
"These findings suggest that consciously generated positive expectations can engage reward circuitry to influence immune function, a process that may be leveraged for non-invasive immune modulation," write the researchers in a paper that has been published in the journal Nature Medicine. “Thus, we may harness the natural capacities of our mind and brain to heal our bodies in times of need.”
Source: Springer Nature via Scimex
