The instance when you take a medication because you're sick and later when you're all better you discover that the medication was just a sugar pill.

The pill did nothing.

The healing was done by your mind.

It is estimated that half the efficacy of pharmaceutical drugs can be attributed to the placebo.

However, the placebo effect can work in both ways.

Our mind can actually induce illness and this is known as the nocebo effect.

Every stressful thought is like a dose of a nocebo pill and this stress literally shuts down the immune system.

This is why doctors give stress hormones to a patient who is receiving an organ transplant.

The immune system needs to be turned off so that the body won't reject the foreign organ.

In modern society, many people are trapped in a cycle of financial debt, fear-mongering on the news, instability in the home, soul-crushing jobs, and toxic social media and so they are living in a never-ending state of stress which results in the nocebo effect.

Our well-being is a reflection of how we perceive the world.

If we gain an understanding over how our emotions affect our biology, then we gain the ability to take back control over our health and come into alignment with our mind, body, soul, genetics, and environment.

Today's episode is from the original Gaia series, Rewired, by the wise and powerful Dr. Joe Dispenza.

This episode will break down the difference between living in survival and living in creation.

You are not a victim of your genetics or environment.

You have the capacity to experience reality and transform it.

It's time to take our power back.

Sit back and enjoy this insightful presentation with Dr. Joe Dispenza.

Stress can be defined as a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances.

But how do different kinds of stress cause long-term effects on our brain and body?

Stress usually is created when we can't predict a future outcome, when we feel that we can't control the situation, or when we have the perception that there's a threat, a danger, or a perception that something's going to get worse in our lives.

You may not be able to control everything that happens in your life or your outer world.

However, is it possible that you can learn how to control your inner world of thoughts and feelings?

I'm your host, Dr. Joe Dispenza, and in the previous episode, we went into depth on the ancient practice of meditation and what it means to be truly present.

In this episode, we're going to identify different kinds of stress, show you the long-term effects of stress, how it can create illness in your body.

And once you understand what stress can do to you, it's my hope that the information you'll learn will empower you to make some important changes in your life.

There are three types of stress.

There's physical stress, chemical stress, and emotional stress.

Now, physical stress are things like traumas, accidents, injuries, falls.

Chemical stress, flus, bacteria, viruses, blood sugar levels, toxins in food.

Emotional stress, family tragedy, second mortgages, single parenting, traffic jams.

And all of these different stressors, whether they're physical, chemical, or emotional, knock your brain and body out of balance.

In fact, the definition of stress is when your brain and body are knocked out of homeostasis.

Now the stress response is what your body innately does to return itself back to order.

When you or any organism in nature begins to perceive a danger or a threat in their external environment, they turn on a primitive nervous system called the fight or flight nervous system.

And when the person or the organism is perceiving that danger, the body innately begins to mobilize enormous amounts of energy and resources.

All of its energy now is being mobilized to be able to adapt to the stress in the environment.

So then we begin to tap the body's vital resources so that we can survive the condition in the outer world.

All organisms in nature can tolerate short-term stress, whether it's a zebra being chased by a lion, or whether it's a pack of coyotes chasing a deer.

The moment the organism perceives that danger and switches on that emergency system, there is a rush of adrenaline and a rush of energy, and there is an arousal that takes place in the brain and body.

And those chemicals then alter our normal homeostasis.

And in that state of survival, we switch on that sympathetic nervous system, or what's called the fight or flight nervous system.

And our pupils dilate, our salivary juices shut down, it's not a time to eat.

Our heart rate increases, our respiratory rate increases, blood is sent to the extremities, and it's shut down in the internal organs because it's a time to run, it's a time to fight, or it's a time to hide.

Now, if the zebra or the deer outrun the predator, 30 minutes later, the stress response begins to switch off and the body returns back to balance.

After there's a stress response, many organisms need to rest and repair because the body has to come back online and regenerate and conserve energy.

What if, though, you're being chased by T-Rex and you're turning on that primitive nervous system called the fight or flight nervous system, and the moment you perceive that threat and you're in danger, and now you're running from the predator, that's very adaptive.

But what if then the predator is waiting outside the cave and waiting for you to go out and get some food?

We could say then that your ability to sustain a certain stress response would be very important would be extended.

But what if it isn't T-Rex outside the cave?

What if it's your co-worker?

What if it's your mother-in-law?

What if it's your boss?

What if it's traffic?

And what was once highly adaptive becomes very maladaptive.

Because when you turn on the stress response and you can't turn it off, now you're headed for disease because no organism can live in emergency mode for an extended period of time.

Reason this with me.

If you keep mobilizing enormous amounts of energy for some threat in your outer world, there's no energy in your inner world for growth and repair.

So think of the sympathetic nervous system as the emergency system that's like the gas pedal in the car.

The other nervous system, called the parasympathetic nervous system, that nervous system is the nervous system of relaxation, of regeneration, of metabolism.

So if a person is living in a constant state of stress and they, like an addict, become conditioned to the rush of the arousal of those chemicals, then in time then, they will begin to use the problems and conditions in their life to reaffirm their conditioning or their addiction to that emotion.

We become so conditioned to these chemicals that, like a drug addict, we need the bad relationship.

We need a difficult situation in our life to keep getting that rush of adrenaline, to keep getting that rush of energy.

And in a sense, people become addicted to the life they don't even like.

So then because of the size of the neocortex, the thinking brain as you learned about, we can make thought more real than anything else.

And people can begin to think about their problems.

And as they begin to think about their problems, they can turn on the stress response just by thought alone.

And we now know that those chemicals can become addictive.

And you can turn on the stress response just by thought alone.

So then you can become addicted to your own thoughts.

So it's a scientific fact that the long-term effects of the hormones of stress push the automatic buttons that create disease.

And you can turn on the stress response just by thought alone.

It means then that your thoughts can literally make you sick.

And so many diseases around the world now are created by the immune system being suppressed, or what we call immune-mediated diseases.

Everything from cancer, MS, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, food allergies, food sensitivities is a compromise in the immune system.

So here's the question.

If your thoughts can make you sick, is it possible that your thoughts can make you well?

Well, we did a research study where we took 117 people, and we wanted to measure their cortisol levels, which is the stress hormone, and another chemical called IgA, immunoglobulin A.

It's your body's primary defense against bacteria and viruses.

So as cortisol levels go up, and you're mobilizing enormous amounts of energy for some threat in your outer world, the immune system dials down.

And now the immune system becomes compromised because all of the energy is going for a threat in the outer world.

Our immune system becomes suppressed.

So typically, IgA levels go down.

So we measured the cortisol and IgA levels, and we put them through four days of training.

And we asked them to trade emotions like anger and frustration and hatred and violence and aggression and competition and fear.

Those are all the chemicals that are derived from the stress hormones.

We asked them to trade those survival emotions for elevated emotions, heartfelt emotions like gratitude, appreciation, kindness, care, love for life, a joy for existence.

And all we wanted them to do for 10 minutes a day was open their hearts and begin to feel those elevated emotions.

At the end of three and a half days, we went back and we remeasured those same values.

And their immune system, that is, IgA levels went up as a collective, about 50 percent.

Their cortisol levels dropped about 16.25 percent.

Their stress hormones went down, and their immune system upregulated to a great degree.

That means then, when you begin to make a change in the way you think, in the way you feel, and you begin to change your attitude, and you begin to open your heart again and feel an elevated emotion, it is those elevated emotions that begin to restore and repair the immune system.

So then, there's three things when you're living by the hormones of stress that you keep your attention on.

Think about it.

If you're being chased by a predator, all of your attention is on your outer environment.

Where are you going to go?

What place do you need to move to?

What object do you need to move past?

And when you're under the gun of those chemicals, you're thinking about time.

How much time do I have to get there?

So then, the body, the environment, and time.

And if where you place your attention is where you place your energy, it makes sense then if all of your attention is on your body, all of your attention is on your environment, and all of your attention is on time, then you are putting all of your attention in this three-dimensional reality.

Now, you have to play by the rules of this three-dimensional reality, and everything that you create will take time.

When people are under the gun of those chemicals, they're drawing from this invisible field of energy surrounding their body, this vital life force, and they're using it to make chemistry, and the field around their body shrinks, and they become more matter and less energy, more particle and less wave.

And the very hormones of stress heighten our senses so that we become a materialist.

And the more altered we feel from that stress response, or by the emotional reaction from some threat or danger, the more we narrow our focus on the cause or the object.

And when we do that, all of a sudden, we are focusing only on matter.

And so people, over time, get hooked in or habituated into narrowing their focus.

So then, when you're living in emergency mode, it's not a time to create.

It's not a time to open your heart.

It's not a time to learn anything new.

It's not a time to sit still and go within.

In fact, if the survival gene is switched on, you'd be thinking, on some level, innately, that it's not a time to sit still because you would be prey.

So then, the more people are conditioned or addicted to the hormones of stress, the more their attention is on matter, the more they begin to experience separation from everyone and everything.

Now, if stress is created by the feeling that you're losing control in your life, that you can't predict an outcome, or you have the perception that something or someone is causing situations in your life to get worse, then if you're living by the hormones of stress on a daily basis, then what we try to do is we try to control everything in our life.

When we're feeling loss of control, we try to predict the next moment based on our memories of the past.

That means people under stress are craving the known.

They're trying to get back to the familiar or the known because in survival, the unknown is a scary place.

So then, as they begin to shift their attention from one person to one problem to another person to another problem to another thing to another place, each one of those elements has a neurological network in the brain.

And the arousal of those chemicals then begin to cause those different circuits as you shift your attention to begin to become highly activated.

And now the brain is functioning in a very incoherent state.

And the arousal of those chemicals drives the brain into a very, very highly analytical over-focused state.

Think about it.

When you're under stress, have you noticed that you keep thinking about the same problem over and over again?

Because the very hormones of stress cause you to narrow your focus on the cause because that's what you do when you're living in survival.

And in fact, out of the infinite possibilities that exist in your reality, when people are addicted or living in that stressful state, they'll always select the worst case scenario in their mind and prepare for the worst.

Why is that?

Because in survival, if you prepare for the worst, anything less that happens, you have a better chance of surviving.

So people spend the majority of their life preparing for the worst thing that could happen to them when they're living in the stressful state.

And it turns out that 70% of the time, most people are living in survival.

So then when you react to someone or something, there's a refractory period of chemicals that's created from your emotional reaction.

And if you don't know how to regulate or stop that emotional reaction, and you keep that same reaction lingering for hours or days, that's called a mood.

If you keep that same refractory period going for weeks to months on end, that's called a temperament.

If you keep that same emotional reaction going on for years on end, that's called a personality trait.

And most people's personalities then are defined by experiences from the past.

So now that you understand that stress is when the brain and body are knocked out of balance, and you understand that the hormones of stress push the genetic buttons and create disease, it begs the question, is there anyone or anything truly worth living in that state?

So then if people are living in chronic stress, and they're drawing from this invisible field of energy surrounding their body, and they're mobilizing that vital life force to make chemistry, and the field around their body is shrinking, and they're feeling more like matter and less like energy, more like particle and less like wave, and they feel separate or disconnected from everyone and everything in their life, well, when you're matter trying to change matter, we tend to force outcomes, control outcomes, try to predict outcomes, and there's only a certain number of resources that we have when we're matter trying to change matter.

We'll compete, we'll fight for it, we'll manipulate, we'll try harder, we'll hope, we'll wish, because we're experiencing separation.