Managing Our Brain

Do you ever find yourself, in the midst of your daily routine, pausing for a moment and feeling as if you are living the same cycle every day, almost like a habit? The tasks to be done every day, repeating the same things from morning till night, and as a result, moving as if on autopilot, a sudden awareness, a pause, a question arises: "Is my life under my control, or is it someone else's?" The answer to this question is: "While living our own lives, our brain takes control of our lives."

The question of whether your brain is controlling you or you are controlling it is something almost everyone has heard in their lives. If we have a life with a series of events that repeat every day, especially when we have a routine, the event of the brain controlling us happens more easily. For example, imagine having a routine like waking up early every morning to go to the office, then sequentially: meeting, meeting, paperwork, lunch break, meeting, paperwork, leaving the office, going home, cooking, eating, taking care of household chores, taking a shower, and sleeping.

Think about having such a routine. One day, two days, three days, a week goes by, and initially, the routine you applied with your own will is perceived by the brain as something that will continue like this every day. It takes over, and you start implementing these actions without thinking. In other words, with the brain taking over, there may be a sense of obligation, unwillingness, ordinariness, and boredom in the continued tasks. This happens because we surrender our thoughts and feelings to the control of our brain.

The term "placebo" entered the medical literature, derived from the Latin word "to please." The placebo effect is the phenomenon of producing an effect based on the "suggestion" of an "ineffective" drug pharmacologically. In other words, we can say "the power of self-healing when people want it, based on suggestion, which cannot be scientifically explained."

However, it should not be perceived solely as healing; a person can make oneself "ill" by thinking in the opposite direction. The most important study related to the placebo I want to mention was published in 1955 by American anesthesiologist and medical ethics expert Dr. Henry Beecher. During World War II, when morphine was depleted in the treatment of wounded soldiers, Dr. Henry interestingly gave them a saline solution without revealing it. The result was surprising; more than 35% of the soldiers began to say they were feeling better. In a study where Cardiothoracic Surgeon Leonard Comb reported increasing the amount of blood going to the heart by connecting the 2 main vessels in the chest and providing a 90% recovery in patients, the same result was achieved only by making an incision in the skin (not tying the vessels) in patients (placebo surgery group).

We can explain what Dr. Henry showed as follows: Especially in the control and healing of pain, your belief that your pain will go away leads to the release of "endorphins," the body's natural painkillers. Endorphins are morphine-like neuropeptides that make you feel good. In addition, the expectation of healing based on belief stimulates the reward system and leads to the release of dopamine. Since taking the real drug and thinking that we have taken it both interact with the same processes in our body, we can say that it works. The research by Cardiothoracic Surgeon Leonard Comb suggests that the placebo effect may be related to a person's genetic predisposition. Of course, despite the surprisingly positive results of the placebo effect, we cannot say anything definite about this issue. However, from these two examples, we can easily understand this: If we can heal ourselves with our thoughts, we can do many things.

The reason I mention the placebo effect is to demonstrate that the method doctors apply to help their patients heal can also be applied by us in our own lives. When we realize that our brains are governing us or to be able to manage our brains and not surrender control to them, we can use the placebo effect on ourselves. Even though we have a daily routine that needs to be followed, if we focus on ourselves, or rather, if we focus on the task at hand while performing that routine, for example, when going to work, focusing not on the meeting we will attend but on the content of the meeting and the ideas of other people, then our brains won't realize that every day is a different day, that we are in a routine, and we will be in control. Just as every person is different, our brains, minds, and thoughts are also very different from each other. The difficulties we experience and the obstacles we encounter in life depend on how we look at them. You can use the placebo effect to change the place and perspective you are looking at; that's when you can manage your brain. 

Bibliography:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9449934/

https://moletik.com/plasebo-etkisi-beyni-kandirmak-mi-yoksa-beyin-tarafindan-kandirilmak-mi/http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/09/magazine/the-placebo-prescription.htmlhttps://www.ankaraestetikcerrahi.com/plasebo-etkisi/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/80579/