Mind Power

The power of human mind is in itself mind-boggling.  I have learned many different concepts about the power of the human mind such as our own ability to fight disease without drugs, operate under stressful situations such as war, and the highly complex functions that no present day computer can replicate with the same processing speed.  If we were to measure the speed of our brain process in relation to a computer processor our brain operates at 1680 gigahertz.  In contrast a typical home computer runs at about 2 gigahertz.  Our mind is so adept to processing information that we can read broken sentences with mistyped words and our mind will automatically search for the best fit for the mistyped word, fill them in, read the word for comprehension, then read the next word to make sure the sentence makes sense.  Unfortunately this kind of “superpower” leads to writers leaving typos in their own work because the mind has already created the solution.
Another fact is that the human mind can adapt to a stressful situation and achieve a positive result.  A good example would be the effect of stress on soldiers and professional athletes.  Soldiers and professional athletes endure years of training that regularly hone their skills in their field which leads to mental conditioning.  This type of conditioning prepares the mind to tell the body how to react when needed.  When a soldier is under heavy fire from his or her enemy he or she knows how to react quickly and effectively to ensure their survival.  Although mental conditioning is purposeful in a stressful situation, the human mind will seek options when threatened and provide itself with the most reasonable course of action.  This type of action is also known as a “gut-feeling” or “fight or flight” response.
The human mind is very powerful at fighting disease.  There have been many reports of patients who suffer from chronic and terminal diseases that live longer and sometimes even force the disease into dormancy.  The mind creates its own “cure” which medical science has a difficult time explaining.  Adrianne Lord writes in her paper Consciousness and the Placebo Effect about patients who were given fake treatments and fake drugs, and these patients were unaware.  The healing power of the mind created its own cure and most of these patients experienced recovery similar to those who took the legitimate drug.  Although one explanation is that the placebo may have reduced the patients anxiety levels, I believe that the human mind is powerful at achieving just about anything set forth by its owner.