My Mom lived her life with courage and determination. She survived poverty, abuse, single-parenthood, and teenagers. When she was diagnosed with a rare form of breast cancer, she fouight like hell for the right treatment, and faced horrifying, invasive and embarrassing procedures with strength and humor.
Cancer simply beat the crap out of her.
Thank you. 
An interesting small study, done in 1998.
In 2004, a meta-analysis of the studies of the previous 30 years of data on stress and the immune system was done, and concluded:
So, no evidence that positive mood improves immune function, only that chronic stress may impair it.
An animal study, which also finds that: immune reactions are either inhibited or enhanced as a result of previous or parallel stress experiences.
The conclusion of this study: A pessimistic explanatory style was significantly associated with a self-report of poorer physical and mental functioning 30 years later. It doesn’t address immune status at all, nor does it measure outcomes in terms of actual morbidity or mortality, only subjective self-reporting.
“Positive mood guards against getting colds”. While interesting, again the numbers are small, the main measurements are subjective reporting of symptoms, and the report implied that the optimistic ones had clinical signs of infection (evidence of the disease process, seen on physical exam) but complained about them less.
This study of Finns concludes: Dissatisfaction was associated with increased disease mortality, particularly in men with heavy alcohol use. Women did not show similar associations between life satisfaction and mortality. Life dissatisfaction may predict mortality and serve as a general health risk indicator. This effect seems to be partially mediated through adverse health behavior.
So, unhappy men didn’t live as long, and the result seemed to be related to abuse of alcohol. Women did not show this effect. And the men could have been dissatisfied because of other health problems, too. I don’t see the application of this study to considerations of optimism and immune status.
I did find one study on HIV-infected men, where their overall optimism and level of spirituality was assessed, and was found to correlate with a lower CD4 count than their less optimistic cohorts!
So, none of those cites you provided really go very far to demonstrate your assertion that
But I do sincerely thank you for providing them as requested, and for affording me the opportunity to view them, and review the current literature regarding psychological factors and the immune system!
I’ve skimmed the thread, and seen people respond to this assertion. What I’m asking is slightly different: is the immune system critical to, or even relevant to, fighting cancer? I though cancer was your own cells growing out of control and the immune system was essentially powerless to fight them because it identifies them as your own cells.
Sailboat
Aye, there’s the rub.
Sme cancers do arise far more often in folks who are immunosuppressed: Kaposi’s sarcoma in AIDS patients for one.
But others pop up in folks whose immune systems are quite adept; Lung cancer and liver cancer are two frequent examples, and some forms of breast cancer are in this category also. The immune system is potent but it just does not recognize the cancer as other.
However, given that cancer treatments tend to knock back both the cancer cells and the immune system, with the result that at times cancer patients die of infections they could normally fight off even while the cancer is in retreat, it’d be nice to be able to beef up the immune system.
It still remains to be seen if a positive mental attitude actually strengthens immunity.
Nice analysis there of Quiddity’s cites by Qadgop, pointing out the insufficiency of evidence linking “a positive outlook” to any lower incidence of, or increased survival secondary to cancer.
I’d note that three of those studies dealt with self-reporting and not any kind of rigorous analysis of the patient’s condition (self-perceptions of well-being are not very reliable indicators of disease states).
Further, one of those studies notes:
*"(regarding) indices of immune function in depression, contradictory studies have been reported in which researchers did not detect any significant alteration in some of the immune variables in patients who are depressed…The relation between stressful life experiences and breast cancer has been the subject of a great deal of research, most of which has been characterised by weak design and contradictory results. A retrospective study did not show any important association between stressful life events and breast cancer. A meta-analysis concluded that the few well-designed studies that have been done did not find evidence of a link. A further observational cohort study also did not confirm that severely stressful life experiences increase the risk of relapse of breast cancer.
The role of psychological factors in cancer initiation and progression has been reviewed, and, despite the availability of some prospective studies, there is no certainty about the role of any specific factor."*
It’s sort of a cliche among physicians that people developing terrible illnesses often are “nice”, while nasty, contrary sorts go unscathed. This, while interesting, is likely anecdotal and subject to the same sort of observer bias that says that people with “positive” outlooks do better in regards to cancer.
Thank you OP. Every time I hear this crap I want to vomit. The notion that someone who survives cancer is stronger, or more positive, or just tried harder enfuriates me.
If you survive cancer, it’s because it was caught early enough, you got good treatment, and you have horseshoes up your ass.
The related glurge to that described in the OP is featured in stories about one-in-a-million coma survivors.
‘“We never gave up hope” said relatives of Mrs. Beatrice Mooney, who abruptly woke Saturday from a 20-year coma and began reciting Shakespearean sonnets.’
All those other people who recognized the reality of massive brain damage and made decisions for their loved ones based on the best medical appraisals possible - well, you just gave up. :rolleyes:
[Emphasis mine.]
Perhaps I should suggest that to my brother. If it helps, that’ll be a miracle. If it doesn’t, I’ll still get to be amused. 
I’m someone who thinks about this stuff a bit, wanting to go into the field and all.
But sometimes the best alternative to a long life is a good death. With cancer at least you get a few days, usually, to say goodbye. (This is particularly poignant to me right now because a good friend lost her mom a couple of weeks ago to lung cancer no-one knew she had. Her mom was unable to speak most of the time; she died within a week.)
If I were a doctor and my patient decided that they’d had enough - they’d had enough life, etc. - I’d like to hope that I could respect their choice to die as they chose, as comfortable as possible. I would encourage thought about their choice and would ask them to take some time to think, and if I thought it was a good idea I would strongly encourage chemo. But it’s not me that it’s happening to.
People die all the time; it’s not fair to put this expectation on cancer patients (or anyone else terminal) that they should be heroes. We don’t expect people with diabetes to “think themselves well!”. Yeah, it’s great when people are noble in the face of death and I’ve seen people do it, cancer or no.
Some folks with cancer really do get a lot out of being positive. Some folks with cancer are miserable. “Positive thinking” is not a fucking magic fairy wand that makes the goddam tumor taking over your head shrink and go away.
Keeping a positive attitude may have helped me push through my rehab faster and start walking again (although that could have just been because I was bored as shit being stuck in a hospital bed). But you want to know the real secret of how I beat cancer?
Ten metric assloads of medical technology and a doctor with a hard-on for tumors.
And if I ever write a book about the experience, that’s exactly what the title will be.
Can I pit the related “I prayed to God and He saved me.” Not the whole “God as myth” rant (cause, Lord knows, that hasn’t ever been done around here), but the hubris involved in “I’m more worthy to be saved, or I prayed harder.”
One of my colllegues at work has a daughter who was diagnosed with a neuroblastoma at eight months - neuroblastoma is a very treatable cancer when discovered early. I got a little sick of the whole “God saved her” thing - no, four months of intense chemo saved her.
Yes, The power of Prayer.
I have a friend whose relative was in a horrible accident and really wouldn’t normally have survived. She’s always saying that it proves what amazing things prayer can do. She says this in front of my friend and I who have both lost siblings to an accident and cancer. Did we not pray enough?
If enough prayer could save us from death not many people would die.
If nothing else, please read the last sentence in the ‘Conclusion’ section from this clinical trial published in the highly respected journal Cancer.
I’m positive that I’ve read other studies showing increases of T-cells and other disease-fighting mechanisms but it was long since and I haven’t access to higher-end sites where more papers can be found. However, there is a new field of medicine someone else referred to above (psychoneuroimmunology ) that is examining these very questions because they think there’s enough existing evidence to render such things plausible.
Since there is evidence for stress suppressing the immune response, though now it seems more so in the long term than in short, at minimum, having a better attitude, or at least minimizing stress, will stop suppressing the immune system, which can’t be a bad thing.
Whoops - listening to Wolf and Helen Thomas and took too long to add this:
Now, you can take this to the negative extreme, and interpret this as blaming people because they die, but I think that’s unproductive. Isn’t it a worthy endeavour to help people in such situations by providing support groups, information on meditation, and other things to help them cope? And since medicine can sometimes bring about results, isn’t it worthwhile to keep someone who still has a chance at being successfully treated sufficiently energized that they continue to fight even when it’s tiring?
You can’t tell me you haven’t heard of or known people who died because they quit. I knew someone like that. He had lymphoma. It wasn’t supposed to be fatal. He could have lived with it for years. However, he was in and out of the hospital several times for infections. I met him one day when he was leaving the hospital after a treatment and he said that he was tired of being sick and if he had to go back to hospital, he’d just quit. I urged him not to (he was just in his early 50s) but he was quite glum. Sure enough, he ended up in hospital a few weeks later because of another infection and he didn’t leave.
My dad did the same thing. After my stepmom died, he just quit (he didn’t tell me this; I didn’t find out until after). He went into hospital to have his meds regulated and the doctors told me there was nothing seriously wrong with him and he’d be out shortly. He was dead in two days. On the other hand, my mother was supposed to die more than once but she was going to see my wedding and she did.
I don’t think attitude is guaranteed to work one way or another; certainly a disease can overcome even the strongest of wills, but I think that there’s enough evidence that thought is not independent of physical function that science will eventually reveal the mechanisms which might be tweaked in patients’ favour. I don’t think skepticism is warranted in this regard.
Well, if it was before 2004 that you last accessed this data, it should have been included in the meta-study of 2004 I cited earlier.
Maybe, maybe not. Risk of having Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a non-Hodgkins lymphoma, is higher in people with autoimmune disease. Boosting the immune system in these folks could conceivably worsen their risk of getting lymphoma, or reduce their chance of recovering from said cancer if they already have it.
Bottom line: Many folks are taking specific research findings out of context, the lay press (and those with vested interests) are taking such findings and extrapolating the hell out of them, to make pronouncements like “being happy improves your rate of curing your cancer” when the evidence is not there yet.
We in medicine got badly burned when, on insufficient data, it was decided that post-menopausal women would benefit from wholesale hormone replacement. It turned out to do more harm than good.
I’d hate to see folks get their immune system “boosted” only to later discover that it makes their situation worse.
I think skepticism is highly warranted in such regard.
A skeptic thinks: “Is this proprosal really true? What is the evidence? How good is the evidence? How can it be tested? Does the evidence show what we think it shows?”
Those are very good things for a scientist to be thinking, especially in regards to new treatments on humans.
Oh, and I’m all for support groups, positive mental outlooks, etc. I think the most important factor is improving the quality of life as much as possible, and such interventions have been shown to do so.
I am not ready to declare that such things have been proven to extend life or improve outcomes. I have not seen conclusive evidence of that. Anecdotes aside, of course. I’ve seen people with a great outlook survive a disease that kills 85% of its victims. I’ve seen plenty of similar game young fighters with great attitudes who die quickly and horribly from their disease, despite optimal medical treatment.
I’d also like to pit any nitwit priest, rabbi, minister, or nun who would tell small children that if they pray real hard, God will let Mommy or Daddy beat cancer. A small child could be devastated by the thought that a parent’s death was the fault of their prayers and/or behavior not being good enough.
My sisters and I were told this Big Lie in the early 60s when our mother had cancer. Of course, she died, the primitive treatments of the day made cancer a virtual death sentence. But the damned priests and nuns at our Catholic school made us think that we kids let Mom down–that “better” kids than us would have prayed the cancer away.
I was 10 when Mom died. I spent maybe 3 years or so hating myself, another 3 or so years hating God, and the rest of my life hating the Catholic Church for what I believe was another form of their child abuse.
To those who think grief counseling is nothing more than a racket, all I can say is the Catholic version of grief counseling in those days consisted of, “Your mother died, what? A month ago? You’ve got to stop using her as an excuse for your laziness.” Gee, pardon my sisters and me for slipping off to the rest room to cry a few times a day.
Kids who lose one or both parents need love and compassion, not “Get yer lazy ass back to work!”
And as for Mom’s implied lack of courage and determination, she underwent hellish radiation treatments that were no doubt higher-dose and less exactly targeted than todays treatments.