The mind helps healing
Anew study by scientists at Harvard University, in the US, has found that the way we experience time affects how quickly wounds heal.
When someone thinks more time has passed, their wounds heal faster.
For the test, the scientists had to “wound” the volunteers. They didn’t want to hurt them, so they used “cupping” to create a slight bruise. Cupping involves putting a special type of warm jar on the skin. As the air inside cools, it creates suction and pulls the skin up. This stretches blood vessels in the skin, damaging them slightly so that a little bit of blood seeps out and marks the skin. The same thing happens when you get a bruise from bumping into something.
After the bruise had formed, all the volunteers waited exactly 28
minutes before the scientists checked how well they were healing. However, the volunteers didn’t know that, because they had been given different timers as they waited. Some of the timers went too slowly, some went at the correct speed and some went too fast. In one test, the timer made 28 minutes look like 56 minutes and in another the volunteers waited for what they thought was only 14 minutes. Each volunteer did all three timed tests, because some people naturally heal faster than others and the researchers wanted to make sure the test was fair. After each test the bruises were checked and the final results revealed they healed faster when the person thought more time had passed. Scientists are using this study to look more closely at how the mind can influence the workings of the body.