can will power cure us for a short time

[A Childs Mind]

i was watching house the other day. and ther was this guy. was about to die on his deth bed. and all of a suden his wife had trouble brething then stoped. and the husband lened up and started screming help her. then for like 3 days he was helthey but was still dieing

 

so my question can willpower cause a suden bost of recovery.

[iNow]

As explained in that episode by House himself, the guy was just sick from some mold in his apartment, and his "sudden boost of recovery" was a response to the adrenaline pumping through his system when he saw his wife beginning to suffocate.

 

The human immune system is pretty amazing, but there are very clear limits, and will power rarely impacts those limits.

[wade.daniel.w]

yes, this is called the placebo effect. Also yeah (as iNow suggested) thoughts/memories can also trigger chemicals (peptides) that create emotions more useful in those situations which will help, for example adrenaline will speed up your heart rate and increase blood circulation, making this useful in the case of an ailment with low blood circulation (in some situations a shoot of pure adrenaline to the heart can bring people that have recently flat-lined back to life). certain emotional reactions may be helpful in conditions where the chemical created has use in alieviating the ailment, as medicine does (but is obviously more fine tuned). this is a theory of mine I believe in, however the placebo effect is definitely a real (proven) answer to your question, yes this is possible

[GDG]

What is most clear is that we do not completely understand the immune system yet. See for example:

• G. Pacheco-Lopez et al., FASEB J (2009) 23(4):1161-67, which describes how to train rats so that their conditioned response to the taste of saccharin is a depression in immune response;
  
• A. Kusnecov et al., Biol Psych (1989) 28:25-39, reviewing research regarding immunomodulation by behavioral conditioning;
  
• J. Kipnis et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci (2004) 101:8180–85, describing how depletion of T-cells degrades cognition (and restoring T-cells restores cognition)
  

Given those unexpected findings (at least to me), I would hesitate to say that the immune system has clear limits and capabilities...

[iNow]

Fair enough. My argument intended to suggest that there are definitely going to be limits somewhere, not that we necessarily know what/where those are.

[A Childs Mind]

but you all miss the point. im not talking about the imune system. i belive i put this in the wroung catigory i intende it to be a philisophical question....

[iNow]

Ermm... How is the question, "Can will power cause a sudden boost in recovery" a philosophical one?

 

 

Further, this is a science forum, not a philosophy forum. Never mind. I probably shouldn't have wasted my time replying. Carry on.

[einstein's bro]

some people live longer than expected because of a purpose they believe they need to furfill like if someone wanted to live to see the millenium (back in 1990's) they may have a stronger will to live until then, it's not unheard of for husbands/wifes when they get older to die within very close timeframes so I believe yes it can have some small effect.

[GDG]

Well, your brain does control many aspects of your body and its functioning that you are never aware of. For example, your digestive system does not run by itself: your brain and spinal cord regulate all of the secretion, peristalsis, etc., even though you have no conscious control over the process.

 

What I think is most likely in the situations that you are talking about is that the person in question is determined to survive until event X (grandchild's birth, or wedding, or birthday Y, etc.), and after that point, relaxes. I.e., it is not so much the force of will keeping the person breathing when they "should have" already passed on, as it is the terminal patient who is satisfied that they've made their milestone "letting go" after it is done.