How Your Facial Expressions Assist Your Health Practitioner in Helping You!

Today, I have the great pleasure of being the host on Day 4 of Clifton Meador’s Virtual Blog Tour.

Clifton’s book Fascinomas is celebrating its launch from February 17^th to March 3^rd, 2014.

Clifton K. Meador, MD has a gift for filtering through tales and ‘can you beat this one’ stories that are passed around doctors’ lounges and operating rooms and coming up with succinct but extremely entertaining stories. A ‘fascinoma’, as Meador defines, is medical slang for an unusually interesting medical case. He has gleaned and collected and curated 35 such cases from his own experience and the experiences of colleagues who have given permission to re-tell their own blockbusters. Each case is reads like a short story – the presentation of a strange set of symptoms, the initial response of the examining doctor(s), gradual revelation of further symptoms (sometimes via revealed secrets from the presenting patient), and the final diagnosis. Clifton’s mantra is: “There is not a medical diagnosis or a defined disease behind every chronic symptom; but there is a demonstrable cause if you listen and search carefully.”

Yesterday Clifton visited Robyn Bennett’s blog at http://www.simplewellnesscoach.com who got to ask him some questions about the two broad categories for stressors in the body and how stressful relationships can affect us physically

Today, I’d like to share with you a recent interview I had with Clifton when I got to ask him some questions about how a person’s core beliefs relate to Placebo and Nocebo effects, and the facial expressions of the 7 basic emotions. I hope you enjoy the interview!

***INTERVIEW***

KRYSTALYA: What are the facial expressions of the 7 basic emotions and how can recognizing them help the health practitioner work more effectively with their patient?

CLIFTON: Paul Ekman took photographs from all around the world and found these basic facial expressions of emotions; anger, fear, disgust, surprise, happiness, sadness and contempt. In his book Emotions Revealed and in his DVD he teaches how to recognize these expressions. He holds that for every internal emotional state there is a full external representation of that state. These expressions are very fleeting. If the health practitioner is skilled, he or she will note the internal state of the person before the person is aware of that feeling. This kind of skill builds powerful rapport with the client. It is the ultimate test of empathy to be able to know the emotional state of another person.

KRYSTALYA: What is the difference between a diagnosis and an underlying cause and how can understanding the underlying cause help a patient to heal?

CLIFTON: There are only a limited number of defined medical diagnoses; some one said 25,000. So if the physician is determined to “make a diagnosis” he or she will jam or cram the findings into one of the diagnoses, whether it is true or not. It is a closest fit proposition. In truth there are an infinite number of possible causes for symptoms that are not diagnoses. A cause is an identifiable trigger or stimulus for a symptom such as diarrhea from an abusive boss, partial paralysis from dusting a cat with rose dust, cough from insect spray in an office, aching all over from daily blue cheese salads, multiple symptoms from a toxic marriage (cured by divorce). Causes are more specific than diagnoses.  A diagnosis can obscure finding the cause for a symptom. The patient is satisfied to have a name for the disorder and stops looking for specific causes. Dr. Balint in his book, “The Doctor, the Patient and the Disease” states “once the doctor and patient agree on a diagnosis, then right or wrong, the patient becomes incurable of that named diagnosis.” It is nearly impossible to remove a false diagnosis.  However, once a person becomes aware of the cause, healing usually occurs by confronting, correcting, or removing the specific cause. Awareness is such an important factor. “Diagnoses” are too abstract and removed from actual experience.

KRYSTALYA: How does a person’s core beliefs relate to the effect of Placebo and Nocebo effects?

CLIFTON: That is really a good question. Dr. William Mundy a psychiatrist and medical physician, says “A belief will override any set of facts, no matter how irrational the belief.” No one has studied the characteristics of people who are placebo responders – nor of the characteristics of people who can induce a placebo response. A person must believe in the power of the inducer (physician in white coat in most cases) who is giving the substance.

There are studies of hex or voodoo deaths from around the world; I think voodoo death is the same phenomenon as placebo/nocebo. There are 3 essentials for a hex to produce death:

1. The witch doctor is known to have produced death by talking.
2. All in the immediate family and the victim believe hex or voodoo death can occur.
3. The family and friends retreat from the victim, allowing him to be isolated and die.

So the placebo responder must believe in the power of the doctor or administering person. The placebo or nocebo then produces real or measurable physiological changes in the body or brain of the person.

*** END OF INTERVIEW***

I hope you enjoyed this brief interview with Dr. Clifton Meador Fascinomas – fascinating medical mysteries is Clifton’s 13^th book on medical matters. The response to True Medical Detective Stories led him to collect and write the 35 cases in Fascinomas. In Fascinomas, all of the clinical facts are completely true – the story of the illness, all lab work, all imaging studies, and the physical exam findings. If you are intrigued by the curative power of listening and engaging the patient and the family in searching for clues, especially when the symptoms are chronic and recurring – pick up Fascinomas. You can find the book on Amazon at:

Amazon US – Paperback: https://amzn.to/19bWyIs

Amazon US – Kindle: https://amzn.to/1cTp6aY

Amazon UK – Paperback: https://amzn.to/198bXLO

Amazon UK – Kindle: https://amzn.to/1iaxFz1

Amazon Canada – Paperback: https://amzn.to/KwrqKK

Amazon Canada – Kindle: https://amzn.to/1cHpzbC

Thanks for reading! Please share your comments and thoughts below. I love reading your feedback

Be sure to follow him tomorrow when the next stop on his Virtual Blog Tour is Tina Games’ blog at http://www.journalingbythemoonlight.com/blog/ when Clifton will be talking about questions we should ask ourselves when we experience chronic symptoms in certain parts of our body.