We have heard many stories of how our mind and body affect each other and how they are interconnected. Phantom Pregnancy is an extreme case of our mind’s influence over the body.
Phantom pregnancy is when a woman becomes pregnant but there is no baby in the uterus. The woman’s body will exhibit all the signs of pregnancy including swollen abdomen, enlarged breasts, menstrual cycle stopped, morning sickness, and nipple pigmentation. The body imitates all of these pregnancy symptoms without actually being pregnant. It is called Pseudocyesis.
Why does this happen?
Pregnancy symptoms are caused by hormonal changes. Our brain controls all the hormone levels in our body. So when a woman believes that she is pregnant, both consciously and subconsciously, her brain starts producing the hormones accordingly and all the symptoms start to show up.
But without having an actual baby, how does the abdomen get swollen? Here, the brain subconsciously learns to make the abdomen bigger by accumulating gases in the intestines and by lowering the diaphragm. This way the mind and the body conspire to make a woman look pregnant for 9 months.
What happens after 9 months?
The woman may even feel like the baby is moving inside and at the end of 9 months she may even feel labor pains. But there will be no baby coming out. She realizes she’s no longer pregnant and the symptoms begin to wade off.
Don’t they do pregnancy tests to confirm?
They do. That is why phantom pregnancy cases are much lower these days. In the olden days, before technological advancements, pregnancy tests were not very accurate and not accessible to everyone. There was extreme social pressure on women to have a baby. So, when they felt like they were pregnant, there was no way to disprove their belief. They continue believing they are pregnant and their mind and body act accordingly.
Although the body imitates most of the pregnancy symptoms, it can’t imitate one obvious symptom. It is the belly button. If a woman is really pregnant, the belly button would be pushed outward during the later months. In phantom pregnancies, the belly button remains normal.
Nowadays, if you feel like you are pregnant you’ll immediately get tested in a hospital and you’ll know for sure whether you are pregnant or not. So, the number of phantom pregnancy cases has drastically reduced. In the 1700s, about one in two hundred pregnancies were phantoms. Now, it happens only in one out of ten thousand.
Influence of beliefs
If the brain is capable of making you imitate a complex set of pregnancy symptoms, it sure has a huge influence over the body’s health. The existence of the placebo effect is direct proof of this influence. There are recorded cases of warts falling off automatically after a hypnotic treatment and some cancer patients with positive thoughts live longer than others. This does not mean that our brain is capable of curing any disease, but positive thinking definitely helps.
This article is inspired by Chapter 11 of the book Phantoms in the Brain by V.S. Ramachandran.
Reference Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_pregnancy
https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/false-pregnancy-or-pseudopregnancy-in-dogs
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-hypnosis/202207/treatment-warts-hypnosis