Spontaneous healing is not a solo endeavor. What can you tell us about social support, which is factor No. 7 in your book?
Social support is the love that you receive from your friends and family. There is a rich history of scientific research on it, and it's one of these things that continues to baffle social scientists because it's stronger than almost anything. It is protective to your health even when you are a smoker who's overweight and doesn't exercise and drinks a lot of alcohol. If you have an abundantly strong social support network, if you feel that you have the most amazing friends and family, while that perception won't completely protect you from having a heart attack or cancer, it will be very protective of your health overall. They've done studies asking cancer patients, "How strong is your social support on a scale of 1 to 10?" And they've found that if you perceive you don't have a lot of friends and family, say you self-report a score of 2, you're actually twice as likely to die as someone who reports a score of 8.
In my book, I tell the story of Kathryn, who was a single woman, divorced, in her 60s, and living alone when she was diagnosed with very advanced liver cancer. She had a low salary from her job as an adjunct professor and didn't have medical insurance. So, she thinks, "Okay, this is it. I'm clearly going to die from this." Yet this small church community that she had been a part of came out of the woodwork for her. They arranged meals and rides, and they did a fundraiser to pay for the alternative treatments that she intuitively wanted to have. She was just blown away, and she believes that the grace of others is the reason she's alive today. One gift of her cancer is that she realized she was loved—not because she was a good friend or a good church member, but just because she was a human who was sick. I think it's a wonderful lesson, especially in these current sociopolitical times, of loving your neighbor and giving them support just because they need it.