Last week, I found myself limping around after what seemed like a small accident turned into a painful pull of my glute and hamstring. For a moment I truly believed I had ripped the muscle. My mind raced ahead with fears of long recovery, missed gym sessions, and losing momentum. Yet instead of surrendering to panic, I made a conscious choice. Every morning I repeated to myself, “I have a healthy leg, it is restored into vibrant health.” I spoke it, I believed it, and I paired that conviction with action. I took my medication, showed up for physiotherapy, and added natural remedies like turmeric to reduce inflammation. Slowly but surely, my leg began to respond.

This was not magic. It was not me pretending there was no pain. It was me recognising that the body responds differently when the mind believes in healing. Neuroscience has given us a name for this: the placebo effect. When we expect healing, our brain and immune system shift gears. Stress hormones fall. Repair hormones rise. Cells are given the signal to fight for us. What our grandparents understood through prayer and ritual, science now confirms: belief itself changes the body.

Growing up in Zambia, many of us were raised with that deep cultural wisdom. When a family member fell ill, prayers were said, elders spoke blessings, and rituals were performed. These practices carried comfort and hope. Some might look back and dismiss them as superstition. But perhaps our grandparents were never wrong. They simply lacked the language of neuroscience. Their belief lit a fire in the body, a fire we now measure in brain scans and immune responses.

The challenge today is that many of us live in extremes. Some people hold only to traditional beliefs, convinced that prayer alone will heal any condition. Others run to the opposite side, depending solely on medication and dismissing the power of the mind altogether. Both approaches miss the point. True healing is not either-or. It is both-and. Faith can fuel us, but medication can save us. Herbs and rituals may comfort us, but therapy and treatment rebuild us.

Living with diabetes has taught me this truth in the most personal way. I was diagnosed young, and the temptation could have been to despair. I could have told myself, “My life is over.” On difficult days, that thought still tries to creep in. Yet I know that if I give up mentally, my little cells hear me. They lose hope as well. My blood sugars spike, my stress rises, and balancing blood sugars becomes even harder.

Instead, I have learned to practise belief alongside discipline. When I take my medication, I remind myself that my body has its own innate intelligence. It is trying every single day to keep me alive, to balance blood sugars, to repair what it can. My job is to support it with the tools I have – insulin, food choices, exercise, rest – but also to keep faith in its strength. Believing in my body means I am not just handing over all responsibility to a vial of medicine. I am recognising that my cells and my spirit are already working for me.

This is the heart of integrative healing. It is not about replacing your doctor with positive thinking. It is not about abandoning prayer or rituals. It is about recognising that healing happens fastest when all these forces work together. Belief gives us hope. Medicine gives us structure. Tradition gives us comfort. Science gives us evidence. Together they create a whole greater than any one part.

I often think about how this message matters to our communities, whether here in Zambia or in the diaspora. Too often we fall into inherited myths or rigid medical scripts. We either dismiss our grandparents’ wisdom as outdated, or we distrust modern science as foreign. Yet the truth is that both worlds have always been trying to tell us the same thing: the mind and body are inseparable. Belief is not a substitute for insulin, physiotherapy, or antibiotics. But without belief, treatment itself is weakened.

This is not abstract. It shows up in daily choices. When you wake up with high sugars, the easy response is despair: “I am failing, I cannot manage this.” Yet that thought makes your cells sag in defeat. Instead, imagine saying: “This is a bump in the road. Tomorrow will be better. My body is still on my side.” That shift reduces stress hormones and gives your body the energy to respond to the insulin you inject. Your conviction becomes an ally to your treatment.

I want us to reframe how we see healing. Not as a battle between tradition and medicine, faith and science, old ways and new ways. Healing is a partnership. Your body is already trying every single day to repair, restore, and protect you. It whispers through symptoms, asking for rest, better food, or more movement. It holds memories of rituals and prayers that soothed our grandparents. It also recognises the precision of a doctor’s prescription. Our role is to believe in it, support it, and never abandon it.

My hamstring reminded me of this lesson. What started as pain and panic ended in renewed faith in my own body. I healed because I combined belief with treatment, conviction with action. Diabetes continues to remind me of the same thing. Each day is not about perfect sugars or flawless routines. It is about refusing to give up on my body, no matter what. Because when I believe in it, it believes in me. And together, we keep moving. I trust you can believe in your body’s innate intelligence too.

Kaajal Vaghela is a wellness entrepreneur, sportswear designer, and diabetes health consultant with over three decades of lived experience managing Type 1 diabetes. Having previously served as Chairperson of the Lusaka branch of the Diabetes Association of Zambia, she remains a passionate advocate for breaking down myths and building awareness about diabetes. For more corporate wellness workshops, visit: www.kaajalvaghela.com and for any feedback: [email protected])