My own placebo. Dr. Joe Dispenza - "World bestseller! The book will give inspiration and self-confidence even to skeptics
Good afternoon!
Today is my review of Dr. Joe Dispenza's book My own placebo."
Initially, the bookstore attracted a bright cover. After looking at the content, I realized that I wanted to read it.
"Your own placebo" is world bestseller and sold ☝️ 3,000,000 copies worldwide.
professor of neurochemistry and neurobiology, head of the integrated medicine clinic.
I think a lot of people have heard of placebo but still remember:
from lat. placebo, literally - “I will please, please”) - a substance without obvious medicinal properties, used as a medicine, the therapeutic effect of which is associated with the patient's belief in the effectiveness of the drug. Sometimes a placebo capsule or tablet is called empty. Lactose is often used as a placebo substance. In addition, the term placebo effect refers to the very phenomenon of improving a person’s health due to the fact that he believes in the effectiveness of some effect, which is actually neutral. In addition to taking the drug, such an effect can be, for example, the performance of certain procedures or exercises, the direct effect of which is not observed. The degree of manifestation of the placebo effect depends on the suggestibility of the person and the external circumstances of the "treatment" - for example, on the appearance of the placebo, its price and the overall difficulty of obtaining the "medicine" (this strengthens the credibility of its effectiveness due to the unwillingness to consider effort and money wasted) , the degree of trust in the doctor, the authority of the clinic.
The placebo book is in two parts.
In the first part - 10 chapters, in the second - 2 chapters. There are 414 pages in total.
First part:
The first part contains many scientific experiments with the placebo effect, stories of real people who were able to change their lives, although no one believed in it.
Also the story of the author himself, Dr. Joe Dispenza, about how he defeated the death sentence of doctors thanks to the placebo effect. There are many scientific explanations of how and why our brains succumb to the placebo effect. There are many photographs and graphs that show how the brain works in various situations.
Everything is written in such a simple, explanatory language that there are no difficulties in understanding the book.
By the way, have you heard about the effect Nocebo? I'm not here. And it turns out that this is also the case.
Nocebo effect - (from lat. nocebo- “I will hurt”) - a remedy that does not have a real pharmacological effect, but causes a negative reaction in the patient. The term originated as the antithesis of placebo.
The nocebo effect appears to be of a psychophysiological nature.
Joe Dispenza exemplifies the Nocebo effect. Using many examples, he shows how two effects that are opposite in nature work: Placebo and Nocebo.
It is in the first part of the book that the full concept of Placebo is formed in the head. You begin to believe and understand that everything is possible. The main thing is to believe and build your thoughts correctly. After all, no one else but you can change something. The greatest power is our mind, so we must think positively!
The second part:
The second part is the most interesting!
Described how, where and when to meditate. There is also a text of meditation that you can record on your recorder and listen to.
After reading "To Yourself Placebo" you will receive a lot of useful knowledge that will be useful both in everyday life and in difficult periods. You really become a placebo for yourself.
The Placebo Book is not a work of fiction. A whole work of a professor of neurochemistry and neurobiology. This is the work of a scientist, only in a language accessible to a person far from science. Yes, there are some points that are difficult to read and understand. These are neurons, tata levels, etc. But everything is explained and the relationship from one to another is visible.
I bought "To Myself Placebo" in the bookstore "Read the City" for 487 rubles (using a discount card, it turned out 20% cheaper for me). Someone will say that the price is not small, but it's worth it!
P.S. Never forget that we are our thoughts and they must be controlled so as not to harm ourselves.
Healing diseases with the power of intention and visualization - is it possible? In fact, this happens much more often than you might think. As numerous scientific experiments in the fields of self-hypnosis, neurophysiology, psychotherapy and others prove, our brain is not able to distinguish between real events and their consciously imagined phantoms. Through this discovery, we can learn to change ourselves as we wish. And Joe Dispenza will teach you HOW in his Self Placebo.
Discover the skills of mind reprogramming - and enjoy a healthy vibrant life! When a person is able to fully control himself, there are no more barriers and restrictions in self-development for him!
book characteristics
Translation date: 2016
Name: placebo on my own: how to use the power of the subconscious mind for health and prosperity
Volume: 410 pages, 68 illustrations
ISBN: 978-5-699-91379-4
Translator: CJSC "Company EGO Translating"
Copyright holder: Eksmo
Foreword to the book "Myself a placebo. The Power of the Subconscious"
Like most Joe Dispenza fans, I always look forward to his new bold ideas. Combining hard scientific facts with stimulating insights, Joe expands the horizons of the possible by pushing the boundaries of the known. He takes science more seriously than most scientists, and in this charming book presents the latest discoveries in epigenetics, neuroplasticity, and psychoneuroimmunology in a logical conclusion.
This ending is exciting. It turns out that you, like all other people, give shape to your brain and body with your thoughts, emotions and aspirations, as well as those transcendental states that you experience. Book "My own placebo" invites you to use this knowledge to create a new body and a new life for yourself.
This is not a metaphysical proposal. Joe explains each link in the chain of cause and effect that starts with a thought and ends with a biological fact such as an increase in the number of stem cells or immune protein molecules circulating in your circulatory system.
The book begins with Joe talking about an accident in which he fractured six vertebrae in his spine. Almost on his deathbed, he was faced with the need to put into practice what he knew before in theory - that our body has an innate intelligence and miraculous healing power. The discipline he brought to the process of visualizing his spinal column by rebuilding it is a story of inspiration and determination.
We are all inspired by such stories of spontaneous remission and "miraculous" healing, although Joe shows us in this book that all of us can experience such miracles of healing. Renewal is built into the very fabric of our body, and its weakening and disease are the exception, not the rule.
When we understand how our body renews itself, we can begin to use these processes intentionally to help our cells' hormones synthesize the proteins they are made of, the neurotransmitters they make, and the neural pathways they send signals through. Because our body is constantly changing. Our brain is seething, every second creating and destroying neural connections. Joe teaches us to intentionally steer this process by moving from the seat of a passive passenger to the driver's seat of a car.
The notion that you can heal yourself simply by translating thoughts into feelings may seem startling at first. Joe himself did not expect the results obtained by the participants of his master classes: spontaneous remission of tumors, wheelchair-bound patients began to walk, and migraines disappeared. With open-hearted joy and receptive experimentation, like a child engrossed in the game, Joe began to try to push the boundaries of the possible, wondering how quickly radical healing could occur if a person applied the placebo bodily effect with complete conviction. It turns out that the title "My own placebo" reflects the fact that it is our own thoughts, emotions and beliefs that trigger a series of processes in the body.
Joe delved into the science behind these changes and presented them to us in an easy-to-understand and digestible way. He did all the hard work behind the scenes to bring elegant and simple explanations to the stage. Using analogies and case histories, he demonstrates in full how we can apply these discoveries to our daily lives, and recounts incredible recovery among those who have taken these ideas seriously.
New generation researchers have coined a term for the practice that Joe outlines in the book "My own placebo" - self-guided neuroplasticity. At the heart of this concept is the idea that we ourselves control the formation of new neural pathways and the destruction of old ones due to the quality of the experiences that we cultivate. I am confident that this technique will become one of the most powerful concepts in personality transformation and neuroscience for the coming generation.
In the meditation exercises of the second part of the book, metaphysics moves into concrete practice. You can easily do these meditations on your own, giving you the opportunity to become your own placebo. The task is to change your beliefs and perception of your life at the biological level, that is, to “fall in love” with the new future in the matter of the body and life.
So embark on this magical journey that will expand your horizons, opening up the possibility of healing and optimal functioning. You have nothing to lose by throwing yourself enthusiastically into the process and shedding unnecessary thoughts, feelings, and biological pre-sets that have limited your past. Believe in your ability to realize your highest potential, and you will become a placebo for yourself.
Dawson Church, PhD
Quotes from “Yourself a placebo. The Power of the Subconscious by Joe Dispenza
It is not enough to avoid such negative feelings as fear and anger - it is necessary to consciously cultivate a sincere positive attitude in yourself.
The human body has some kind of innate intelligence that allows it to supply the body with a set of chemicals for natural healing.
If you can imagine a specific future event that you would like to experience in your life, then that reality already exists as a possibility, somewhere in the quantum field - beyond this space and time - waiting for you to observe it.
The placebo effect requires a person to be inspired emotionally, since emotions are directly related to the subconscious. It is they who allow you to make a change in the operating system and program, commanding the autonomic nervous system to start producing the appropriate biochemistry.
For as long as you hold on to certain ideas, they will lead to the same choices and, consequently, to the same actions, which create the same experiences and evoke the same emotions, which, in turn, again give rise to the same thoughts.
To nurture and solidify new neural connections, you must make a conscious choice to think and act in new ways every day. We need to strengthen these bonds by repeating this experience repeatedly until it becomes a habit. It is necessary to get used to new chemical states, experiencing emotions from a new experience.
We are programmed for unconscious behavior from morning to evening - and we do not even know about it.
If you constantly analyze your life, judge yourself and constantly fixate on thoughts about everything in your reality, then you will never enter the operating system of the subconscious, where these old programs are recorded, and you will not be able to reprogram them.
The greater the connection with emotions, the stronger the reaction of the acquired (conditioned) reflex to stimuli in the environment.
When a person consciously accepts a certain idea and develops a firm intention, the cascade of physiological reactions automatically brings about a complete biological change without the participation of his consciousness.
Then you need to consciously adjust your thoughts and aspirations to such states of elation as joy or gratitude.
When you picture a new destiny or dream in your mind, you imagine it again and again until it becomes familiar to you. The more knowledge and experiences associated with the new reality that you dream about, you have built into your brain, the more resources you have to create its best model in your imagination, and the stronger your desire and expectation.
Before trying to understand the works of a certain person, you need to know something minimal about him, otherwise you risk missing the most important thing that he was trying to convey to you. The placebo author is Joe Dispenza. This fellow explains science fiction at the level of science. He himself writes: Mysticism is the main tool of science».
Joe conducts dozens of master classes a year around the world, where people experience the most unusual positive changes, up to healing from incurable diseases.
All this, of course, could turn out to be another wonderful tale for dinner if Dispenza and his team forgot to fix everything with the help of instruments, and then elegantly and naturally describe the miracle on paper in an accessible human language. That's what kind of person he is.
Joe has been studying man and his potential for the fourth decade, which, in fact, he writes about in each of his three books. It takes an extremely brave person to take a risk and go into the wilds that are so unexplored that they can just make you laugh and end your research career.
About "Placebo Myself"
Here you see a book in front of you with the inscription: “Your own placebo” and a beautiful abstract cover, what thoughts can you have? Of course, you decide naively to assume that there will be something dry, highly scientific and not really going beyond the scope of banal self-treatment. Well, then you read and gradually realize: “ Hell, this is completely different, life itself is described here!».
Placebo effect
On the first hundred pages, nothing foreshadowed trouble or some kind of grand trick, it describes the results of various placebo studies and the history of individual people, we have already closely studied the topic of placebo when. But it is no coincidence that the author pays so much attention to these stories - we need to be concretely confronted with facts so that we begin to listen, so everything is written on the case.
Mind-body connection
All the processes that take place inside a person are explained in a completely accessible and simple language, even lovers of pictures will be satisfied here. You can learn that we, it turns out, are able to turn on and off our genes that affect our health. And much attention is also paid to rational analytical thinking, the subconscious and.
Potential and power of thinking
By the middle of the book, Joe decides that the time has come and, as if in between, begins to give out harsh monumental truths from the scientific bell tower. The ideas that gradually appear on the pages, in a nutshell, boiled down to the fact that a person is endowed with enormous potential, which it would be good to know about and be able not to lose it along the way of one's life. If earlier we knew more about this by intuition and our own observations, now we finally have the opportunity to find out how a person from the world of science explains it and with the help of science.
Almost the entire book "Placebo for Yourself" is built around human thinking. Did you know that your brain will generate 95% of yesterday's thoughts today, and it will reproduce 95% of today's thoughts tomorrow?
The author suggests thinking that if our life does not suit us now, then how, with such static thinking, are we going to change it? This is a very good question, because 5% interest is clearly not enough.
On this topic, Joe drops one mind-blowing thought: “ The unknown is the only place where you can create, because you can’t create anything fundamentally new from the known». Of course, a new experience is not born from the same conditions of life in which a person is used to being from day to day.
Great opportunities are hidden in the unknown, and we foolishly do not use them at all. Therefore, one must constantly go beyond the boundaries in order to move forward from the starting point, but how often do we do this?
Robbery of own resources
Much has been said about the stressful state in which we are already accustomed to being. Initially, the “fight or kick” mode was conceived by nature to increase a person’s chances of survival and was turned on only in the most life-critical situations.
This allowed a person to take a little more resources from his own body in order to be saved. But now we are too carried away by this state, plundering precious energy for nerves and irritability, and this energy in a good way should be used for development.
Dispenza, based on his own research, believes that the most creative state of a person is very far from such concepts as self-flagellation, stress, fear, negativity. How is it possible to make your life successful and happy, or at least be healthy, based on such concepts? - No way, but ironically, this is how we used to think.
quantum world
Well, the hell itself in terms of the complexity of the text begins when the author decides to lift the veil of the quantum concept of our world. Here you are about quantum intelligence, and about the observer effect, and about the principle of superposition - in general, choose for every taste. But since we have already talked about that, Joe's thoughts on this subject will be familiar to you.
As for specific instructions for action, at the end of the book the author offers only one meditation. Do not be upset, because all the necessary thoughts have already been given on the previous pages, and now you just need to take one tool and do everything right.
Who is this book for?
The book is universal. If you are just curious and eager to learn something new, then the book is clearly for you. If you do not understand many things in life and strive to find answers to help yourself, then the reading matter in question will also suit you.
Perhaps you suffer from or are susceptible to any diseases, or simply want to have good health, then the Placebo for Yourself book will be more useful than the most expensive medical care (but only if you allow yourself to listen to the book). These 400 pages of text are really worth the time and effort, because we need to stop living unconsciously and let life out of our hands.
What are the disadvantages?
Of the shortcomings, it is difficult to single out anything. Maybe only the first hundred pages, but most will like it, and its uselessness was only in our case. The author also returns to the same ideas throughout the book, describing them first from one side, then from the other, but this is necessary so that basic and non-obvious things reach readers.
If you seriously decide to realize everything that is written in the book, then one reading is not enough. Plus, in order to understand the concept, it is necessary to encounter it minimally in life and have some experience, otherwise it will hardly be possible to understand the whole essence and depth of the ideas described in the lines of the book “Placebo for Yourself”.
The situation is similar with meditation: if you have never meditated and do not see the point in meditation, then you should not abruptly ignore the material. Give yourself a few months to verify your opinion from personal experience, but after this time you will have no doubts about the effectiveness of the ideas presented.
In the end, let's not forget that the book contains several real-life cases where people recovered from diseases that are not treated medically at all.
Conclusion
"Placebo for Yourself" is a powerful book that leaves positive emotions and several reasons to think about your behavior. Here you once again understand how much responsibility lies on your shoulders and how much you are capable of.
From the life of one person
And finally, the story that begins the book. This is the story of a 23-year-old boy who, while participating in triathlon competitions, had an unfortunate meeting on a bicycle with an SUV. The man's spine was so severely damaged that it was unable to bear the weight of his own body, and the doctors kindly informed him that with such an injury, the boy would be paralyzed in all limbs for the next six months.
Our hero naturally had his own opinion, which allowed him, by the power of thought, without any medical influence from the outside, to calmly get on his feet and continue to live a full life after three months. And that kid was everyone's favorite psychopath, Joe Dispenza. A psychopath in the most beautiful sense of the word, that is, a person who devotes himself to his work to the marrow and bones.
Dr. Joe Dispenza
YOU ARE THE PLACEBO
© 2014 by Joe Dispenza. Originally published in 2014 by Hay House Inc., USA
© Design. LLC "Publishing house" E ", 2016
Book Reviews "My own placebo"
« My own placebo is a detailed guide on how to create miracles with your body, health and in your life. The book is just great!
– Christian Northrop, MD,
“Your mind plays a decisive role in the success or failure of almost everything you do, from personal relationships, studies, work and prosperity to happiness in general. "My own placebo" is a comprehensive study of our most important resource, plus it offers a wealth of practical methods to optimize your mind for success in everything. I love Dr. Dispenza's ability to present complex ideas in a way that any of us can not only understand but benefit from."
– Daniel J. Amen, MD,
“My experience of working with patients with life-threatening illness confirms the ideas expressed in the book. "My own placebo." The body experiences what the mind believes. I learned how to "deceive" people for their own good. “You can kill with a word, you can save with a word” - a word in the hands of a doctor can become a healing scalpel, or it can become a murder weapon. We all have the ability to heal ourselves built in. The main thing is to learn how to use this opportunity. Read and learn!
– Bernie Siegel, MD
"Dr. Joe Dispenza is an excellent teacher with a talent for explaining science in simple terms that anyone can understand."
– don Miguel Ruiz, MD,
“Dr. Joe Dispenza skillfully combines scientific research and brings forward a truly revolutionary approach to applying the mind to heal the body. An amazing book. Bravo!"
– Mona Lisa Schultz, MD
My mother, Francesca
Foreword
Like most Joe Dispenza fans, I always look forward to his new bold ideas. Combining hard scientific facts with stimulating insights, Joe expands the horizons of the possible by pushing the boundaries of the known. He takes science more seriously than most scientists, and in this charming book presents the latest discoveries in epigenetics, neuroplasticity, and psychoneuroimmunology in a logical conclusion.
This ending is exciting. It turns out that you, like all other people, give shape to your brain and body with your thoughts, emotions and aspirations, as well as those transcendental states that you experience. Book "My own placebo" invites you to use this knowledge to create a new body and a new life for yourself.
This is not a metaphysical proposal. Joe explains each link in the chain of cause and effect that starts with a thought and ends with a biological fact such as an increase in the number of stem cells or immune protein molecules circulating in your circulatory system.
The book begins with Joe talking about an accident in which he fractured six vertebrae in his spine. Almost on his deathbed, he was faced with the need to put into practice what he knew before in theory - that our body has an innate intelligence and miraculous healing power. The discipline he brought to the process of visualizing his spinal column by rebuilding it is a story of inspiration and determination.
We are all inspired by such stories of spontaneous remission and "miraculous" healing, although Joe shows us in this book that all of us can experience such miracles of healing. Renewal is built into the very fabric of our body, and its weakening and disease are the exception, not the rule.
When we understand how our body renews itself, we can begin to use these processes intentionally to help our cells' hormones synthesize the proteins they are made of, the neurotransmitters they make, and the neural pathways they send signals through. Because our body is constantly changing. Our brain is seething, every second creating and destroying neural connections. Joe teaches us to intentionally steer this process by moving from the seat of a passive passenger to the driver's seat of a car.
The discovery that the number of connections in a neural bundle can be doubled by repeated stimulation revolutionized biology in the 1990s. She brought her discoverer, neurophysiologist Eric Kandel, the Nobel Prize. Later, Dr. Kandel discovered that if we do not use new neural connections, they begin to fade in just three weeks. In this way, we can rewire our brain with signals sent through the neural network.
In the same decade that Dr. Kandel and others were studying neuroplasticity, other scientists discovered that only a small fraction of our genes are static. Most of the genes (according to various estimates, from 75 to 85%) are turned off and on by signals from our environment, including the thoughts, attitudes and feelings that we cultivate. One of the classes of these genes, early response genes(IEG), it takes only three seconds to reach peak expression. IEGs are predominantly regulatory genes that control the expression of hundreds of other genes and thousands of other proteins in remote areas of our bodies. This kind of penetrating and rapid change helps to explain some of the radical healings described in the pages of the book.
Joe understands the role of emotions in transformation more than any popularizer of science. Negative emotions are literally an addiction, causing high levels of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. Stress hormones and relaxation hormones, like oxytocin, have a very specific effect. This explains why we feel out of place when we think negatively: our hormonal balance is out of our comfort zone.
Thus, by changing your inner state, you can change the material reality. Joe is a master at explaining the chain of events that begins with intentions associated with the frontal lobes of the brain, from where signals are broadcast throughout the body (through chemical messengers called neuropeptides), these signals activate or deactivate genetic switches. Some of these chemicals are associated with feelings of love and trust: for example oxytocin -“hug hormone” (touch stimulates its production). You can learn to quickly regulate the levels of stress hormones and healing hormones in your body.
The notion that you can heal yourself simply by translating thoughts into feelings may seem startling at first. Joe himself did not expect the results obtained by the participants of his master classes: spontaneous remission of tumors, wheelchair-bound patients began to walk, and migraines disappeared. With open-hearted joy and receptive experimentation, like a child engrossed in the game, Joe began to try to push the boundaries of the possible, wondering how quickly radical healing could occur if a person applied the placebo bodily effect with complete conviction. It turns out that the title "My own placebo" reflects the fact that it is our own thoughts, emotions and beliefs that trigger a series of processes in the body.
As the saying goes, desperate times call for desperate measures. When Harvard graduate American surgeon Henry Beecher served on the front lines of World War II, he ran out of morphine for pain relief. Toward the end of the war, all field hospitals experienced severe morphine shortages, so this situation was not unusual. At that moment, Beecher had to operate on a seriously wounded soldier. He feared that without the introduction of an anesthetic, the soldier could fall into a deadly cardiovascular pain shock. What happened next shocked him to the core.
The nurse filled the syringe with saline and gave the soldier an injection, as if it were an injection of morphine. The soldier immediately calmed down.
He acted as if he had actually received a dose of medicine.
Beecher proceeded with the operation. He crashed into the body of a wounded soldier, removed fragments, treated wounds, and then applied stitches - all without any kind of anesthesia.
The soldier felt a slight pain, but he was not going to go into shock. How could it be, Beecher wondered, that saline had replaced morphine?
After this overwhelming success, whenever the field hospital ran out of morphine, Beecher repeated the same technique: he injected the patient with saline, simulating an injection of morphine. The front-line experience convinced him of the power of the placebo, and when he returned to the United States after the war, he began to study this phenomenon.
In 1955, Beecher made history with a clinical review of 15 studies published "Journal of the American Medical Association". His work not only testified to the great importance of placebo, but for the first time proposed a new model of medical research: subjects are randomly divided into two groups - receiving the active drug or placebo (what is now called placebo-controlled trials), so that the placebo effect does not distort the picture. treatment.
The idea that we can change physical reality with a single thought (whether we fully understand what we are doing or not) certainly first originated in the wrong World War II field hospital. The Bible is full of stories of miraculous healing, and even today, crowds of people constantly flock to places like Lourdes in southern France (where a 14-year-old peasant woman named Bernadette had a vision of the Virgin Mary in 1858), leaving their crutches, bandages and wheelchairs as proof of his full recovery. Similar miracles were noted in Fatima, Portugal (where the Virgin Mary appeared to three shepherdesses in 1917), and also in connection with the traveling statue of Mary, which was carved on the thirtieth anniversary of this phenomenon. The sketch of the statue was drawn from the words of the eldest of the three children, who by that time had taken the veil as a nun. Before the statue was sent to travel the world, it was blessed by Pope Pius XII.
Faith healing is, of course, not limited to the Christian tradition. The late Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba, considered by many followers to be avatar- the embodiment of a deity - became famous for emitting sacred ash from the palms, known as vibhuti. This fine gray ash is said to have the power to cure many physical, mental and spiritual ailments when eaten or smeared on the skin. It is said that Tibetan lamas also have the ability to heal, it is enough for them to blow on the patient for him to recover.
Even the French and English kings who ruled between the 4th and 9th centuries used the laying on of hands to heal their subjects. King Charles II of England became particularly famous for this treatment, having performed the practice about 100,000 times.
Why do such miracles happen (it does not matter here what is the instrument of healing - faith in a deity or faith in the exceptional power of a particular person, object, or even a place considered spiritual or sacred)? What is the process by which faith produces such powerful results? Could it be that the significance we attribute to ritual plays a role in the placebo phenomenon: whether it's casting a spell, rubbing a pinch of sacred ash into the skin, or taking a new miracle drug prescribed by a trusted doctor? It seems that the inner state of those healed was influenced by the appropriate circumstances (person, place, or some object at the right time) to such an extent that the new state of their mind could produce real physical changes?
From magnetism to hypnotism
In the 1770s, the Viennese physician Franz Anton Mesmer became famous for developing and demonstrating what was then considered the medical model of miraculous healing. Taking Sir Isaac Newton's idea of the effects of Earth's gravity on the human body, Mesmer became convinced that the body contained an invisible fluid that could be skillfully manipulated to heal people using a force he called "animal magnetism".
His technique consisted of asking the patients to gaze into his eyes, after which he began to move the magnets around their body, directing and balancing this magnetic fluid. Mesmer later discovered that he could just as well swing his empty arms without magnets. Shortly after the start of the session, his patients began to tremble and twitch, and then fell into convulsions, which Mesmer considered curative. Mesmer continued to balance the fluid until the patient calmed down again. He used this method to treat a variety of ailments, from serious disorders like paralysis and convulsions to less severe ailments like menstrual problems and hemorrhoids.
In his most famous case, Mesmer nearly cured the concert pianist Maria Theresa von Paradise of "hysterical blindness," a psychosomatic illness that she had suffered from about the age of three. The teenage girl lived in Mesmer's house for weeks while he treated her and, as a result, helped her to perceive movement and even distinguish colors. However, her parents were not at all pleased with such progress, because they were afraid to lose the royal pension if their daughter recovered. In addition, as her eyesight returned, her piano playing deteriorated because she was distracted by the sight of her fingers on the keyboard. In addition, as always, unsubstantiated rumors spread that Mesmer was having an intimate relationship with his pianist patient. Parents forcibly took the girl from Mesmer's house, after which her blindness returned, and Mesmer's reputation was seriously damaged.
Armand-Marie-Jacques de Chastenay, a French aristocrat better known as the Marquis de Puysegur, followed Mesmer's ideas and took them to the next level. Puysegur caused a deep state, which he called "magnetic somnambulism" (akin to sleepwalking), while in which his wards gained access to deep thoughts, and even intuitive insights about their own health and the health of others. In this state, they were highly suggestible and followed orders, while not remembering anything that happened after leaving the hypnosis. Unlike Mesmer, who believed that the doctor had power over the patient, Puysegur believed that the patient's own thoughts (guided by the doctor) had power over his own body. This was probably the first therapeutic attempt to explore the relationship between mind and body.
In the 1800s, the Scottish surgeon James Braid took the idea of mesmerism even further, developing a concept he called "neuripnotism" (what we know today as hypnotism). Braid became interested in this idea when one day he arrived late for a call and saw that the patient was calmly looking at the flickering flame of an oil lamp. Braid found that he was in a special, highly suggestible state as long as his attention remained so riveted to the flame, thus "depressing" certain parts of his brain.
After many experiments, Braid taught his patients to focus on a single idea by staring at some object, which led them into a similar trance. And Braid intended to use this method to treat the ailments of his subjects, including chronic rheumatoid arthritis, diseases of the sense organs, as well as various complications of spinal cord injuries and stroke. Braid's book "Neuripnology" describes in detail many of his successful cures, including how he cured a 33-year-old paraplegic woman and a 54-year-old lady who suffered from skin disease and severe headaches.
Later, the renowned French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot argued that only those suffering from hysteria, which he considered a hereditary and irreversible neurological disorder, had the ability to enter such a trance. Charcot used hypnosis not to treat patients, but to study the symptoms of their illnesses. Finally, Charcot's rival, a doctor named Hippolyte Bernheim of the University of Nancy, insisted that the faculty of suggestibility, so important to hypnotism, was not limited to hysterical patients, but was common to all human beings to some degree. He instilled certain ideas in his patients, telling them that when they came out of the trance they would feel better and their symptoms would disappear, thus he used the power of suggestion as a remedy. Bernheim's work continued until the early 1900s.
Despite the fact that each of these early researchers of suggestibility had their own focus and methodology, they were all able to help hundreds and thousands of people get rid of a wide variety of physical and mental problems by changing their understanding of their illness and how this illness is expressed in their body.
During the first two world wars, military doctors, most notably the army psychiatrist Benjamin Simon, used the concept of hypnotic suggestibility (which I will discuss below) to aid in the recovery of soldiers suffering from what was at first called "war neurosis" and is now called post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD). Combatants go through such horrendous experiences in war and see such horrific scenes that many of them become emotionally frozen in a form of self-preservation, with some developing amnesia for the horrific events and others, even worse, continuing to relive tragic events in the memories. All this often leads in addition to somatic diseases.
So Simon and his colleagues found that
hypnosis helps veterans to recognize and cope with their traumas, and then the symptoms of anxiety and physical disorders disappear - including nausea, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disorders, and suppressed immunity.
A century earlier, hypnotic doctors helped their patients change their mental models in order to get better and regain their mental and physical health.
These hypnotic techniques were so successful that civilian doctors began to use suggestibility as well. They did not necessarily put their patients into a trance, but, for example, gave them sugar pills or other placebos, convincing them that these "miracle drugs" would put the patients on their feet. And often patients do got better, like Beecher's wounded soldiers who believed they had received an injection of morphine.
And here we are back again in the era of Beecher, who in 1955 wrote his groundbreaking review calling for the use of random selection of patients for placebo drug trials. This method has become an established medical research procedure.
Beecher's point of view was well received. Initially, most scientists assumed that the performance of the control group in such trials (the placebo group) should remain unchanged, and thus a comparison between the control group and the active treatment group would show how effective the study treatment is working. However, it turned out that in many experiments, the performance of the control group became better than the performance of the main group (receiving treatment). This happened thanks to expectation and faith patients in that they are taking medicine or receiving treatment that is sure to help them. By itself, the placebo is inert, but its effect can not be called such, it turned out to be incredibly potent! One way or another, this influence had to be removed from the data in order to return it to its true value.
To this end, and in response to Beecher's petition, the researchers began conducting double-blind, randomized trials, randomly assigning subjects to either the active or placebo group, ensuring that none of the subjects and researchers knew which of the experimental participants was taking the real medicine and placebo. Thus, the placebo effect in each group could manifest itself in the same way, and any possibility that the experimenters would treat the subjects differently depending on which group they belonged to was excluded. (Today, research is sometimes carried out on the principle triple blind normalized sampling, when not only the participants and the scientists conducting the trial are completely unaware of who is taking what and until the very end of it, but the statisticians who process the data also do not know anything until the end of their calculations.)
nocebo effect
Of course, every phenomenon has a downside. When suggestibility attracted everyone's attention because of its ability to heal, it became obvious that this same phenomenon could be used to cause harm. Such magical practices as the evil eye, sorcery, and voodoo curses illustrate the negative side of suggestibility.
In the 1940s, Harvard physiologist Walter Bradford Cannon (the same one who in 1932 described the reaction "fight or flight") studied the nocebo's marginal response, a phenomenon he called "voodoo death." Cannon examined many reports of people convinced of the power of voodoo healers or sorcerers suddenly falling ill and dying after being subjected to witchcraft or curses (despite no visible signs of violence, poison or infection). His research laid the foundation for our current knowledge of how the body's physiological response systems allow emotions (especially fear) to create disease. Cannon argued that a person's belief in the ability of the curse to kill him is only part of the physiological brew that leads the victim to death. Another significant factor is the impact on the victim of public opinion and rejection, especially from the victim's own family. Such people easily become the walking dead.
The destructive effects of harmless causes, of course, are not limited to wudu alone. In the 1960s, scientists introduced the concept nocebo(translated from Latin “I will damage”, as opposed to placebo- “I will please”) in relation to an inert substance that causes a detrimental effect only because a person believes or expects harm from him. Effect nocebo tends to occur during drug trials when placebo-takers are anticipating side effects to the test drug (or when they are specifically warned about the possibility of side effects). Then they experience those same side effects, associating the thought of the drug with all the potential consequences.
For obvious ethical reasons, there are not so many experiments specifically designed to study this phenomenon, although they are still being carried out. A famous example is a 1962 experiment conducted in Japan with a group of children who were severely allergic to poison ivy. The researchers rubbed one hand of each child with poison ivy leaves, but told them they were harmless sakura leaves and did no harm. To control, they rubbed the other hand of the child with sakura leaves, claiming that it was poison ivy. All the children developed a rash on the arm that had been rubbed with sakura leaves masquerading as poison ivy. Moreover, 11 out of 13 children did not have any rash where the poison really touched their skin.
It was an incredible discovery! How could children with severe allergies to poison ivy not react with a rash on the skin he rubbed? And How were they able to react with a rash to the touch of completely harmless leaves? A new thought that the leaves won't hurt them ousted their memory and faith in their allergies, making real poison ivy harmless. And, conversely, in the second part of the experiment, harmless leaves became poisonous just by the command of thought. It turns out that the child's body instantly reacts to a new performance. The children were relieved of the expectation of a reaction to poisonous leaves. By some unknown mechanism, they have risen above environmental factors (exposure to poison ivy leaves). This means that the physiology of their organism changed due to a simple change in thoughts. This amazing evidence that thought (in the form of expectation and representation) can have a greater effect on the body than an actual physical factor, marked the beginning of a new direction of scientific research called psychoneuroimmunology. It studies the influence of thoughts and emotions on the immune system, an important link between mind and body.
Another well-known study from the 1960s examined the nocebo effect in patients with bronchial asthma. The researchers gave 40 patients inhalers containing nothing but water vapor, but told them that the inhalers contained an irritant. As a result, 19 subjects (48%) experienced asthma symptoms in the form of airway spasms, and 12 members of the group (30%) experienced full-fledged acute asthmatic attacks. The researchers then gave the subjects inhalers, saying that they contained a drug that would relieve their symptoms, and in each case the airway was restored, although the inhalers contained only the same water vapor.
In both situations (the onset of asthma symptoms and then their disappearance), patients responded to a single suggestion - a thought implanted in their mind that played out exactly as they imagined. They got worse when they "knew" they were inhaling something harmful, and vice versa - better when they thought they were getting a cure.
These thoughts were stronger than reality.
It can be said that thoughts created brand new reality.
What does this say about the beliefs we hold and the thoughts that swarm through our heads? How much does our readiness to catch the flu increase when all winter long, everywhere we look, we are told about the beginning of the flu season and the need to get vaccinated? Maybe we do not catch the flu at all from some patient, but get sick just because we are ready for it, like those asthmatics who survived an acute attack of bronchial asthma by inhaling harmless water vapor?
First big breakthroughs
Pioneering research in the late 1970s showed for the first time that a placebo could trigger the release of endorphins (the human body's natural analgesics are just as good as drugs). In his study, John Levine, MD, PhD, from the University of California, San Francisco, gave a placebo instead of pain medication to 40 dentist patients who had just had a wisdom tooth removed. No wonder: because the patients thought they had received a drug that relieved pain, most of them experienced relief. The patients were then given an antidote to morphine (naloxone), which chemically blocks cellular receptors that are susceptible to morphine and natural endorphins. As soon as the researchers injected naloxone, the pain returned to the patients again!
The placebo effect has been shown to cause patients to produce their own endorphins, our natural pain reliever.
If the human body can be its own pharmacy, producing its own painkillers, why not same way not have the ability to produce other natural medicines as needed, with its innumerable reserves of chemical elements and healing components? And these natural medicines, probably, can act no worse, or even better what the doctor prescribes?
Another study was done in the 1970s by psychologist Robert Ader, Ph.D. at the University of Rochester, who added a fascinating new dimension to placebo studies—the element of conditioning, conditioning. Conditioned reflex, first described by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, implies the association of a natural function with a conditional circumstance. For example, Pavlov's dogs associated the sound of a bell with food after Pavlov rang the bell every time before feeding them. Over time, the dogs developed a conditioned reflex - as soon as they heard the bell, they immediately involuntarily salivated in anticipation of feeding. As a result of this type of conditioning, their organism began to physiologically respond to a new stimulus in the environment (in this case, a bell) even in the absence of a natural stimulus (food) that causes this reaction.
Therefore, in the case of an acquired (conditioned) reflex, it can be said that the subconscious program in the body (I will talk more about this in the following chapters) seems to dominate the conscious mind and take control. Thus, the body develops a reflex, replacing the mind. Therefore, in Pavlov's experiments, the dogs only needed to hear the sound of a bell, and their mental and chemical state changed involuntarily and automatically. Them autonomic nervous system, which operates outside of awareness, automatically took control. So, conditioning leads to subconscious internal changes in the body, linking past experience with the expectation of results in a given situation (this is called associative memory) until these expected or anticipated end results happen automatically. The stronger the conditioned reflex, the less our conscious control over these processes and the more automatic the subconscious programming becomes.
Ader began by trying to investigate how long such acquired (conditioned) reflexes could persist. He fed laboratory rats sweetened water to which he added cyclophosphamide, which causes stomach pain. After developing a conditioned reflex in rats linking the sweet taste of water with pain in the abdomen, he suggested that they would soon refuse to drink such water. He intended to find out how long they would avoid drinking sugary water - to measure the time during which their acquired reflex would last.
However, at first, Ader did not know that cyclophosphamide also suppresses the immune system, and therefore was quite surprised when his rats suddenly began to suddenly die from bacterial and viral infections. After making adjustments to his experiments, he continued to give the rats sugar water (force-feeding them through a pipette), but without cyclophosphamide. Even though the rats were no longer receiving the immunosuppressant, they still died from infections (while the control group, which were fed only sweet water without the drug, continued to live well). Teaming up with University of Rochester immunologist Nicholas Cohen, Ph.D., Ader found that the conditioned reflex linking the taste of sweetened water to the effects of an immune-suppressing drug was so strong that drinking plain sweetened water produced the same physiological effects in rats as the drug— signaled to the nervous system to suppress the immune system.
Like Sam Londe in Chapter 1, Ader's rats died from "thought" alone. Researchers began to guess that the psyche is clearly capable of subconsciously influencing the body due to some as yet unexplored mechanisms.
West meets East
Meanwhile, in the United States, the ancient Eastern practice transcendental meditation(TM) taught by the Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. She quickly gained popularity, fueled by the enthusiastic participation of some celebrities (beginning with the Beatles in the 1960s). This technique is followed by the repetition of a mantra during a 20-minute meditation session performed twice a day. It leads to complete relaxation. Its goal is spiritual awakening.
The practice caught the attention of Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson. He wondered if it could help reduce stress and reduce risk factors for heart disease. Benson developed a similar technique, which he called the "relaxation response", and in 1975 he described it in his book of the same name. Benson discovered that by simply changing their mental model, people can relieve the stress response, thereby lowering blood pressure, normalizing heart rate, and achieving states of deep relaxation.
In addition to being calming, meditation has been found by many to increase positive emotions. For example, former minister Norman Vincent Peel published a book in 1952 "The Power of Positive Thinking" where he popularized the idea that our thoughts can have a significant impact on our lives, both positive and negative. This idea captured the attention of the medical community in 1976, when political columnist and magazine editor Norman Cousins published in "New England Journal of Medicine" evidence that laughter can beat a potentially fatal disease. A few years later, Cousins expounded the idea in his bestselling book "Anatomy of the disease".
Cousins' doctor diagnosed him with a degenerative disorder called ankylosing spondylitis, or Bechterew's disease, a type of arthritis that causes a lack of the fibrillar protein that holds our body's cells together, and estimated his chances of recovery as 1:500. Cousins suffered from unbearable pain and moved his limbs with such difficulty that he could hardly turn in bed. Under the skin, he developed granular nodules, and his lower jaw almost jammed.
Confident that his constant bad mood contributed greatly to his illness, he came to the conclusion that a more positive emotional attitude was just as likely to reverse the illness. Continuing to consult with his doctor, Cousins started with high doses of vitamin C and Marx Brothers films (and other comedy films and shows). He found that 10 minutes of genuine laughter gave him 2 hours of pain-free sleep. He eventually made a full recovery. Simply put, Cousins laughed himself to recovery.
How? At the time, scientists couldn't explain this hilarious healing, but current research suggests it's all about epigenetic processes. Cousins' change of mind changed his body chemistry and his inner state, sending new signals to his genes. Thanks to this, those genes that supported his disease simply turned off, and turned on genes responsible for recovery. (I will talk more about turning genes on and off in later chapters.)
Many years later, Keiko Hayashi, Ph.D. at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, conducted a study that showed the same result. In Hayashi's study, diabetic patients watched an hour-long comedy program and turned on as many as 39 genes. Some of these genes were directly linked to glucose regulation, and the patients' blood sugar levels were better balanced than after listening to a boring diabetic health lecture the next day. The researchers hypothesized that laughter affects a variety of immunity-related genes, which in turn contributed to improved glucose control. The high spirits turned on genetic variations that activated natural defense mechanisms and somehow improved their glucose response—perhaps in addition to many other healing effects.
As Cousins said of the placebo in 1979, “The process works not because of some magic in the pill, but because the human body is the best pharmacist and writes itself the most effective prescriptions.”
Inspired by Cousins' experience and the explosion of alternative medicine and mind-body understanding, Yale surgeon Bernie Siegel began to analyze why some of his cancer patients with low chances of recovery survived while others with high chances died. Siegel characterized cancer survivors as mostly unruly fighting spirits, and then concluded that there are no incurable diseases, only incurable patients. Siegel wrote that hope is a powerful driving force in recovery, and selfless love, which provides nature's pharmacy with cures for all diseases, is the most powerful booster of the immune system.
Placebo outperforms antidepressants
A new wave of antidepressants, which appeared like mushrooms after rain from the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, caused another debate in medical circles, which eventually (but not immediately) increased interest and respect for the power of placebo. In a 1998 meta-analysis of published studies on antidepressant drugs, psychologist Irving Kirsch, Ph.D., then at the University of Connecticut, was shocked. He found that in 19 double-blind, randomized clinical trials involving more than 2,300 patients, the majority of improvements were not due to antidepressants, but to placebo.
Kirsch then used the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to unpublished clinical trial data (which, by law, every drug manufacturer must submit to the Food and Drug Administration). Kirsch and colleagues conducted another meta-analysis. This time, the analysis included 5,000 patients in 35 clinical trials involving 4 of the 6 most common drugs that were approved between 1987 and 1999. And scientists again found that placebo in 81% of cases works as well as popular antidepressants (Prozac, Effexor, Serzon and Paxil). In other cases, when the drug after all coped better with the task, its advantage was not statistically significant. Patent drugs significantly outperformed placebo only in treating patients with severe depression.
Not surprisingly, Kirsch's research caused quite a stir in the medical world. However, rather than seeing Kirsch's work as evidence of the failure of antidepressants, some researchers preferred to see the glass as half full and paid attention to placebo success.
Ultimately, these trials proved irrefutably that the idea that depression can recede can cure depression as well as medicine. Those patients who got better with placebo actually produced their own own, natural antidepressants– just like Levine's patients in the 1970s who had their wisdom teeth removed developed their own natural painkillers. So Kirsch showed that
the human body has some kind of innate intelligence that allows it to supply the body with a set of chemicals for natural healing.
Notably, in further trials of antidepressants, the rate of recovery from placebo increased over time, but so did the response to the active drug. Some researchers explain it this way: the public is placing more and more hope on antidepressant drugs, which in turn increases the placebo effect during blinded studies.
neuroscience placebo
It hasn't been that long since neuroscientists have developed cutting-edge brain-scanning techniques that allow them to look deep into brain processes and find out what happens at the neurochemical level when a placebo is administered. An example is the 2001 study of Parkinson's disease, where patients regained motor skills after a single injection of saline, which they thought was the cure (see Chapter 1). Italian researcher Fabrizio Benedetti, MD, PhD, a pioneer of placebo studies, did a similar study on Parkinson's disease with colleagues a few years later (2004). Then for the first time it was possible to show the effect of a placebo on individual neurons.
Benedetti et al. explored not only the neurobiology of expectation, but also the placebo mechanism at the level of the classical conditioned reflex (something that Ader had tried years earlier to explore in his lab rats). In one experiment, Benedetti gave subjects sumatriptan, which stimulates growth hormone and suppresses cortisol secretion, and then, without the knowledge of the patients, switched the drug to a placebo. He found that the patients' brain scans continued to "glow" in the same places as when they received sumatriptan. So the brain was producing the same substance—in this case, growth hormone—on its own.
This pattern was repeated in other combinations of the drug and placebo: the chemicals produced by the brain were similar in composition to those that the subjects had previously received as a drug to treat diseases of the immune system, movement disorders and depression. Moreover, Benedetti demonstrated that the placebo caused the same side effects as the drugs. For example, in one study using drugs, subjects in the placebo group suffered the side effect of slow and shallow breathing—the placebo accurately reproduced the effects of the drug.
The human body is indeed capable of producing many different biological substances that can heal, protect against pain, promote sound sleep, strengthen the immune system, give us pleasure, and sometimes even help us fall in love. After all, if at some point in our lives the work of a certain gene was expressed in the fact that the body produced these special chemicals, but then stopped producing them due to some kind of stress or disease, we should be able to turn this gene back on, because our body already knows from previous experience how to do it.
So let's see how this happens. Neurological examination reveals something truly remarkable. If the patient continues to take a certain substance, then their brain continues to fire the same neural pathways in the same way - in fact, remembering exactly what this substance does. The subject can easily develop a conditioned response to the effects of individual pills or injections through association with the experience of habitual internal change. Because of this type of conditioning, when the patient then takes the placebo, the same neural pathways will fire just as they did when they took the drug. The associative memory triggers a subconscious program that links the pill or injection to the hormonal change in the body, and then that program automatically signals the body to produce the appropriate chemicals associated with the drug... Isn't that amazing?
Benedetti's research makes another point clear: different types of placebo strategies are needed for different tasks. For example, in the trial of sumatriptan, the initial verbal suggestion that the placebo would work did nothing to stimulate growth hormone production. In order for a placebo to affect unconscious mental reactions through associative memory (for example, promoting the release of hormones or changes in the functioning of the immune system), it is necessary to form a conditioned reflex, but to use a placebo to change more conscious reactions (for example, to relieve pain or reduce depression), a simple suggestion or expectation is enough. This is why Benedetti claimed that the placebo reaction not alone- them several.
Take control of the superiority of consciousness over matter
A surprising new twist to the placebo study came in a 2010 pilot study led by Harvard M.D. professor Ted Kapchuk. This experiment showed that placebo works, even if people know they are taking a pacifier. Kapchuk and colleagues gave a placebo to 40 patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Each patient was given a jar unambiguously labeled "Placebo Pills" and told that it contained "empty pills made from an inert substance such as sugar, which have been shown to produce a marked improvement in CPPS symptoms through psychosomatic self-healing processes" in clinical studies. . Another 40 patients with CPTS who did not receive any pills acted as a control group.
After three weeks, the placebo group showed twice the relief of symptoms in comparison with the control. Such a noticeable difference, according to Kapchuk, is quite comparable with the impact of the best real medications for the treatment of IBS. No one tricked these patients into healing themselves. They are knew for sure that they are not receiving any medication - and yet they succumb to the suggestion that a placebo can relieve their symptoms. Belief in a cause-independent outcome so affected their body that it responded with improved symptoms.
In the meantime, a parallel course of research examining the effects of attitude, belief, and belief is forging its way into current mind-body research, showing that even something very specific, such as the benefits of exercise, can be influenced through belief. An excellent example of this is a 2007 study of 84 hotel maids by Harvard psychologists and Ph.D. Alia Kram and Helen Langer.
At the start of the study, some of the maids knew that the routine work they did in the hotel exceeded the US Chief Medical Officer's recommendations for healthy daily physical activity (30 minutes). In the survey, 67% of women told researchers that they exercise irregularly, while 37% said they don't exercise at all. After this initial evaluation, Crum and Langer divided the subjects into two groups. They told the maids of the first group how their physical activity affects the number of calories burned, and also explained that, just doing their job, they already get more than enough training load. In the second group, the researchers did not say anything of the sort. Since the maids of both groups worked in different hotels, there was no need to fear the exchange of opinions and information.
After a month, the researchers found that participants in the first group had lost an average of two pounds of weight, had a reduction in body fat percentage, and systolic blood pressure by an average of 10 points—although they did not do any extra exercise outside of work or change their food habits. The indicators of the second group, which performed the same work as the first, remained practically unchanged.
This experiment echoes a similar study earlier in Quebec, where 48 young people participated in a 10-week aerobic exercise program, attending three one-and-a-half-hour sessions per week. The subjects were divided into two groups. The experimenters told the original test group that this study was specifically designed to improve not only their aerobic function, but also their mental health. In the second group, which acted as a control group, they mentioned only the physical benefits of aerobics. At the end of week 10, the researchers found that aerobic function scores increased in both groups, but a significant increase in self-esteem (as a measure of health) was noted only in the second.
These findings suggest that awareness itself can have significant physical effects on the body and health. What we know, and the language we use to define what we will experience, and the weight we give to the explanations offered, all affect our desire. And when what we do is based on a clear intention, we naturally get better results.
In short, the more you learn about the what and why, the easier and more effective the how becomes. (I hope my book will do the same for you.)
As an old but now classic study at the University of Cincinnati showed, we attach importance to details such as the color of the medicine and the number of pills we swallow. In this experiment, the researchers gave 57 medical students one or two pink or blue capsules. Both were empty shells, although the students were told that the pink capsules contained a stimulant and the blue capsules contained a sedative. The researchers found: "Two capsules caused more noticeable changes than one, and the calming effect of the blue capsules was stronger than the stimulating effect of the pink ones." In fact, the students learned that the blue pills were two and a half times more effective as a sedative than the pink pills as a stimulant, although all the pills were placebo.
More recent research suggests that beliefs and beliefs can also affect mental performance and scores on standardized exams. The Canadian experiment in 2006 involved 220 female students. They were given fake research reports to read that claimed that men were 5% better at math than women. The subjects were divided into two groups, one of which read that the intellectual superiority of men is due to recently identified genetic factors, and the second that this superiority is only the result of a well-known stereotype, manifested in the different attitudes of teachers to the abilities of girls and boys in elementary school. Then the students received a mathematical task. Those who read the text about male genetic superiority scored lower than those who read the explanation about the stereotypical origin of male advantage. In other words, when the girls were pre-configured that their mental retardation was insurmountable, then they acted to confirm this idea.
A similar effect was noted in an experiment with black students who historically lag behind whites in vocabulary, reading and math skills, and perform worse on a learning test, regardless of socioeconomic factor. Statistically, on most standardized tests, the average black student scores anywhere from 70 to 80 percent compared to white students of the same age. Stanford University social psychologist Claude Steele, Ph.D., explains that the "stereotype effect" is to blame. His research shows that students who belong to clearly negatively stereotyped groups perform worse on assignments when they believe their performance will be judged in light of this cultural stereotype than when they do not feel such pressure.
In Steele's landmark study with Joshua Aronson, Ph.D., researchers gave Stanford sophomores a series of verbal reasoning tests. Some of the students were instructed to reinforce the white-superiority stereotype by saying that the upcoming test was designed to compare their cognitive abilities. The rest were told that it was an insignificant research tool. In the group where the stereotype was activated, black students scored lower than white students. Where is the stereotype was not given, the scores of black and white sophomores on the test were the same. This proves that it is the initial attitude that plays a critical role.
This preset is called "priming".
Priming is when who-then, where something or what Something in our environment (for example, when taking a test) triggers certain associations and stereotypes that are ingrained in our brain and thus make us unconsciously act one way or another.
For example, the notion that people evaluating the results of a given test are sure that black students will score less than white students, leads the first to unconsciously score lower. Attitude building is called priming because it works like a pump. It is necessary that the water is already in the pumping system in order to pump more water out of it. So in this example, the notion or belief that others expect black students to perform worse is like water that is knowingly poured into the system. When you do something to get the system running (handling a pump or taking an exam), you stir up all those related thoughts, behaviors, and emotions and produce exactly what was just waiting to come out of the system from the very beginning - whether it's pre-poured water or a shortfall on a test.
Think about this.
Most of the involuntary actions that are caused by priming are generated by unconscious or subconscious programming, for the most part taking place behind the scenes of our awareness.
It turns out that we are programmed for unconscious behavior from morning to evening - and we do not even know about it?
Steele experimentally confirmed this effect with other groups of stereotyping. When Steele gave a math problem to a group of whites and Asians (who are traditionally good at math), those white students who were told that Asians were superior to whites actually performed worse than whites in the control group who weren't told so. Steele's experiments with strong math students showed similar results. And in this case, when students unconsciously expected to score lower, they actually scored lower.
The higher meaning behind Steele's research also turns out to be very deep: the way we are trained to think about ourselves in one way or another, as well as the fact that we are deliberately programmed with our idea of \u200b\u200bwhat other people think of us, affects our behavior and success. It's still the same placebo - setting what will happen when we take the pill. And even more so when a certain result is expected by everyone around us. Do many drugs or even surgeries actually work better because we have been repeatedly primed, persuaded and taught to believe in their effects? What happens if there were no placebo effect, all these drugs would not work at all?
Can you be your own placebo?
Two recent studies at the University of Toledo, perhaps better than others, shed light on how the mind can decide unaided what a patient perceives and experiences. For each experiment, the researchers divided a group of physically healthy volunteers into two categories - optimists and pessimists (according to how they answered the diagnostic questionnaire). In the first experiment, they gave subjects a placebo but told them that it was a drug that would make them feel worse. The negative reaction to the pill was stronger among the pessimists than among the optimists. In the second experiment, the researchers also gave the subjects a placebo, but this time they said the drug would help them sleep better. As a result, optimists slept much better than pessimists.
So, optimists are more likely to respond positively to the suggestion that taking pills will make them feel better, because they are initially tuned in to a better future. And pessimists, on the other hand, tend to accept the suggestion that the drug will cause their condition to worsen, because they always consciously or unconsciously expect a negative development of events. It seems that optimists subconsciously produce special chemicals that help them sleep, and pessimists also subconsciously create a pharmacy with drugs that make them feel worse.
In other words, under the same external conditions, people with a positive mindset tend to create positive situations, while people with a negative mindset actually create negative situations themselves. Such is the marvel of our own free will bioengineering.
Although we do not know exactly what proportion of patients owe their healing to the placebo effect (Beecher's 1955 article cited earlier in this chapter gives a figure of 35%, but modern research suggests that it can range from 10 to 100%), but their total number is undoubtedly enormous. With this in mind, the question must be asked what percentage of diseases and ailments arise under the influence of a negative attitude - nocebo? Considering that the latest scientific research in psychology has found that about 70% of our thoughts, images and ideas are negative and excessive, the number of diseases caused by the nocebo effect can be quite impressive - and certainly much more than we think. This sounds quite logical given the many mental, physical and emotional health problems that often appear out of nowhere.
At first glance, it may seem implausible that the psyche has such power, but research in recent decades clearly confirms this. What you think is what you experience, and when it comes to your health, it is brought about by that amazing pharmacopoeia that has settled in your body – it works automatically and subtly with your thoughts. The prescription department of our in-house pharmacy activates certain natural molecules in the body, causing the corresponding effects. In later chapters, we will look at how this all unfolds at the biological level. And most importantly: how to use this innate ability to consciously and intentionally create for yourself the kind of health that everyone wants to have, and the kind of life that everyone would like to live.