The Other Placebo Effect (by Ric Weinman)
We usually think of the placebo effect as the effect that can happen when we believe we are taking something that will help us, and we get better even though we just took sugar pills. But the placebo works both ways: we also show can show symptoms when we believe that something is bad for us, even if it turns out that it was just sugar pills. The dark side of the placebo effect is called the nocebo effect, which means ‘I will harm’. This is the source of most of voodoo’s power—people believe they are cursed and that they are going to die, and they start to deteriorate. But if you can create a ceremony that convinces the voodoo victim that you have lifted the curse, they will return to good health.
Apparently, the greatest group of voodoo-type doctors in the world today are the doctors of modern medicine. But this goes unnoticed because if a negative prognosis turns out to be true, the doctor is only considered to have accurately predicted the condition, not to have contributed to it. But studies show that in double blind studies with drugs, where side-effects are expected, a significant portion of the controls end up with these side-effects. One man, in a study like this for depression, had an argument with his girlfriend and took the rest of the bottle of pills to commit suicide. Soon he regretted it and was taken to the hospital, where he collapsed. His blood pressure dropped and he started into rapid breathing. But the doctors could find nothing wrong with him in his blood-work. After some time, the doctor from his depression study came in and revealed to him that he was in the control group, that there were no drugs in the pills he took. Fifteen minutes later his blood pressure and heart rate had returned to normal.
Along these lines, 60% of people undergoing chemotherapy start to feel sick before treatment even begins. In one study, it was found that women who believed they are particularly prone to heart attack are nearly four times as likely to die from coronary conditions than other women with the same risk factors.
There have even been ‘epidemics’ of belief-created illness, where one person believes they have gotten ill from a cause that turned out to not be real, and then many associates who see this person being ill believe that they must have it, too, and develop similar symptoms.