Journalist
Erik Vance
grew up in a Christian
Science home. Though he no longer adheres to the religion,
he believed that he experienced and heard many true stories of seemingly
miraculous healing. The not miraculous, but still amazing source of these
improvements in health
may be in the brain.
Vance recounts his search for answers in Suggestible
You.
Our brains are hard at work predicting what will happen next; we are
constantly expecting. What we perceive, and how our brain reacts is powerfully
affected by expectation. Our expectations are shaped by suggestion. Though
suggestion has many forms, at the heart of each is a story. It doesn’t have to
be an actually true story; it just needs to be plausible and resonant.
One area where the power of suggestion is apparent is the placebo effect.
Our bodies produce chemicals that can make us feel better, and sometimes it
just takes a good suggestion to get it to do so. A placebo is such a
suggestion. Placeboes contain no drugs that should be effective and can take
many forms such as a pill, a shot, a fake surgery or even the presence of a
professional who seems competent and caring. Placeboes work so well that on
certain type of diseases that they are better that many treatments.
The effectiveness of placeboes presents a problem for medical
researchers.
How do you sort out the effect of a treatment from the placebo effect? Modern
medical research requires testing to show that a treatment is more effective
that a placebo. In the United States,
the law
requiring such studies was introduced by Senator Estes
Kefauver, who readers of this blog may know from his anti-comic
book hearings.
There is also a nocebo effect,
essentially the brains response to a suggestion that makes us sick. Noceboes
are connected to fear,
so they are in a sense supercharged in comparison to placeboes.
Vance looks into other ways suggestions can affection or brains,
particularly hypnosis
and false memories. Science provides some answers for how these things work.
Placeboes seem to be tied to chemicals released by the brain, though there seem
to be several at work and they may represent only a few of the ways placeboes
my work in our incredibly complex brains. Hypnosis is not the same as placebo and
its workings remain mysterious.
Suggesting affects us in ways outside of health. Marketers are
particularly interested in our suggestibility. Our expectations can influence
the way food tastes and our perceptions of value.
Vance finds hope in the still incomplete science of how expectation
affects our health. Those who are susceptible to placebo or hypnosis (not
necessarily the same people) may have a host of options for coaxing out the
healing powers of their own bodies. Better understanding of how these things
work may help us make better treatments for those who are less susceptible. He
envisions a day when placeboes and hypnotism may be treatments medical
professionals apply in much the way the use drugs or surgeries.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Vance, Erik. Suggestible You: The
Curious Science of Your Brain’s Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal. Washington,
DC: National
Geographic, 2016.
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