"Infectious" thoughts that can kill you

People have long realized that waiting for a disease can be as dangerous as the virus itself. Previously, shamans practicing Voodoo could harm their victims, using only the power of persuasion. Similarly, ordinary people, especially alarmists and impressionable individuals, can experience quite real symptoms due to thoughts about the disease.

Nocebo effect

Nausea, dizziness, headache and much more terrible symptoms can be caused by the nocebo effect - the exact opposite of a placebo.

In Latin, "placebo" means "I like me," while "nocebo" means "I'll screw it." Butsebo often becomes the reason why some homes are called "damned", why mobile phones cause headache, and people living in close proximity to wind power stations complain about noise and ringing in their ears. Doctors still can not fully explain both effects. While a placebo is studied more often, its opposite is not so easy to study, explain and prevent.

Impact

Among the doctors there is a mass of anecdotes about the death effect of nocebo. For example, in the 18th century an incident occurred in the Vienna Medical School: the students decided to play a trick on the assistant and promised to decapitate him. The unfortunate person was tied up, his eyes were closed and put on the scaffold. Instead of the guillotine, a cold, damp towel was sharply lowered on his neck. Assistant died on the spot, confident that his neck touched the tip of the guillotine.

Despite the fact that such stories are more than enough, doctors, scientists and researchers prefer to concentrate their efforts on studying the placebo. Many trials today are divided into two branches - one people are given medications, the other is inert tablets. Even those patients who take a placebo demonstrate a significant physical improvement, as the doctors believe, thanks to faith and confidence in the medicinal properties of the drug.

Relationship of two effects

However, like any medal there is a downside, and inert tablets can cause a nocebo effect. For example, patients taking glucose or other harmless inert drugs, demonstrated side effects described by the doctor. Somehow, a negative expectation triggers appropriate physiological reactions. Pain and nausea can be not only phantom, but have very real, tracked causes.

In the medical literature of the last ten years, the nocebo effect is very clearly traced. For example, in the treatment of Parkinson's disease, 65% of patients who took inert drugs experienced side effects. Many of them were forced to abandon treatment because of the very tangible and dangerous reactions to placebo, caused by the expectation of a negative effect.

Syndromes and manifestations

Most often, nocebo is the cause of subjective syndromes, such as headache or nausea. However, sometimes the effect of negative expectation manifests itself in the form of itching or skin irritation, and changes can be traced in the analyzes.

Another demonstration of the lethal effect of nocebo may be the history of a patient with depression. Suffering from emotional and psychological frustration, he decided to commit suicide and drank all his pills. Changing his mind, he turned to an ambulance, which found the patient in the dying state - high blood pressure, lack of oxygen in the lungs. The attending physician arrived at the scene and informed the patient that his antidepressants were just inert tablets based on sugar. Upon learning of the sugar overdose, the patient quickly recovered from a physiological shock.

Research

It is difficult to assume that in this case the effect of nocebo would be the cause of the patient's death, but many doctors admit this possibility. Dr. Fabrizio Benedetti of the Medical School of Turin scanned the brains of patients who underwent a "persuasion session" in the nocebo effect. It turns out that the expectation of a negative reaction activates the hypothalamus - the region of the brain that reacts most rapidly to dangerous situations, and the adrenal glands. If the confidence in the negative consequences and fear of them are strong enough, a cocktail of hormones released by the involved part of the brain and the adrenal glands may well lead to death.

Spread

What is the main reason for the spread of the "negative placebo"? The main means of its distribution are, oddly enough, rumors and gossip. On the example of the next experiment, conducted by Dr. Benedetti, you can see how dangerous rumors can be.

The doctor invited his students (more than a hundred) to go camping in the Alps. A few days before the departure, Benedetti told one of the students about the side effect of high altitude hypoxia (a disease manifested in individual symptoms at an altitude of over 3 thousand meters). The doctor called one symptom - a migraine. For several days and during the hike this information spread among the students, and everyone who heard about it began to experience severe headaches when reaching a height of 2500-3000 meters. In fact, altitude sickness manifests itself differently in everyone, for example, women are better tolerated, and the most frequent symptom is intermittent breathing and increased fatigue.

According to the researches and conclusions made by doctors, do not ignore the obvious link between consciousness and physical state. Over the years, medicine has been in the vast majority of the placebo effect, for example, conspiracies, expulsion of demons and washing.

In other words, harmful thoughts about the influence of certain things, processes and technologies can be extremely contagious and often cause the realization of negative expectations. Just like positive thoughts and belief in the best can greatly improve the state of health.