While some people show actual symptoms of the disease, it may be due to their thinking. Here are the most famous phenomena of this phenomenon.
1. Placebo effect
The placebo effect is the phenomenon of improving the health or well-being of a person due to the fact that he believes in the effectiveness of some effect, in fact, 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.
In response to the expectation of an improvement in well-being, the patient's brain produces certain substances that cause this very improvement in well-being. This mechanism has been studied and described in some detail, but we will not dwell on it now.
The fact that in some conditions it is the placebo effect, and not the therapy itself, that works, is tested as follows: people are randomly divided into two groups, one receives the alleged "drug", and the other receives the appearance of a "drug", for example, pills, if a homeopathic remedy is checked, or pricking with special retractable needles when checking acupuncture. In all external indications, the placebo should be similar to “remedy,” but the putative key component is missing from the placebo. It turns out that the strength of the placebo effect depends on how the placebo is given.
For example, saline injections are stronger than sugar tablets, the strength of the tablets depends on their color, as well as on the declared price of the tablets and, in general, the credibility with which they are told about their usefulness. But do not assume that a placebo can help with any disease, or that it can be compared with high-quality modern drugs in its effectiveness (in clinical trials of normal drugs, a drug is required to perform better than a placebo), but in some cases, placebo has shown itself to be good, for example, for pain relief.
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Quite interesting about the placebo effect is described in Darren Brown's program "Fear and Faith", which shows a not very scientific, but very clear demonstration of the "super placebo" effect. So, in order to convince the participants of the experiment of the effectiveness of a certain drug that relieves people of fear (in fact, the drug is a dummy), a whole fake one-day institute was created, supposedly to research and produce this non-existent drug.
Inside the walls of the "institute" actors, dressed in robes, with a smart look and a bunch of scientific terms, read lectures to the volunteer participants about the miraculous properties of the (pseudo) means they were developing: everything was done in such a way as to create the illusion of seriousness, scientific character, and validity of the proposed method of treatment. Of course, the super placebo was super noticeable.
2. Nocebo effect
According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, nocebo is "a harmless substance that causes a negative reaction in a patient because of negative expectations associated with it, or because of the patient's psychological state."
In a study on the therapeutic effect of prayer on complications in people who had heart surgery, patients were randomly divided into three groups. Patients in the first group were told that they might (or might not) be prayed for and prayed for. Patients in the second group were also told that they might be prayed for, but they were not prayed for. Patients in the third group were told that they would definitely be prayed for, and they were indeed prayed for. The number of complications in patients was assessed.
As you might expect, it turned out that prayer itself has no therapeutic effect: people from the first and second groups had approximately the same frequency of complications. Knowing that you will be prayed for was associated with an increased risk of complications after surgery.
Perhaps the increased risk of complications was due to the fact that patients who were told that they would definitely be prayed for were in a state of stress (“is everything so bad that people have already started praying for me?”).
A more accurate nocebo effect was shown in an experiment that was published in 2013. The people were randomly divided into two groups. Participants in the first group were shown a film about how WiFi wireless networks are dangerous to health. Participants from the second group were shown a film that there is no proven danger of WiFi wireless networks.
The participants were then given 15 minutes of fake irradiation (meaning they were told they were being irradiated by WiFi, but in reality there was no irradiation). Some of the participants felt so bad from the non-existent radiation that they asked to stop the experiment.
Most of the participants noted symptoms that they associated with non-existent exposure to WiFi, and among those who watched the film about the dangers of WiFi, there was a greater proportion of participants who indicated the presence of symptoms caused by exposure. Thus, media materials telling about the horrors of the phenomena that ordinary people face can negatively affect the well-being of the audience of these materials.
3. Positive thinking heals
Neuroscientist Joe Dispenza was able to heal himself with thought. In the car accident, he broke his spine, and the doctors said that the only chance for him to start walking again was to have surgery. But he refused, thinking he could heal with willpower. Three months later, he started walking again.
Joe Robson practices metamedicine, a discipline that helps people find the psychological roots of their illnesses and eliminate them. In an interview, he cited as an example people who were helped by this technique. One of his clients suffered from systemic lupus erythematosus. It is an autoimmune disease caused by the body damaging itself.
Its exact causes are not really understood. MedLine Plus explains: "The immune system perceives individual tissues and organs as cancerous and starts fighting them."
Robson helped his patient by making her ponder serious questions: Why is my body attacking itself? What is the reason? . After deep analysis, he discovered that his client suffered from low self-esteem. She put her mother on a pedestal and considered herself unworthy.
Robson explains it this way: "She developed systemic lupus, which was destroying her body because she felt she did not deserve love and felt angry towards herself."
When the psychological causes of the illness were removed, the patient recovered, says Robson.
4. Psychosomatic diseases
Tricia Torrey, a health writer, wrote an article for About.com about diseases that have partly psychological and physiological causes.
She writes: “Psychosomatic illnesses, also called psychophysiological (a combination of physiological and psychological factors), are diagnosed in patients who have physiological symptoms, but the cause of the disease is psychological. The very first official psychosomatic illness was hysteria, described in the middle of the 19th century."
“In modern medicine, disorders with similar symptoms are called psychosomatic diseases. These are real physical disorders, the cause of which has not been established."
The World Health Organization recognizes psychosomatic diseases and notes that their manifestation differs in different countries of the world and depends on the cultural norms adopted there.