NOCEBO EFFECT - when thoughts generate diseases

We know what a placebo effect is-you drink a "pill" that does not contain any medications, but you feel better. Alas, the placebo effect has a lesser known antipode - the nocebo effect. This means that if we wait for the disease, we can get sick without objective reasons.

ALL MATERIAL, EVEN ALERT

The effects of placebo and nocebo are quite real in the human brain and are explained by material causes. They were identified by John-Kar Zubieta (1) from the University of Michigan using positron emission tomography (PET). The scientist demonstrated that the effect of nocebo is associated with a decrease in the production of the hormone dopamine, which is involved in the production of opioid peptides with analgesic effect. This explains why nocebo pains. Simultaneously, Fabrizio Benedetti 2 from the Medical Faculty of the University of Turin in Italy found that pain caused by the effect of nocebo can be suppressed with a proglasm, a drug that blocks the hormone receptors called cholecystokinin (CCK). After all, waiting for pain causes anxiety, and it activates the CCK receptors, strengthening pain.

NOZEBO-EFFECT IN MEN AND WOMEN

Who is more susceptible to the effect of nocebo - the representatives of the stronger or the weaker sex? "Anxiety in the form of nocebo-effect in women manifests itself more often than in men. But men are also anxious, and their problem is that they drive their anxiety inside themselves, they do not discuss suspicions with the doctor, "Zinaida Kolesnikova states.

In men, the development of the nocebo effect is more affected by the expectation of the disease than life experience and information about the disease. For women, the opposite is true. "Women rely more on past experience, whereas men in the analysis of a specific situation are very reluctant to take into account the past," says Paul Enck, a psychologist at the University Hospital of the University of Tübingen, Germany.

PSYCHOSIS

The most, perhaps, vivid example of the nocebo effect described in fiction is the reaction of the main character of Jerome K. Jerome's book "Three in a boat, not counting a dog" to a medical guide in the library of the British Museum. "So I conscientiously looked through all the letters of the alphabet, and the only illness that I did not discover in my life was a labor fever ... I entered this reading room as a happy, healthy person. I crept out of there a wretched wreck, "- describes the author of the experience of his hero, the master of negative self-hypnosis.

Unfortunately, in life, the nocebo effect is not so harmless. Sometimes it takes the form of a mass psychosis. So, in December of 2005, one by one the pupils of several schools in the Shelkovsky district of Chechnya complained of headaches and suffocation, some suffered seizures and muscle spasms. Chemicals that could cause poisoning with such a symptomatology were not identified. And such outbreaks happened more than once. In the 90 years of Jordan, 800 children showed side effects after vaccination. At the same time, nothing was found in the vaccine itself that could cause such an effect.

Anti-nocebo-effect appears with the help of hypnosis.

Just let keep in calm your thpughts and ideas, control them and think positively!!