The Nocebo Effect

Most people know of the placebo effect. Placebo, which is Latin for "I please" is the positive effect that a person experiences based on their expectation that a particular medicine or procedure will work. Nocebo, on the other hand, comes from Latin for "I harm" and it is based on the expectation that something terrible will happen.

Some recent studies on the nocebo effect in relation to terrorist attacks have been released and they point to the fact that the expectation of a highly stressful or fearsome event has negative effects on the overall health and life expectancy of those who live under this fear.

The interaction between the mind and body is fascinating and complex. Our own positive and negative mental processes and emotions can affect our health, as well as be mediated by our interactions with others and our environment.

I often wonder if the nocebo effect is triggered when a doctor tells a patient, "You have x amount of time to live." For some people, this could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. For others, it is motivation to do something different and prove the doctor wrong.

An interesting book I picked up recently is The Anatomy of Hope by Jerome Groopman, M.D. Dr. Groopman echoes some of the findings of Dr. Herbert Benson of the Harvard Medical School who runs the Mind/Body clinic in stating that the belief of an individual has a profound effect on their health and ability to cope with life and disease. The field of psychoneuroimmunology is growing and it looks at the way the psyche of a person has measurable effects on the immune system, stress response, and even cardiac output.

When you have been raised to look strictly at the evidence that can be reproduced, it is hard to accept that something as nebulous as a thought can affect the outcome of what happens in a person. The soul cannot be hauled out of the body and examined under a microscope or tested in a measurable way. Allopathic medicine's solution until more recently has been to ignore it for the most part. But the soul cannot be ignored. Those who study the placebo effect now know that the environmental cues and behavior of the medical authorities can alter the neurochemistry of an individual, both in the laboratory setting and in the clinic.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, a nineteenth century Boston physician, poet, and essayist, said, "Beware how you take away hope from another human being." Omniscience is not ours. Closing off options and denying choices is premature and clinically wrong.

On a practical level what this all points to is the importance of doing what the Apostle Paul told us to do in II Corinthians 10:5: we are to "cast down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Again, God has not given us a spirit of fear , but of power, love and a sound (or disciplined) mind. Our hope must be grounded on that which is unshakeable, unmoveable and unchanging.

Guard your heart. Out of it are the issues of life.