Placebo effect known as the new "witchcraft"

Frightening "new witchcraft"

People may think that this kind of thing is getting less and less rare, and it will only happen in ancient tribes. But according to Clifton Meade, a doctor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, the curse still exists in a completely new form, and he himself has experienced cases similar to Vanders. Sam Schumann was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer in the 1970s, leaving only a few months. Schumann died a few months later, but the autopsy report showed that the doctor's judgment was wrong. The tumor in his lungs is small and does not spread. "He didn't die from cancer, but he thought he was worried about death because he thought he had cancer." Mead said, "If everyone around you believes that you are dying, you will soon believe that you are not far from death." Every part of your body is also beginning to die." The belief that you are sick when you are sick may sound a bit far-fetched, but at least rigorous trials have indeed proved that the anti-proposition of this statement is true, that is, : Positive advice will promote health. This is known as the placebo effect. It does not produce miracles, but it does produce a quantifiable body reaction.

The placebo effect has an evil twin's anti-placebo effect, which has a detrimental effect on fake pills and bad news. The Latin intent of the word anti-placebo is "I will do evil." The term did not appear until the 1960s, but research on this phenomenon is far less than research on the placebo effect. After all, it is difficult to pass an ethical review to design a depressing study. We have determined that the effects of anti-placebo agents are very broad. “If witchcraft does die, it may be an extreme form of anti-placebo phenomenon,” said anthropologist Robert Hahn of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. His main area of research is the anti-placebo effect. About one in four patients who were deliberately ineffective in medical clinical trials experienced harmful side effects, and the severity was sometimes comparable to the side effects caused by a real drug. A retrospective study of 15 trials involving thousands of patients showed that the experimental group taking the type B blocker and the control group not receiving the effective treatment showed comparable side effects such as fatigue, depressive symptoms and sexual dysfunction. . Most of these people had to withdraw from the study.

Sometimes these side effects can be life threatening. "Faith and expectation are not just conscious and logical phenomena, they also produce physiological effects," Hahn said. "Psychological effect" Drake Adams broke up with his girlfriend and swallowed all the pills... but he immediately regretted it. He was afraid that he would die, and he would let the neighbors send himself to the hospital, but he would collapse when he got there. Trembling, pale, drowsy, blood pressure, shortness of breath. However, the test results and the drug test report found no abnormalities. Adams played six liters in four hours, still no improvement. At this time, a doctor from the clinical trial group of antidepressants came. Adams joined the study a month ago and his mood improved, but after quarreling with his ex-girlfriend, he swallowed the remaining 29 pills. The doctor told Adams that he was in the control group, so he thought that the "overdose" tablets did not harm any harm. Adams was shocked when he heard it, and then he cried. After 15 minutes, he completely recovered his waking, and his blood pressure and heart rate returned to normal levels.

Anti-placebo effects are also common in everyday medical practice. About 60% of patients begin to feel sick before chemotherapy. “Maybe it started a few days ago,” said Gaymont Gomeri, a clinical psychologist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Sometimes it is enough to think about the treatment and the doctor's voice enough to make the patient extremely painful. Part of this "anticipation of nausea" is partly due to conditioned reflexes - the patient's subconscious mind associates their experience with nausea; partly because of psychological expectations. What is worrying is that the anti-placebo effect is also contagious. Symptoms of unknown origin have been transmitted in various populations for centuries, a phenomenon known as group snoring. One of the outbreaks led to a recent study by psychologists Elvin Koschi and Juliana Marzoni of the University of Hull in the United Kingdom. The "curse" of contagion In November 1998, a teacher at Tennessee High School smelled a "petrol smell" and felt headache, nausea, shortness of breath and dizziness. The teachers and students of the school were immediately dispersed. In the following week, more than 100 teachers and students came to the emergency room of the local hospital. The symptoms were similar to those of the teacher. However, despite a large number of medical tests, there is no way to find a medical explanation for these symptoms.

A questionnaire survey conducted one month later showed that the majority of those who reported symptoms were women and those who knew or saw sick students. The psychologist at the University of Hull, Elvin Koschi, considers this a large-scale anti-placebo effect. "As far as we know, there is no environmental toxic substance, but they feel sick." Koschi believes that seeing the symptoms of the classmates, other students believe that the disease will also happen to them, causing group snoring. Such mass snoring has broken out all over the world. In Jordan in 1998, 800 children apparently had side effects after vaccination, and 122 of them were taken to hospital. However, no problems were found after the vaccine was examined. They asked some of a group of students to inhale normal air samples, but told everyone that it was a “suspected toxic environmental contaminant” that could cause headaches, nausea, itchy skin and lethargy. Half of the participants also witnessed a woman inhaling the sample and apparently developing these symptoms.

Students who inhaled air samples were more likely to report the above symptoms than students who did not inhale the sample air. And girls are more likely to report symptoms, especially those who see others clearly ill – a tendency that has also occurred in other group snoring. The study showed that if a person hears or observes a potential side effect, he is more prone to side effects. This makes it difficult for doctors. "On the one hand, people have the right to know what side effects will happen, but this will increase their chances of developing these symptoms," Mazzone said. According to Montegomori, this means that doctors need to carefully consider the words and minimize the possible side effects. “It depends entirely on how you say it.” Hypnosis may also help. Montegomeri continued: “Hypnosis can change psychological expectations, reduce anxiety and stress, and improve outcomes. I think hypnosis can be used to treat all symptoms that are affected by psychological expectations.” Can these measures counteract anti-comfort? The effect of the agent? We still don't know. Because there are still many problems that remain unresolved.

Under what circumstances will the anti-placebo effect occur? How long will the symptoms caused by these effects last? The anti-placebo past and present effects, like the placebo effect, seem to be very different from the placebo effect and are largely related to the situation. Psychologist Paul Enke of the University Hospital in Tübingen, Germany, believes that the usual placebo effect is more pronounced in the clinical setting than in the laboratory environment. Therefore, the anti-placebo problem may have a more significant effect in the real world. But for well-known reasons, laboratory experiments can only simulate milder and transient anti-placebo symptoms. Real consequences What kind of people are more susceptible to impact is still unclear. Optimism or pessimism may have an impact, but the personality of a person will always change. Both men and women succumb to group snoring, while women report more symptoms than men.

Enke believes that for men, psychological expectations are more likely to affect anti-placebo symptoms than conditioned reflexes, while women are just the opposite. “Women are more inclined to believe in past experiences, while men prefer to do things.” Obviously, these psychological phenomena do have an impact on the brain. Joan Kasubita of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor last year scanned positive electrons using placebo or anti-placebo using positron emission tomography. The results showed an anti-placebo effect and decreased activity of dopamine and opioid peptides. Related. This explains the principle that anti-placebo increases pain. Placebo naturally caused the opposite effect. At the same time, Riccione Benedetti, of the University of Turin Medical School, found that a drug called proglumide can suppress the pain caused by anti-placebo. This drug blocks the receptor from receiving a hormone called cholecystokinin. Usually the psychological expectation of pain leads to anxiety, which activates the receptor for cholecystokinin and increases the pain.

However, the root cause of the anti-placebo effect is not neurochemistry, but belief. Surgeons are always cautious when they administer knives for conscious patients. A study found that women who believe that they are particularly susceptible to heart disease are four times more likely to die of coronary heart disease than normal women. There is growing evidence that the anti-placebo effect does exist. Still, in this age of reason, it is difficult to accept the idea that beliefs can be put to death. In any case, most people meet a strangely dressed person who jumps around with a bone and squats, "You are going to die, you are going to die" will smile. But if a well-dressed, well-informed doctor takes your medical examination form to say the same thing to you, what do you think? Enke believes that social and cultural backgrounds are essential. Mead said that Schumann’s misdiagnosis and subsequent death have many similarities with the death of witch doctors. A strong doctor pronounced his fate, and the “victim” and the family accepted this statement without any doubt and acted on this basis. Schumann, his family and doctors all believed that he would die from cancer, which became a self-testing prophecy. "Bad news can make the physical condition worse. I think it can make people believe that they are dying, and they are really dead right now." Mead said, "I don't think there is any mystery. I don't agree with the language." And the idea that symbols can kill, this is a challenge to the worldview of biomolecular models.” Perhaps the day when we discover the biochemical principles of witch doctor death, we will be more likely to believe that such events are real and may affect each of us. people.