The Whole Health Life: How You Can Learn to Get Healthy, Find Balance and Live Better in The Crazy-Busy Modern World by Shannon Harvey

Author:Shannon Harvey [Harvey, Shannon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Whole Health Life Publishing
Published: 2016-11-16T13:00:00+00:00

When Words Hurt

In 1934, Walter Cannon, the famous Harvard physiologist who first identified the fight or flight response, received an intriguing letter from Australian pathologist John Cleland who had a keen interest in the diseases of indigenous Australians. Cleland described his experience with a tribesman in central Australia who had been injured in the fleshy part of his thigh by a spear he believed was enchanted. The fine and robust man slowly pined away and died, though the wound had not caused any complication that Cleland could detect.23 Cleland sent this story in response to Cannon’s request to physicians and anthropologists around the world for authentic accounts just like the one Cleland had witnessed. Cannon hoped to use the anecdotes to formulate a theory about the physiological explanation for sudden, unexplained death resulting from a voodoo curse. His paper on the subject, published in 1942,24 was the foundation for many subsequent studies as scientists grappled to understand what is now called the “nocebo effect.”25 You will recall from Chapter 3 (Belief), that the nocebo effect is when you have a negative response to a harmless substance you believe is harmful, as happened to the young man who collapsed after “overdosing” on sugar pills.

Through the work of Dimos Mitsikostas, the head of the neurology department at Athens Naval Hospital in Greece, we start to see that Walter Cannon may have been onto something when he hypothesised that the fear of death could trigger a physiological response that could go as far as precipitating death itself.26 Mitsikostas, who has extensively reviewed decades of nocebo research, concluded that negative suggestion causes people to experience negative symptoms in treatments for everything from headache, to multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, Parkinson’s disease and depression.27 In trials for Parkinson’s disease, as many as 65 percent of people given a placebo report negative side effects as a result of their treatment.28 Mitsikostas’s reviews have estimated that anywhere from 4 percent to 26 percent of patients who receive placebos in trials discontinue their use because they think they are experiencing adverse effects.29

When I think back to the interactions I had 11 years ago with the specialist doctor who first told me he suspected I had lupus, I distinctly remember his prognosis. He explained I had a very serious condition, and if the disease progressed my immune system might start attacking my organs or I could end up in a wheelchair. Given that much of the nocebo research has only taken place in the last few years, it’s unlikely the specialist realised the potential negative impact of his words and the downward spiral they would trigger.

When I mentioned my experience to Weil, he said I was not alone in being what he called “medically hexed.” “Many patients have been told by doctors in one way or another that they’re not going to get better,” he said. “Often doctors haven’t meant to do that, and may even be unconscious of what they’ve said, but I think this is an area that needs

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