Have you ever listened to an advertisement listing the possible side-effects of a drug and then felt queasy? Reading about those effects can make you feel ill, as well.
Dr. Lissa Rankin’s recently published New York Times bestseller, Mind over Medicine, in part, examines this disturbing phenomenon.
Reading Rankin’s thought provoking book reminded me of Fiona Macrae’s 2009 Health post The health alerts that make you ill: Negative thoughts ‘can induce sickness’.
Macrae wrote for the Daily Mail:
A series of studies from around the world has shown that if you believe something could make you ill, it might well do just that.
Simply reading the side-effects on a bottle of tablets raises your risk of experiencing them.
And, taken to its extreme, patients who believe they will not survive surgery, are more likely to die on the operating table.
Have you ever listened to an advertisement listing the possible side-effects of a drug and then felt queasy? Reading about those effects can make you feel ill, as well.
Dr. Lissa Rankin’s recently published New York Times bestseller, Mind over Medicine, in part, examines this disturbing phenomenon.
Reading Rankin’s thought provoking book reminded me of Fiona Macrae’s 2009 Health post The health alerts that make you ill: Negative thoughts ‘can induce sickness’.
Macrae wrote for the Daily Mail:
A series of studies from around the world has shown that if you believe something could make you ill, it might well do just that.
Simply reading the side-effects on a bottle of tablets raises your risk of experiencing them.
And, taken to its extreme, patients who believe they will not survive surgery, are more likely to die on the operating table.