WHY HEALTH WARNINGS CAN BE BAD
By Stuart BlackmanPublished: April 25 2009 01:27
It is perhaps surprising that scientists behind an experiment conducted at the University of California 25 years ago were able to recruit any volunteers. The researchers, purporting to study the effects of electric currents on brain function, warned potential participants that electrodes would be strapped to their temples, and could cause serious headaches. Despite this, 34 students came forward. At the end of the trial, two thirds of the volunteers did report headaches – despite the electric current never having been turned on. Such is the power of the “nocebo” effect, the real subject of the experiment. The current had not been switched on because the scientists were investigating whether expectation alone could make healthy people ill. Apparently it could.
In the 25 years since then, research has been accumulating that the nocebo effect – the evil twin of the better-known placebo effect – is a widespread phenomenon that affects many aspects of our lives and which might contribute to a host of 21st-century ailments, from food allergies to obesity, chronic fatigue, back pain and electrosensitivity. Some experts are concerned that the situation is being compounded by the efforts of health professionals to raise awareness of threats. “When someone receives a placebo and they get better, it’s because of a variety of self-healing processes in the body that are cognition-related,” says Brian Hughes, a psychologist at the National University of Ireland, Galway, who specialises in how mental stress affects physical health. “One expects to get healed and certain symptoms go away.” In the case of the nocebo, it is negative expectations that become self-fulfilling prophecies.
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