However, the placebo effect also has a darker side. The same mind body power that can help you heal can also help cause harm. Patients partaking in these clinical trials are given the list of side effects that the real drug could cause even if they are given a placebo. Some of the patients which received the placebo, a sugar pill often reported taste disturbances, memory disturbance, fatigue, muscle weakness, vomiting other discomforts and symptoms that a sugar pill wouldn’t cause.
Overall, this suggests that the social environment and your role as a health coach/practitioner has an important contribution to health and emphasizes how expectations, both positive and negative can impact the outcome to an illness.
Every time a person whether that’s a friend or health specialist tells you that you have an “incurable” disease, that you will always suffer with a condition, or that you will never get off a medication for the rest of your life… they are essentially hexing you! Remember this isn’t about blaming, more often than not, these statements are said because people think you deserve to know and it comes from a place of good intention.
Yet when those words are said, they instill in your conscious and subconscious mind a belief that you won’t get well, and as long as the mind holds this negative belief, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you believe you’ll never recover, you won’t.
2 Responses
What a great article! Thank you :)
Appreciate it Zoe!