Hello everyone! Today I show you an interesting paper about the Nocebo effect, is amazing how much science advances!! If you dont know what is the effect nocebo, read this
Can just telling a man he has cancer kill him? Well, in 1992 the Southern Medical Journal reported a case like this! A man diagnosed with cancer and given just months to live, at death, his autopsy showed that the tumour in his liver had not grown!! and his intern said: "Could it be that, instead of the cancer, it was his expectation of death that killed him?"
This is an extreme case of effect nocebo wich is the opposite of the placebo effect, This poses an ethical quandary: should doctors warn patients about side-effects if doing so makes them more likely to arise?
The nocebo effect can also be highly infectious. For example, In 1962, 62 workers were suddenly stricken with headaches, nausea and rashes, and the outbreak was blamed upon an insect arriving from England. No insect was ever found. These "mass psychogenic illnesses"usually affecting close communities and especially the female sex.
Irene Tracey and collaborators show that, at the neurological level at least, these volunteers really are responding to actual, non-imaginary, pain. On the other hand Fabrizio Benedetti and his colleagues determined one of the neurochemicals responsible for converting the expectation of pain into this genuine pain perception. The chemical is called cholecystokinin and carries messages between nerve cells. The findings of Tracey's team carry startling implications for the way we practise modern medicine because the patient's negative expectations would have the power to undermine the effectiveness of a treatment, and suggests that doctors would do well to treat the beliefs of their patients, not just their physical symptoms.
All this is very important becouse today's society is litigious and sceptical, and if doctors overemphasise side-effects to their patients to avoid being sued, or patients mistrust their doctor's chosen course of action, the nocebo effect can cause a treatment to fail before it has begun. So, must we believe in our doctors? because if we believe in them too strongly, we can die from their pronouncements.
I think today the work of the doctor is overvalued, especially in the elderly, and often the things the doctor says are taken at face valueand people begin to depend on drugs and doctor visits, never to return to his previous life.
That is why, I think it is vitally important to spread this kind of research so that people can know update how your body works and learn to control it.
I hope you liked the article and reflections about it. I leave the link to the original paper :)
See you soon!
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