Placebo vs Nocebo, Or Simply Buy The Ticket, Take The Ride?

 

Most of us are more than familiar with the concept of a Placebo/Placebo Effect – that sugar pill effect or the overriding belief that we are doing or taking something (sometimes a course of action) which will let us overcome, recover or heal completely, often seemingly against all scientific or reasonable odds.

 

Origin of placebo :

Latin, I shall please

 

Yes, we hear it often in health talk on TV, on the internet & in conversation often harshly administered out to any holistic or natural means of medicine, or healing (by a profit driven set-minded pharma-industry funded health profession) so that it sinks in like a mantra to the collective mind. These same scientific/medical minds are unable to either explain the phenomenon, yet they are happy to harness its power occasionally, or even take credit for anyone who effectively, and subconciously heals themselves!  

What about the ‘Nocebo Effect’? Well it’s kind of the other side of the coin which oddly enough the medical industry doesn’t conciously understand either :

Origin of nocebo :

Latin, I will be harmful

Nocebo – a detrimental effect on health produced by psychological or psychosomatic factors such as negative expectations of treatment or prognosis. E.g. when patients taking medications experience adverse side effects unrelated to the specific pharmacological action of the drug. The nocebo effect is associated with the person’s prior expectations of adverse effects from treatment as well as with conditioning in which the person learns from prior experiences to associate a medication with certain somatic symptoms.  

 

 

 

So that is the surface of it in modern medical terms, we don’t look further than that because there is no explanation in ‘Our’ terms. Full stop.

But what about the concious mind? The subconcious or unconcious? What about the superconcious mind? Well anyone familiar with the metaphysical or healing modalities or therapies that are based on an understanding of the human body, mind & soul may NOT see the body as scientific medicine does (i.e. as a bio-machine to be manipulated chemically from afar).

The good healer, acupuncturist, Bowen therapist, Hypnotherapist or Cranial Sacral therapist or whomever will have a belief in their patient’s healing & an outcome which will assist their subconcious belief that they will benefit from treatment, that it WILL help them to recover in unison with other life changes. Science says No – keep taking the pills & have blind faith in our system. How do we decide then – Placebo or Nocebo?

Well some of that is down to our conditioning & upbringing, the fist six years of life where we pick up all our beliefs about how the world is, what we get used to feeling & believing. At this age our brains operate mainly in Theta wave patterns which is highly impressionable, & then after age six we have more fixed beliefs, the programming of mainstream education comes in then filling up the left-brain with the need to conform to a world-view led by science & profit…

 

 

 

…And BANG! You’re sold one way or the other… Or, you awaken gradually to the possibility that you are more than just a meat-bound robot that they’d have you believe & you go into your right-brain to explore all possibilities of creativity within yourself & beyond yourself – which can include miraculous healing through assisted belief.

This however does not condemn any of us one way or another; quite another thing affects our choices in thinking a treatment or drug will – the superconcious mind. This is the greater part of us energetically, what some call our Soul or Spirit or higher-self. Again science have ridiculed this ever since they set about their war on religion & spirituality many centuries ago. Our superconcious is in tune with our choices for this lifetime (our Karma) and what we chose to enter this reality to learn about beforehand.

Do we choose things because they’re easy? Well if we wish to grow that has to be an easy No. So is your belief about your PCS diagnosis what your Dr confirmed you would experience? Do your expectations of how fast & how well you will heal depend on another professional in a white coat with various certificates on their wall? I hope not.

To be fair I even got caught up in the whole medical Nocebo for quite a while, putting blind faith in big brand names like Cymbalta, Diazepam, Mirtazipine & the rest; yet all the while I became sicker & less able to function in life. I knew the drugs would not heal me the more time went on, and then my life crashed uncontrollably & I lost everything, became homeless & hopeless. My belief did not re-emerge until things became so bad that the only way was upwards.

 

 

 

 

And so my story mirrors many hundreds, maybe thousands of others who had one or more mTBI, and I’m just a little bit further down the line than most of those others – and so are many of my peers whom work alongside me in these efforts. For them (and they know who they are) I give them my thanks, my belief & my faith wholly & unconditionally – no placebo required…

…Like so many others – I bought my unique ticket, and took the ride.

 

Keep your choice to heal positively fixed & learn to believe in what is good & what can heal you, not what profits only someone else.

 

Namaste

 

David