Health continued….

The placebo and nocebo effect and the power of the mind

“The separation of mind and body is an erroneous view, incompatible with science. Personality traits—that is, psychological patterns—conduce to disease because the brain circuits and systems that process emotions not only exert a profound influence on our autonomic nerves, as well as our cardiovascular, hormonal, and immune systems: In reality, they are all conjoined. The recent, but no longer new, discipline of psychoneuroimmunology has delineated the many neurological and biochemical mechanisms that unite all these seemingly disparate systems into one super-system.” from https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/good-health/2015/11/16/gabor-mate-how-to-build-a-culture-of-good-health/  by Dr Gabor Mate

The placebo and nocebo effects could be described as the response of our nervous and endocrine systems to our conscious and unconscious expectations, fears, desires, emotions and interactions with the environment around us. Simply put it is our physiology responding to our own and others’ expectations concerning health outcomes. To a large extent our conscious and unconscious beliefs around our health shape our expectations and influence our decisions, behaviours, and most importantly, our physiology. Science now supports that our conscious and unconscious beliefs, childhood experiences and conditioning, lifestyle and environment exert an influence on the expression of our genes.  Read more……