The Nocebo Effect

Doctor and anthropologist Herbert Bassadow described a shamanistic bone pointing that he witnessed in the tribes of Australian aborigines in 1925. Both the patient and the shaman have expectations about this, again quote unquote treatment. That causes a real physical effect. It is important to note that the nocebo effect is not just a psychological phenomenon. Researchers using fMRI's have documented that placebo pain medications reduce activation in pain-sensitive regions of the brain. Even basic cellular immune responses such as levels of interleukin 2 can be affected by placebos. So you get the picture, it is truly psychosomatic, a psychological phenomenon that affects our body even at the intracellular level