Healthy thoughts - damn good Preventitve maintenance plan
Never underestimate the power of a single thought.
" Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
Matthew 9:22 / Mark 5:34 / Luke 8:48
“According to your faith, let it be done to you.”
Matthew 9:29
“Woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.”
Matthew 15:28
“Go; *your faith has made you well.”
Mark 10:52 / Luke 18:42
“Rise and go your way; *your faith has made you well.”
Luke 17:19
“Jesus answered them, ‘Is it not written in your Law, “I said, you are gods”?’”
John 10:34 (ESV)
Placebo effect
Placebo Surgery – Yes, it’s happened
Knee Surgery Study (2002 – Dr. Bruce Moseley)
• Patients with severe knee pain (osteoarthritis) were split into 3 groups:
1. Real arthroscopic surgery
2. Only a saline wash of the knee
3. Placebo surgery: The patient was sedated, cut open, but no real procedure was done.
• Results: The placebo group reported just as much pain relief as those who had the real surgery.
• Published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Parkinson’s Disease – Dopamine spike with fake treatment
• Patients with Parkinson’s were given a placebo saline injection they were told was an expensive drug.
• Their brains released more dopamine as if they’d gotten actual medication.
• Shows the brain chemically responds to belief.
Fake Oxygen for Athletes
Cyclists were told they were breathing oxygen-enriched air to boost endurance.
• It was just normal air.
• They still performed significantly better, thinking they had an edge.
“Fake” Antidepressants vs Real Ones
In some studies, placebos were nearly as effective as SSRIs (like Prozac), especially in mild to moderate depression.
• The belief in the treatment made a real difference in mood and outlook.
Color & Brand Influence
• Red and orange pills work better as “stimulants” in tests, even when they’re sugar pills.
• Blue pills were more effective as sedatives.
• Branded placebo pills often outperform generic-looking ones—just because they “feel” more legit.
Open-label Placebos
- In some trials, people are told they’re taking a placebo, and it still works.
- This has been shown with conditions like IBS and chronic pain.
Sham Pacemakers and Implanted Devices
• In some heart failure trials, patients were implanted with a sham pacemaker or defibrillator—devices that looked and felt real but weren’t actually activated.
• Many reported improved symptoms, less fatigue, and better energy just from believing they had a life-saving device in them.
Fake Acupuncture
In multiple trials, sham acupuncture (where the needles don’t even penetrate the skin or are inserted in the “wrong” spots) produced as much or more pain relief than real acupuncture.
• Belief in the ritual of the treatment played a huge role.
Placebo Response in Surgery for Angina (1950s!)
Surgeons tied off arteries to the chest wall, believing it would increase blood flow to the heart (it didn’t).
• Some patients underwent a sham procedure—incision only, no ligation.
• Both groups reported improved angina symptoms.
• Once placebo was revealed, that whole surgery was abandoned.
Fake Alcohol & Drunkenness
• People who are given non-alcoholic drinks but are told they’re drinking real alcohol can still act drunk—slurred speech, clumsiness, and even memory issues.
• Shows how expectation alone can recreate the effects of a drug.
Immune System Activation
• People who are given non-alcoholic drinks but are told they’re drinking real alcohol can still act drunk—slurred speech, clumsiness, and even memory issues.
• Shows how expectation alone can recreate the effects of a drug.
Sham Brain Surgeries for Parkinson’s
• In multiple studies, surgeons implanted inert material or did mock brain surgeries, telling patients they were getting experimental brain implants.
• Some of these patients had real improvements in tremors and motor function, even though the procedure did nothing.
• One neurosurgeon even said, “The placebo effect in brain surgery is not subtle.”
Psychological Suggestion and Fatal Outcomes: Verified Cases
Case of “Mr. J” (1979) –
A 37-year-old German patient exemplified psychogenic death in a medical settingpubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Suffering back pain after spinal surgery, he became convinced the operation had failed. Within a day he shockingly died, even though autopsy and toxicology found no physical causepubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Researchers concluded he succumbed to a “psychic” trigger – essentially willing himself to die due to hopelessness. This case, published in a 1979 psychosomatic medicine journal, described the patient’s state as total passivity, resignation, and apathy before deathpubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. It was deemed a classic psychogenic death, where the expectation of doom led to unexplained sudden death.
“Give-up-itis” in Prisoners of War –
Military psychologists and physicians have long noted a syndrome in extreme trauma survivors (such as POWs or disaster victims) where individuals lose the will to live. Dr. John Leach, who studied this phenomenon, describes “give-up-itis” as a progressive demotivation that can end in death without organic causemedscape.com. In the Korean War, some captives who remained physically intact nevertheless became withdrawn, refused to eat or move, and died suddenly – a pattern also called psychogenic death. Leach’s research outlines five stages (from social withdrawal to apathy, then aboulia, psychic akinesia, and finally psychogenic death) where a person mentally “switches off” lifemedscape.commedscape.com. In one report, a 19-year-old WWII soldier who lost hope is cited as an example of this fatal surrendermedscape.com. The interpretation by experts is that mental defeat activates a kind of internal shutdown: the brain essentially “accepts death” as a coping mechanism, triggering physiological processes of dying even though the body is otherwise capablemedscape.com. Such cases baffled doctors because no medical reason explains why a previously healthy person would die, underscoring the lethal power of belief and emotional despair
Maori Taboo Death (Cannon 1942) –
Cannon’s seminal paper describes the case of a Maori woman who accidentally ate fruit from a tapu (taboo) groveen.wikipedia.org. Upon learning of the transgression, she was overwhelmed by dread at the supernatural punishment she believed would befall her. Less than 24 hours later, she was dead,en.wikipedia.org despite no injury or poison – a psychosomatic death attributed to extreme fear. Cannon interpreted this as evidence that the belief in having violated a sacred taboo induced mortal terror, triggering physiological shock (collapse of blood pressure, etc.) leading to death
Bone-Pointing Curses (Australia) –
- In Australian Aboriginal culture, the “Kurdaitcha” or sorcerer’s bone-pointing curse was historically feared as a death sentence. Medical observers in the colonial era documented that victims of this ritual would literally will themselves to die. Dr. W. E. Roth, a government surgeon in Queensland in the 1890s, reported seeing victims so convinced they’d been “boned” by an enemy that they lay down and died despite readily available food and waterromolocapuano.com. He personally witnessed “three or four such cases”romolocapuano.com. Another physician, Dr. J. B. Cleland, recounted a case of a “fine, robust tribesman” who was speared with a bone that had been ritually cursed – the man slowly wasted away and died even though the wound was superficial and showed no infectionromolocapuano.com. Cleland emphasized no ordinary lethal cause was found and poisoning was ruled out, implicating malignant psychic influence as the causeromolocapuano.comromolocapuano.com. Anthropologist Herbert Basedow in 1925 vividly described the sequence: when an Aboriginal person realizes he’s been “boned,” he reacts with absolute terror – “His cheeks blanch and his eyes become glassy… he attempts to shriek but the sound chokes in his throat, with only froth at his mouth. His body trembles… he collapses… thereafter he refuses food and withdraws… death is only a matter of a short time without a counter-charm.”romolocapuano.comromolocapuano.com. The interpretation of these cases by early observers and by Cannon was that fear itself is lethal: the intense activation (and then exhaustion) of the nervous system – a massive stress response followed by shock – literally shuts down vital functionsen.wikipedia.org. Cannon theorized that adrenaline surge and sympathetic nervous system overdrive, followed by collapse of blood pressure and organ failure, explained these deathsen.wikipedia.org. Modern researchers concur that extreme stress can provoke fatal arrhythmias or cardiovascular collapse (akin to stress-induced cardiomyopathy or “broken heart syndrome”)en.wikipedia.orgen.wikipedia.org, lending credence to these early reports. In essence, the victim’s belief in the curse’s power becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy carried out by their own body.
Placebo Overdose Case (2007) –
A dramatic clinical case reported in General Hospital Psychiatry illustrates how belief alone can cause dangerous physiological reactionspubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. A 26-year-old man in an antidepressant drug trial swallowed 29 capsules in a suicide attempt, believing they were a deadly overdose. In reality, he was in the placebo arm – the pills were inert. Nonetheless, he collapsed with life-threatening hypotension (critically low blood pressure), rapid pulse, and profuse sweatingmondediplo.com. He was rushed to the ER; despite IV fluids, doctors struggled to stabilize him. Only after the trial supervisor revealed that the pills were placebos with no drug did the patient’s condition rapidly reverse – his blood pressure normalized within 15 minutesmondediplo.com. Interpretation: this was a nocebo-induced crisis – his mind generated severe physical symptoms because he expected an overdose. As researchers Reeves et al. note, the case highlights that nocebo responses “may have significant negative impacts” and can mimic medical emergenciespubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. The patient’s belief in harm was potent enough to nearly cause a fatal outcome.
Trial Side-Effects and “Harmful” Placebos –
Large-scale analyses confirm that nocebo effects are common in clinical trials. A 2018 review of data from over 250,000 trial participants found that 1 in 20 people on placebos dropped out due to serious adverse events – including symptoms as severe as chest pain, gastrointestinal crises, and even some deathsox.ac.uk. Nearly half of participants reported milder side effects while on a sugar pillox.ac.uk. Of course, if a patient in a study dies while on placebo, the actual cause might be an unrelated health issue; but researchers note that negative expectations and misattribution play a huge roleox.ac.uk. In other words, people often convince themselves they are ill. The University of Oxford team led by Jeremy Howick concluded that many “strange” placebo harms can be explained by patients’ expecting side effects (the nocebo effect) or blaming normal aches on the trialox.ac.ukox.ac.uk. For instance, if volunteers are warned a drug may cause stomach pain or fatigue, a significant proportion will report exactly those problems even on placeboox.ac.uk. The implication is that caution is needed in how we communicate risks: expectations alone can produce real suffering.
Belief and Heart Disease Risk (Framingham Study) –
A long-term epidemiological study provided evidence that beliefs can influence mortality. In the famed Framingham Heart Study, researchers noted that women who believed they were prone to heart disease had nearly 4× the risk of dying in the next decade compared to women with identical cardiac risk profiles who did not hold such fatalistic beliefstampabay.com. All women had similar blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, etc., so objectively their risk should have been the same. But those convinced “heart trouble runs in my family, I’ll probably die young” did, in fact, die at a much higher ratetampabay.com. This nocebo-like effect – essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy – suggests psychological stress and expectation may have contributed to heart attacks or fatal arrhythmias. The study underlines what one CDC scientist called the “negative self-fulfilling prophecy” aspect of nocebo responsestampabay.com: believing you will get sick can help make it so.
Allergic Reaction by Suggestion (Ikemi’s Poison Ivy Study, 1960s) –
- A classic experiment in Japan by Dr. Yukio Ikemi proved that the mind’s expectations can override the body’s usual allergic responses. The study involved 57 boys highly allergic to a toxic plant (Japanese lacquer tree, similar to poison ivy)skeptics.stackexchange.comskeptics.stackexchange.com. The researchers conducted a blind test: each boy had one forearm rubbed with the poisonous leaf and the other arm rubbed with a harmless leaf – but the boys were told the opposite (the poison was said to be harmless, and the harmless leaf was said to be the irritant)skeptics.stackexchange.com. The results were astonishing: on the arm that the boys believed was exposed to poison, the majority developed itching, redness, and rashes, even though that arm actually only touched a benign leafskeptics.stackexchange.comskeptics.stackexchange.com. Conversely, the arm that actually had real poison ivy oil on it but which they thought was safe often showed no reaction at all. In one group of 13 particularly sensitive boys, 84.6% reacted strongly to the “harmless” leaf when told it was poisonskeptics.stackexchange.com. Overall, suggestion alone produced some level of rash in up to ~90% of subjects across various conditionsskeptics.stackexchange.com. Medical examination confirmed that these weren’t imaginary complaints – the skin actually erupted with genuine dermatitis, in some cases even showing the histological signs of eczema identical to a true allergic reactionskeptics.stackexchange.com. Ikemi’s paper concluded that suggestion had a statistically significant effect on triggering allergic skin outbreaks (with p < 0.001)skeptics.stackexchange.com. In more than half the subjects, belief outweighed physiology – meaning if they expected a rash, they got one, and if they expected to be fine, their bodies suppressed the allergic responseskeptics.stackexchange.com. This controlled study is a striking demonstration of the nocebo/placebo effect: the mind’s expectations can literally produce or prevent allergic inflammation. Researchers interpreted this as evidence that the brain’s influence (through stress or neural mechanisms) can mimic or block immune reactions at the skin level
Fake Electric Shock Experiment (1980s) –
- To test nocebo effects in a laboratory setting, researchers have told volunteers to expect some harmless but unpleasant stimulus and then observed physiological outcomes. In one placebo-controlled trial of pain, healthy volunteers were informed that a mild electric current would be passed through their heads (to study headaches), though in reality no current was delivered. Nonetheless, approximately two-thirds of the subjects reported developing a headache purely from the power of suggestiontampabay.com. They experienced real pain symptoms despite nothing physically causing them. This “imaginary shock” study, reported by nocebo researchers, underscores how simply expecting a symptom can manifest it. The participants weren’t malingering; their headaches were real to them – a direct result of the induced anxiety and expectation. The study’s interpretation was that negative expectation can induce measurable symptoms (a “meaning response” in the words of anthropologist Daniel Moerman)tampabay.com, demonstrating a controlled nocebo effect on a common sensation like pain.
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This is a representation of my journey and the collaboration of ideas, history, facts, and—at times—my own reflections on them. This is a space for growth and discovery, not for comfort and stagnation. As with everything in life, how you choose to react to the contents here is your own choice—and your own responsibility.