Description

‘Absolutely fascinating’ Dr Julie Smith, author of the #1 Sunday Times bestseller, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?

‘Entrancing’ David Robson, author of the Sunday Times bestseller The Expectation Effect

Illness is not simply a matter of biology. Our thoughts, conscious or otherwise, can make us feel pain or become unwell. If you experienced side effects from your Covid vaccine, the chances are that these were caused by your belief that you would experience them. When a nurse tells you ‘this is going to hurt’, it generally does – but perhaps it shouldn’t.

In this revelatory study, neuroscientist Helen Pilcher explores the hidden impact of the ‘nocebo effect’ – the placebo’s evil twin. Medical studies have proven the nocebo effect to cause pain, nausea, paralysis, seizures, and even blindness. The nocebo effect impacts how we grow sick and grow old, explains why people who don’t have food allergies have dietary intolerances, and why, during the pandemic, so many teenagers caught tics through social media.

From Havana Syndrome to hex deaths, chronic pain and mystery illnesses, this book explains what happens when illness, psychology and society meet – and shows us what we can do to become less ill and more well.

Publisher Review

Absolutely fascinating and never more relevant than today. Helen has a talent for making confusing subjects clear in your mind. I will be recommending this one far and wide — Dr Julie Smith, author of Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? Few medical phenomena are as fascinating as the nocebo effect, and few science writers are as engaging as Helen Pilcher. This entrancing book will change the way you think about your mind and your body — David Robson, author of The Expectation Effect and The Laws of Connection Absolutely fizzing with fascination. Helen Pilcher knows just the stories to make ideas stick and she tells them so fluently. What makes her storytelling so captivating is that it shows us just how susceptible to stories we are – to the point of possible death. This book will widen your range of understanding of who you are and how your complexity offers a whole new world of risks that are both real and not real. It may cause side effects, but it will be really good for your health too. — Robin Ince, former co-host of The Infinite Monkey Cage This subversive and devastating takedown of the mind-body binary will change the way you think about health, medicine, and that body part known as the mind. Revelatory — Sonia Shah, author of Pandemic Helen Pilcher brilliantly unpacks the powerful – and often overlooked – ways our expectations shape our physiology … A compelling call to reexamine how we communicate about illness, how we frame risk, and how we harness the mind’s extraordinary power for good rather than harm. It should be required reading for clinicians and patients alike — Dr Robynne Chutkan, author of Gutbliss and host of The Gutbliss Podcast