WEBVTT - What is Collective Hysteria? 0:00:01.080 --> 0:00:04.520 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works 0:00:04.559 --> 0:00:13.080 dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh 0:00:13.200 --> 0:00:15.960 Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant, 0:00:16.000 --> 0:00:20.160 and Jerry's over there to the left, and that makes 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:23.680 the Stuff you Should Know got the eighteen. Yeah, in 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:29.120 the hissy, I call face what I'm face? Of course 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:31.960 your face, look at you. I would be a combination 0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:36.080 of Murdoch and Mr Tak Yeah. Oh, your hair is 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:38.600 kind of spiky in the middle today. Yeah, Jerry, I 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:42.280 don't know what she'd be. I guess she'd be the leader. 0:00:42.280 --> 0:00:45.360 She'd be Hannibal. Oh yeah, you know she's smoking a 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:47.920 cigar right now, wearing a black glove. When did you 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:52.720 start the sucking cigars? Jerry? That's weird, very timely. I 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:55.240 said a team. I don't want to slag off guests 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:58.560 produce a knoll. He's not exactly be team. We'll just 0:00:58.560 --> 0:01:02.120 call ourself the O G S. Okay, now that we 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:04.920 have that established, we are the O G S. We 0:01:04.959 --> 0:01:08.080 need bowling shirts that say as much. On the bad 0:01:08.760 --> 0:01:14.399 you're feeling good, I'm feeling uh nauseous and dizzy. Oh well, Chuck, 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:17.120 did you happen to see somebody else who is nauseous 0:01:17.120 --> 0:01:19.640 and dizzy. Well, Jerry was last week, and then a 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:21.520 few more people in the office, so I just figured 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:23.480 we all had the same thing. All right, I'm gonna 0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:29.400 diagnose this, Okay. It's called collective hysteria, also known, I 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:34.200 think more appropriately is mass psychogenic disorder. I think when 0:01:34.200 --> 0:01:36.400 you add the word hysteria to this, it ticks on 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:40.920 certain dimensions that a lot of people could find very objectionable. 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:46.240 You know, hysterics, hysteria. It's like um dogs and cats 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:49.559 living together. Yeah, but I think it has it has 0:01:49.600 --> 0:01:55.040 a definite um gender specific connotation to it from over 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:59.120 the years, like women were supposedly very hysterical. So the 0:01:59.120 --> 0:02:04.480 the idea of diagnosing somebody as hysterical under any circumstances, 0:02:04.520 --> 0:02:06.760 it's kind of it's had him out to panning him, 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:09.160 patting him on the head. Yeah here, nice lady, you're 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:11.600 you're just a little hysterical. Do you just go calm 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:15.480 down and bake something right? Stop being crazy? Uh? No. 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:18.720 Mass psychogenic disorder instead is just kind of like whoa, 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:22.000 your brain just did something pretty neat. And that is 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:26.000 the case for mass psychogenic disorder. If you ask me um. 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:30.880 In this article Chuck written by Jacob Silverman, Jeopardy Champion. 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:34.080 Yeah well yeah, yeah you won on Jeopardy. That makes 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:35.840 him a champion? Or yeah, I think so. He wasn't 0:02:35.880 --> 0:02:39.040 like the ultimate Champion, but he won a couple of episodes, right, 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:42.200 which is why they should have a word for I 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:44.920 guess like the champion is like the one who won 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:49.799 at all Ken Jennings, Yeah, or um Watson, who's that 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:55.840 the IBM computer? Yeah, so Jeopardy winner. Jacob Silverman wrote 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:58.360 this article years back, and he did a pretty great 0:02:58.440 --> 0:03:05.160 job of citing a contemporary outbreak of mass psychogenic disorder 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:08.600 that had been going on around that time down in Mexico, 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:12.920 down Mexico, way in Chalco, Mexico, at a boarding school. 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:16.880 There apparently was a girls boarding school and the girls 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:19.359 that went to school they were just twelve to seventeen, 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:22.840 and all of a sudden they started, well, there was 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:26.880 an outbreak, a weird outbreak. There was vomiting, I believe, 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:34.720 trouble walking. Um, there was fever that's weird, nausea and 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:38.160 so the the people running this boarding school like, um, 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:41.760 what's going on? This is not good? Uh? And they 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:45.120 had no idea. The girls went on Christmas break for 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:48.440 ten days, came back, and the thing just took off 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:52.560 again like wildfire. Yeah, six d girls, um showed these 0:03:52.600 --> 0:03:56.160 symptoms and nobody could figure it out. Um. They did 0:03:56.200 --> 0:03:58.000 a lot of tests, they brought in people to like 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:01.440 check out the facilities, and because as you'll see, there's 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:05.000 a trend there. Um, you know here in the West, 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:09.600 they start to blame it, usually on um, like environmental 0:04:09.640 --> 0:04:12.320 poisoning of some kind. Right, Um, you know there's some 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:15.480 sort of toxins that is poisoned everybody. But they didn't 0:04:15.480 --> 0:04:21.120 find anything there, and eventually, um, they said, this is uh, 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:25.159 what do you call it? Psychosomatic mass psychogenic disorder? Okay, 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:27.560 mass psychogenic disorder, but no, that is one of the 0:04:27.760 --> 0:04:31.320 one of the names that it's mass psychogenic disorder, collective hysteria, 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:36.839 mass hysteria, or mass psychosomatic reaction. They're all saying the 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:39.560 same thing they are, which is you're not well. Was 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:41.560 about so you're not really sick, But that is not 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:45.159 exactly true, because that's one thing that differentiates this from 0:04:45.279 --> 0:04:47.160 something that's just in your head is you actually do 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:50.600 manifest physical symptoms. Right. Yeah, there's this article written by 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:53.760 a m d. Named Timothy F. Jones from the Tennessee 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:56.719 Department of Health way back in the heavy days of 0:04:56.960 --> 0:05:00.800 two thousand, your two thousand in the future. Um, and 0:05:00.880 --> 0:05:06.280 he writes that you if you are experiencing mass psychogenic disorder, 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:09.600 it is not just in your head. That the symptoms 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:12.640 that you have are actually very real. Even though there's 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:16.240 no toxic cause that they couldn't find some sort of 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:20.479 environmental poison or anything like that, the symptoms are extremely real. Yeah, 0:05:20.640 --> 0:05:24.159 it's just psycho somatic. It's just basically the brain has 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:30.320 been tricked into causing this response. Yeah, and this has happened. Um, 0:05:30.520 --> 0:05:33.839 They've documented about eighty cases throughout history and apparently the 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:38.280 National Institutes of Health gets about two cases per week reported. 0:05:38.760 --> 0:05:41.599 But um, which is I mean, like that's that's way 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:45.320 more common than than you would think, you know, yeah, 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:47.080 I would think there'd be more than eight, because I mean, 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:48.880 these have happened. If you go back and look at 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:51.360 I mean, there's all sorts of crazy lists on the 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:54.120 internet about these cases that date back to like the 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:58.120 fourteenth century. Medieval dancing mania was one of them. Yeah, 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:02.039 the dancing plague. Yeah, yeah, that's in there. The Salem 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:06.159 Witchcraft trials or the Salem witchcraft I guess what led 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:10.320 to the trials was UM supposedly attributed to this kind 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:15.599 of thing. Uh. One weird thing about this condition is 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:21.479 more times than not, it is affects females, Yeah, and 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:25.520 young females even more specifically teenagers or even younger, which 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:30.279 is as far as it goes right now, inexplicable UM. 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:32.680 And it's kind of a prickly issue, you know, like 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:35.359 again you kind of come back to the idea of 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:38.640 calling it hysteria. You know, the fact that it does 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:43.720 tend to afflict women or girls more than them boys. 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:49.599 UM is apparently one means of diagnosing psychogenic disordered mass psychogogical. 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:51.560 That's like one of the first things we'll say is like, 0:06:51.600 --> 0:06:54.000 all this the sickness is happening in this place, the 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:57.000 school wherever, and the doctor will say, is it a 0:06:57.000 --> 0:07:00.039 bunch of girls? And then that will clue them in 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:02.000 that hey, this might be what we're dealing with here. 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:05.800 And but the problem is no one has any idea why, 0:07:05.839 --> 0:07:09.960 and there have been explanations of things like um, Uh, 0:07:11.600 --> 0:07:16.680 I guess girls, this is this is girls culturally acceptable 0:07:16.720 --> 0:07:20.920 outlet for raging against the patriarchy. Sure, even if they 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:23.840 don't necessarily feel that that's what they're doing. This is 0:07:24.000 --> 0:07:28.560 there there, Uh, this is the symptoms of that. That's one. Yeah, 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:31.120 I thought this was a pretty interesting part. What article 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:34.120 was that from Slate? Uh? There was uh yeah, one 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:37.840 called mass Asteria and Upstate New York by Ruth Graham 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:39.280 was on Slate. That was a good one. It was 0:07:39.320 --> 0:07:40.640 a really good one. And we'll get to that case 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:43.360 in a sect. But um, I thought it was pretty interesting. 0:07:43.360 --> 0:07:45.640 In one part, it says, um, and this is a 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:48.400 quote from someone writing about something and said inform, if 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:52.720 not unconscious intent, it is to protest the sexual repressiveness, 0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:56.800 rigid double standard of female team culture. Um. But they 0:07:56.800 --> 0:08:00.360 were writing about Beatlemania, Yeah, which is interesting because it's 0:08:00.840 --> 0:08:05.200 sort of has a similar vibe of uh, young ladies 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:09.080 being repressed, um, not having an outlet, and so they 0:08:09.120 --> 0:08:12.160 see the Beatles and they go berserk and faint and 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:16.800 cry and scream collectively. Whereas boys they're more prone to 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:19.160 just act out if they're not feeling good. Girls are 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:21.760 trained to keep things inward. And they also point out 0:08:21.760 --> 0:08:25.360 that ladies and young ladies are more prone to seek 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:28.520 a doctor's help for something. Uh, they say that may 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:31.440 account for the bias right there, like guys just won't 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:33.959 go to the doctor exactly. You have to be careful though, 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:38.160 and in just diagnosing MATHS psychogenital disorder, you physicians out 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:40.600 there who are listening to encounter a case like this 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.400 UM it just by basing it on the fact that 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:47.320 it is affecting more girls than boys. Because there's at 0:08:47.400 --> 0:08:51.480 least one case in Great Britain where I think girls 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:55.240 were afflicted by more than half more than double the 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:57.840 number of girls were afflicted by this, and it turned 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:00.720 out that they were retaining cucumbers being served in the 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:04.120 lunch room. Yeah, and everyone knows boys hate cucumbers, and 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:06.600 so I mean they didn't need anyone, right. But this 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:09.679 is one of the issues with dealing with UM MATHS 0:09:09.679 --> 0:09:14.600 psychogenic disorder, and that it looks and acts a lot 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:19.680 like some sort of weird epidemic. That basically it looks 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:25.160 like either a UM something like bioterrorism, uh, rapidly spreading 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:31.480 affection infection or affection if lemania and then acute toxic exposure. 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:34.959 That's what it looks like. It's like one person gets sick. 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:37.720 This is your index case and all of a sudden, 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:42.200 everyone around them suddenly has the same symptoms. Yeah, and 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:45.560 it's like you said, it's super dangerous to just dismiss 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:48.280 that as oh it's all in your head, silly little ladies. 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:51.040 You can't do that because what if it is something 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:54.200 for real? But it's also a double edged sword, is 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:58.800 that doctor pointed out, Um, you start ordering batteries of 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:01.600 tests and it it It can go both ways. It 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:04.560 can Um. What the old saying is, if you order 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:07.240 enough tests, you're gonna find something, so it can fuel 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:10.440 that fire. But you also can't not run any tests 0:10:10.440 --> 0:10:13.640 and just dismiss it. Uh. So it's a very fine 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:16.640 line that physicians walk when dealing with stuff like this, 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:22.000 for sure. Indeed, apparently UM study of mass psychogenic disorder 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:27.120 has found that it's more prevalent in isolated communities and 0:10:27.160 --> 0:10:34.400 in situations where um, they are highly rigid, formalized, structured rules, 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:38.320 like a Catholic school in Mexico exactly, um or again 0:10:38.480 --> 0:10:44.160 um Salem, Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, you know. Um. 0:10:44.200 --> 0:10:49.160 And apparently, between nineteen seventy three and half of all 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:53.920 the outbreaks of psychogenetic or psychogenic illness took place in schools, 0:10:55.040 --> 0:11:01.000 so that that's possibly in part by due to kids 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:06.200 being susceptible to it more um, but also because of 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:10.280 that that rigid, formalized structure. Yeah. And there's also usually 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:12.680 a top down effect, like it'll start with a teacher 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:17.360 or an older student, and then the younger students follow suit, 0:11:17.559 --> 0:11:21.760 which if you're talking influence, would make sense for sure. 0:11:22.000 --> 0:11:25.120 There was one very famous case. Um. Apparently there's not 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:28.840 very many actual academic studies on this, but there's one 0:11:28.960 --> 0:11:32.880 that came out of the New England Journal of Medicine 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:38.400 UM that that described a case in Tennessee where a 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:45.040 teacher noticed, um, some weird gas odor, a gassy odor, uh, 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:48.320 like the chemical kind. Yeah, not like the guy on 0:11:48.320 --> 0:11:52.679 the front road to right exactly, um, and she apparently 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:57.160 started suffering symptoms uh, And all of a sudden, like 0:11:57.160 --> 0:12:00.640 a hundred and eighties students and teachers had to go 0:12:00.679 --> 0:12:03.160 to the emergency room. The school was shut down for 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:07.280 two weeks. They did all this environmental testing, couldn't find anything, 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:13.080 and finally traced it back to UM psychogenic a mass 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:16.240 psychogenic disorder, if that's what it didn't and then everyone 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:19.280 In most of these cases we should point out everyone 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:22.600 it starts feeling better. Yes, like in Mexico and then 0:12:22.640 --> 0:12:25.600 the school in Tennessee. It's it's not like they went 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:28.280 on to die or anything. Yeah. So in the school 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:32.480 in Mexico, the these girls were at a boarding school. 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:34.640 They were only allowed to see their parents, I think 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:36.880 like three times a year. Yeah, they couldn't even call. 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:40.600 It's like it sounds more like a prison. They were 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:44.839 allowed letters when they went home. Immediately their symptoms cleared up. 0:12:45.400 --> 0:12:47.880 The problem is that doesn't automatically say oh, well, it's 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:51.840 obviously mass psychogenic distorder. It could be an environmental toxin 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:54.840 that they were being exposed to still uh at the 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:58.360 school and we're removed from But I think the the 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:04.040 definite problem osis is mass psychogenic disorder in this case. 0:13:04.200 --> 0:13:06.240 That's right. What we're talking about is a sort of 0:13:06.320 --> 0:13:08.920 version of the no Seebo effect, which we've talked about before, 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:12.040 and we will get into that right up to this break. 0:13:14.840 --> 0:13:18.160 So the no cebo effect, we talked about that, and 0:13:18.840 --> 0:13:23.360 what the placebo effect. Well, that makes sense. Yeah, I 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:25.640 was trying to be more clever. I thought we were 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:28.599 more clever than that. Uh no cebo. I think we 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:31.160 said in that other podcast he was Latin for eyeshall harm. 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:34.800 And that's basically whereas you take a placebo thinking it's 0:13:34.800 --> 0:13:36.640 gonna help you out, and it does help you out 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:40.040 because the mind is powerful. The no cebo effect is 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:44.360 thinking something bad will result, like my teachers getting sick. 0:13:44.400 --> 0:13:47.040 I think I feel a little sick too, and then oh, hey, 0:13:47.080 --> 0:13:48.719 my neighbor is feeling a little sick. I think I'm 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:51.200 feeling a little sick too. Or this this drug trial 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:54.360 that I'm on, I was told that I could possibly 0:13:54.400 --> 0:13:59.600 get some sort of gastro intestin old distress. Yeah, and 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:02.600 even I've been given a sugar pill. I'm now going 0:14:04.240 --> 0:14:07.439 yeah because in my mind because of the Noebo effect. 0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:11.720 There was a famous experiment or case from eight six 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:14.520 where there was a woman who had a rose allergy 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:18.000 and they showed her an artificial rose and she began 0:14:18.080 --> 0:14:20.440 to I guess it was convincing, and she began to 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:25.040 have her allergic reaction and they said, ah, ha, it's 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:29.960 fake and you're faking, and uh she said, oh, well, 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:34.000 I think I'm feeling better now, and supposedly that cured 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:38.920 or of her real allergy to real roses. I couldn't 0:14:38.960 --> 0:14:40.440 find a lot to back that up. But is it 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:42.320 it is a story. Yeah, well no, that's a I 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:45.200 mean it was in I can't remember the journal, but 0:14:45.280 --> 0:14:47.440 it was really well yeah, it was a real deal thing. 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:50.640 And um, I don't I didn't get to the bottom 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:55.200 of why they presented this woman with a fake rose 0:14:55.320 --> 0:15:00.239 or whatever, but they definitely didn't. This definitely happened. And um, 0:15:00.320 --> 0:15:03.480 the even the author of the study was saying, like 0:15:03.840 --> 0:15:07.480 this woman, she wasn't faking. It was like she she 0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:12.120 had real symptoms hives or hives exactly. I can see those. Um. 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:14.160 I think they call it like a rose cold or 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:18.200 something like that. You can get you know, stuffy, your 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:21.200 eyes are watering, your your nose is running, that kind 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:26.240 of thing. And what's interesting is some researchers have studied 0:15:26.240 --> 0:15:30.600 the no sebo effect and they basically have isolated this 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:35.440 this chemical that gets released when the no cebo effects 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:38.040 going on. And again we should say it's not just 0:15:38.600 --> 0:15:41.440 um making your nose running or releasing histamines or anything 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:44.480 like that is pain too, Like you can you can 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:48.560 experience pain even though nothing's there to give you pain, 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:52.040 just because of the noebo effect. What they found was 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:57.880 a um A, I guess, uh hormone, I believe. Are 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:02.040 you ready? I'm gonna try this one? Uh, coli cisto kinon. 0:16:02.760 --> 0:16:05.280 That sounds great, thanks man. I haven't looked at the word, 0:16:05.320 --> 0:16:10.080 but it sounds right. Coli cisto kinon. Um. Do you 0:16:10.120 --> 0:16:12.400 see it now? That's totally right. I totally did. So. 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:17.240 It's a hormone, right, and it gets released and it actually, um, 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:21.560 it helps you experience pain. So it's a nasty little hormone. 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:24.800 But they found in testing with the no cebo effect 0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:27.920 that if you block this, you can also block the 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:30.560 no cebo effect. So that proves two things. Does that 0:16:30.600 --> 0:16:33.320 block pain though, like your pain receptors? So does that 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:34.880 mean if you slam your pand in the door you 0:16:34.920 --> 0:16:39.000 won't feel it if you can block this? Yes? So um, 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:43.480 if you can block coli cisto canon, yes, it will 0:16:43.800 --> 0:16:47.600 keep you from um hypersensitivity to pain. I believe. And 0:16:47.680 --> 0:16:51.400 this guy named Fabrizio Benedetti I think was also in 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:58.200 the Strokes back. He uh, he was testing out the 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:01.120 nocebo effect and found that if he told people that 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:03.240 he was giving them an injection, which is it's a 0:17:03.240 --> 0:17:08.880 pretty cruel test. But effective. These post stop people who 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:12.160 had just come out of surgery. Uh, We're given an 0:17:12.160 --> 0:17:15.840 injection and told this injection is going to increase your 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:17.880 pain in thirty minutes. I'm sorry, we have to give 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:20.760 it to it's part of the procedure. He gave some 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:24.360 people an injection of saline and they reported an increase 0:17:24.600 --> 0:17:26.560 in pain, and they all went behind the two way 0:17:26.600 --> 0:17:32.320 mirror and laughed right there like yeah. And then they 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:36.280 gave somebody, like the other group, the control group, uh, 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:39.880 a chemical an injection that blocks that pain. But they 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:42.880 were told that it was going to increase their pain. 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:45.840 But they were given a chemical that blocks uh cola 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:49.960 sister kinon and the effect didn't take place. They didn't 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:52.440 report an increase in pain even though they were told 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:55.080 they would. Yes, so they So this guy is saying, 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:59.600 like the no cebo effect is real. Like when when 0:17:59.640 --> 0:18:02.480 they say it's not just in your head, it's you're 0:18:02.600 --> 0:18:07.760 experiencing the same thing as if you were experiencing somebody's 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:11.040 stabbing you. You know, that's when you have to start 0:18:11.040 --> 0:18:16.800 asking yourself those deep philosophical questions. Interesting, Um, there's another 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:20.840 case that's have you ever seen the movie Safe The 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:24.399 Todd Haynes movie with Julianne Moore. No, it's from like 0:18:25.080 --> 0:18:28.400 the mid nineties, and she played a lady that um 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:33.200 started to have environmental sickness. UM just in the air, 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:37.440 and she's got sort of like increasingly UM crazy as 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:39.640 the movie went on, as far as scrubbing things and 0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:41.840 locking herself in her house and making her house a 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:46.040 clean environment. It was good and UM there's there's a 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:49.600 true story though of a lady in London, UM named 0:18:49.600 --> 0:18:54.240 Debbie Bird. She's a health spot manager that says that 0:18:54.280 --> 0:18:59.000 she's allergic to e m F electromagnetic fields. And it's 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:01.719 an actual thing now you know, there's more than her claiming. 0:19:01.760 --> 0:19:06.520 It's called e S electro magnetic sensitivity. Where she has 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:11.359 basically transformed her house. She painted it black. She said 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:14.879 she's allergic to computers, cell phones, microwaves. She had her 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:20.600 house rewired, uh to make it basically e m F free. Uh. 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:23.000 She and her husband's sleep under a silver plated mosquito 0:19:23.080 --> 0:19:26.199 net to keep out radio waves and covered all her 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:29.200 windows with protective films. And she said she feel a 0:19:29.200 --> 0:19:34.760 lot better now. So I saw that, yes, electromagnetic sensitivity 0:19:34.760 --> 0:19:39.000 that if you expose somebody to a an electromagnetic field 0:19:39.400 --> 0:19:41.680 and then just tell them that you are, and don't 0:19:42.200 --> 0:19:45.480 they have the same reaction, which would suggest that it's 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:49.000 it's no c bow. Well, it's super fascinating because you 0:19:49.040 --> 0:19:53.120 see cases like this from that to like gluten sensitivity 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:57.879 becoming a big thing now and people some people contend that, well, 0:19:57.880 --> 0:20:00.880 it's maybe a collective hysteria going on. If you think 0:20:00.920 --> 0:20:03.120 you're going to be sensitive to gluten, then you're gonna 0:20:03.160 --> 0:20:05.600 be sensitive to things that contain gluten. And I'm not 0:20:05.640 --> 0:20:08.520 saying that people because that's a very hot topic it is, 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:12.600 but um, some people have claimed that, well, we'll talk 0:20:12.600 --> 0:20:16.040 a little bit more about things that exacerbate the mass 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:19.440 psychogenic disorder and the no cebo effect right after this, 0:20:29.320 --> 0:20:32.640 so chuck back in two thousand seven, in New Zealand, 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:37.359 UH a drug called el trokes in. It was a 0:20:37.359 --> 0:20:41.040 pretty widespread drug in New Zealand. It's a hormone replacement 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:43.000 drug and it was the only one that the government 0:20:43.040 --> 0:20:45.359 would pay for. So most people who were on this 0:20:45.400 --> 0:20:48.399 hormone replacement therapy, we're using l trokes in. And it 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:51.800 had been that way for like decades. It was just 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:58.320 an established trug Glaxo Smith client hormone replacement Glaxo Smith Klein. 0:20:58.920 --> 0:21:03.400 I think just those there's no welcome involved. UM changed, 0:21:03.960 --> 0:21:07.719 just the like the outer the inert qualities of it, 0:21:07.760 --> 0:21:10.679 like the shape of the pill, the color um, and 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:14.240 I think that's about it. But the the active ingredient 0:21:14.359 --> 0:21:19.040 was exactly the same in two thousand seven. Uh. And 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:22.560 when they released it, all of a sudden, some reports 0:21:22.560 --> 0:21:26.320 of bad side effects were starting to trickle in, and 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:29.399 the government was like, wait, what's going on here. It 0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:33.240 got a little bit of media attention and more reports 0:21:33.280 --> 0:21:36.240 started trickling in, and then the media attention grew, and 0:21:36.280 --> 0:21:40.480 the reports grew and grew, and apparently the reporting of 0:21:40.600 --> 0:21:46.320 adverse effects of el trucks in increased two thousandfold in 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:48.639 a year and a half because of the look of 0:21:48.720 --> 0:21:51.240 the bill, because of the look of the pill. They 0:21:51.320 --> 0:21:53.119 went back and studied this and they found that in 0:21:53.200 --> 0:21:57.920 areas where there was more reporting about these adverse effects 0:21:58.000 --> 0:22:01.240 being reported for all trucks in the more adverse effects 0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:04.080 were being reported in that area. And that kind of 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:08.919 reveals one of the um risk factors for mass psychogenic 0:22:08.960 --> 0:22:13.359 disorder is the media. It's actually spread through the media. 0:22:13.440 --> 0:22:16.680 Most easily. Yeah, they have a point though, I mean, um, 0:22:16.720 --> 0:22:18.600 I know. In this article too, it points out that 0:22:18.840 --> 0:22:22.520 pills that are blue and green are usually associated with drowsiness, 0:22:23.320 --> 0:22:27.520 pills that are orange or yellow are not. And I 0:22:27.520 --> 0:22:29.120 don't know if that's why they market it that way 0:22:29.160 --> 0:22:31.280 or if it's the opposite, as we just see it 0:22:31.320 --> 0:22:33.680 that way because of products like niquil and day quill. 0:22:34.359 --> 0:22:36.720 But the one that makes you sleepy is green and blue, 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:38.920 and the one that keeps you awake or keep you 0:22:38.920 --> 0:22:42.000 awake but doesn't make you drowsy orange. I thought about it. 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:44.359 I think, I mean, what do you associate with like 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:49.760 daytime sunrise? Yellow? Orange? What do you associate with night time? 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:56.040 Like something tranquil like blue? Yeah, Scotch scotch amber. Uh yeah, 0:22:56.080 --> 0:22:58.919 I mean you think of That's what I think it 0:22:59.040 --> 0:23:02.600 came from. I think the pills came after the association 0:23:02.760 --> 0:23:06.520 rather than the other way around. Yeah, I think I even, 0:23:07.440 --> 0:23:09.679 like when I get a prescription for something, when I 0:23:09.680 --> 0:23:12.359 see the pill, I make a judgment on it before 0:23:12.400 --> 0:23:14.280 I've even had it, just by saying, well, don't look 0:23:14.320 --> 0:23:17.040 at that thing that Yeah, that's a horse pill or 0:23:17.440 --> 0:23:21.359 that's a capsule with you know, powdery stuff inside that's 0:23:21.440 --> 0:23:24.560 different than the chalky one. It's you. I think you 0:23:24.680 --> 0:23:26.720 just make an association. I don't think I have any 0:23:27.000 --> 0:23:29.639 preconceived notions on what a larger pill will do to 0:23:29.720 --> 0:23:32.199 me or a capsule will do to me other than 0:23:32.240 --> 0:23:35.119 a tablet. But I think it's interesting, though, how you 0:23:35.280 --> 0:23:39.639 make these judgment calls but without even thinking about totally. 0:23:39.720 --> 0:23:42.680 You know, I mean, like you're you're you probably don't 0:23:42.680 --> 0:23:44.280 sit there and look at a pill in your hand. 0:23:44.359 --> 0:23:48.080 You just take it and just make some sort of um, 0:23:48.200 --> 0:23:51.960 almost unconscious judgments about it. Yeah, it may remind you 0:23:52.000 --> 0:23:54.640 another pill that helps you that you're not even remembering exactly, 0:23:54.680 --> 0:23:59.879 so that would be placebo. Yeah that's great effect, not great, No, 0:24:00.080 --> 0:24:04.800 and it pusses a lot of problems. For instance, there 0:24:04.880 --> 0:24:07.800 was a study I think in the nineties that found 0:24:07.800 --> 0:24:10.760 that women who believed that they were prone to heart 0:24:10.760 --> 0:24:15.080 disease were four times likelier to die of heart disease 0:24:15.359 --> 0:24:17.520 than women who didn't believe they are prone to it, 0:24:17.640 --> 0:24:20.600 even though they had all the exact same risk factors, 0:24:20.640 --> 0:24:24.119 basically the same risk risk factors. There was nothing differentiating 0:24:24.160 --> 0:24:26.320 these women aside from a belief that they were going 0:24:26.359 --> 0:24:29.719 to die from heart disease or a belief that they weren't, 0:24:30.560 --> 0:24:34.439