Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
Speaker 1: and Jerry's over there to the left, and that makes
Speaker 1: the Stuff you Should Know got the eighteen. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: the hissy, I call face what I'm face? Of course
Speaker 1: your face, look at you. I would be a combination
Speaker 1: of Murdoch and Mr Tak Yeah. Oh, your hair is
Speaker 1: kind of spiky in the middle today. Yeah, Jerry, I
Speaker 1: don't know what she'd be. I guess she'd be the leader.
Speaker 1: She'd be Hannibal. Oh yeah, you know she's smoking a
Speaker 1: cigar right now, wearing a black glove. When did you
Speaker 1: start the sucking cigars? Jerry? That's weird, very timely. I
Speaker 1: said a team. I don't want to slag off guests
Speaker 1: produce a knoll. He's not exactly be team. We'll just
Speaker 1: call ourself the O G S. Okay, now that we
Speaker 1: have that established, we are the O G S. We
Speaker 1: need bowling shirts that say as much. On the bad
Speaker 1: you're feeling good, I'm feeling uh nauseous and dizzy. Oh well, Chuck,
Speaker 1: did you happen to see somebody else who is nauseous
Speaker 1: and dizzy. Well, Jerry was last week, and then a
Speaker 1: few more people in the office, so I just figured
Speaker 1: we all had the same thing. All right, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: diagnose this, Okay. It's called collective hysteria, also known, I
Speaker 1: think more appropriately is mass psychogenic disorder. I think when
Speaker 1: you add the word hysteria to this, it ticks on
Speaker 1: certain dimensions that a lot of people could find very objectionable.
Speaker 1: You know, hysterics, hysteria. It's like um dogs and cats
Speaker 1: living together. Yeah, but I think it has it has
Speaker 1: a definite um gender specific connotation to it from over
Speaker 1: the years, like women were supposedly very hysterical. So the
Speaker 1: the idea of diagnosing somebody as hysterical under any circumstances,
Speaker 1: it's kind of it's had him out to panning him,
Speaker 1: patting him on the head. Yeah here, nice lady, you're
Speaker 1: you're just a little hysterical. Do you just go calm
Speaker 1: down and bake something right? Stop being crazy? Uh? No.
Speaker 1: Mass psychogenic disorder instead is just kind of like whoa,
Speaker 1: your brain just did something pretty neat. And that is
Speaker 1: the case for mass psychogenic disorder. If you ask me um.
Speaker 1: In this article Chuck written by Jacob Silverman, Jeopardy Champion.
Speaker 1: Yeah well yeah, yeah you won on Jeopardy. That makes
Speaker 1: him a champion? Or yeah, I think so. He wasn't
Speaker 1: like the ultimate Champion, but he won a couple of episodes, right,
Speaker 1: which is why they should have a word for I
Speaker 1: guess like the champion is like the one who won
Speaker 1: at all Ken Jennings, Yeah, or um Watson, who's that
Speaker 1: the IBM computer? Yeah, so Jeopardy winner. Jacob Silverman wrote
Speaker 1: this article years back, and he did a pretty great
Speaker 1: job of citing a contemporary outbreak of mass psychogenic disorder
Speaker 1: that had been going on around that time down in Mexico,
Speaker 1: down Mexico, way in Chalco, Mexico, at a boarding school.
Speaker 1: There apparently was a girls boarding school and the girls
Speaker 1: that went to school they were just twelve to seventeen,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden they started, well, there was
Speaker 1: an outbreak, a weird outbreak. There was vomiting, I believe,
Speaker 1: trouble walking. Um, there was fever that's weird, nausea and
Speaker 1: so the the people running this boarding school like, um,
Speaker 1: what's going on? This is not good? Uh? And they
Speaker 1: had no idea. The girls went on Christmas break for
Speaker 1: ten days, came back, and the thing just took off
Speaker 1: again like wildfire. Yeah, six d girls, um showed these
Speaker 1: symptoms and nobody could figure it out. Um. They did
Speaker 1: a lot of tests, they brought in people to like
Speaker 1: check out the facilities, and because as you'll see, there's
Speaker 1: a trend there. Um, you know here in the West,
Speaker 1: they start to blame it, usually on um, like environmental
Speaker 1: poisoning of some kind. Right, Um, you know there's some
Speaker 1: sort of toxins that is poisoned everybody. But they didn't
Speaker 1: find anything there, and eventually, um, they said, this is uh,
Speaker 1: what do you call it? Psychosomatic mass psychogenic disorder? Okay,
Speaker 1: mass psychogenic disorder, but no, that is one of the
Speaker 1: one of the names that it's mass psychogenic disorder, collective hysteria,
Speaker 1: mass hysteria, or mass psychosomatic reaction. They're all saying the
Speaker 1: same thing they are, which is you're not well. Was
Speaker 1: about so you're not really sick, But that is not
Speaker 1: exactly true, because that's one thing that differentiates this from
Speaker 1: something that's just in your head is you actually do
Speaker 1: manifest physical symptoms. Right. Yeah, there's this article written by
Speaker 1: a m d. Named Timothy F. Jones from the Tennessee
Speaker 1: Department of Health way back in the heavy days of
Speaker 1: two thousand, your two thousand in the future. Um, and
Speaker 1: he writes that you if you are experiencing mass psychogenic disorder,
Speaker 1: it is not just in your head. That the symptoms
Speaker 1: that you have are actually very real. Even though there's
Speaker 1: no toxic cause that they couldn't find some sort of
Speaker 1: environmental poison or anything like that, the symptoms are extremely real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just psycho somatic. It's just basically the brain has
Speaker 1: been tricked into causing this response. Yeah, and this has happened. Um,
Speaker 1: They've documented about eighty cases throughout history and apparently the
Speaker 1: National Institutes of Health gets about two cases per week reported.
Speaker 1: But um, which is I mean, like that's that's way
Speaker 1: more common than than you would think, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would think there'd be more than eight, because I mean,
Speaker 1: these have happened. If you go back and look at
Speaker 1: I mean, there's all sorts of crazy lists on the
Speaker 1: internet about these cases that date back to like the
Speaker 1: fourteenth century. Medieval dancing mania was one of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the dancing plague. Yeah, yeah, that's in there. The Salem
Speaker 1: Witchcraft trials or the Salem witchcraft I guess what led
Speaker 1: to the trials was UM supposedly attributed to this kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Uh. One weird thing about this condition is
Speaker 1: more times than not, it is affects females, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: young females even more specifically teenagers or even younger, which
Speaker 1: is as far as it goes right now, inexplicable UM.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of a prickly issue, you know, like
Speaker 1: again you kind of come back to the idea of
Speaker 1: calling it hysteria. You know, the fact that it does
Speaker 1: tend to afflict women or girls more than them boys.
Speaker 1: UM is apparently one means of diagnosing psychogenic disordered mass psychogogical.
Speaker 1: That's like one of the first things we'll say is like,
Speaker 1: all this the sickness is happening in this place, the
Speaker 1: school wherever, and the doctor will say, is it a
Speaker 1: bunch of girls? And then that will clue them in
Speaker 1: that hey, this might be what we're dealing with here.
Speaker 1: And but the problem is no one has any idea why,
Speaker 1: and there have been explanations of things like um, Uh,
Speaker 1: I guess girls, this is this is girls culturally acceptable
Speaker 1: outlet for raging against the patriarchy. Sure, even if they
Speaker 1: don't necessarily feel that that's what they're doing. This is
Speaker 1: there there, Uh, this is the symptoms of that. That's one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought this was a pretty interesting part. What article
Speaker 1: was that from Slate? Uh? There was uh yeah, one
Speaker 1: called mass Asteria and Upstate New York by Ruth Graham
Speaker 1: was on Slate. That was a good one. It was
Speaker 1: a really good one. And we'll get to that case
Speaker 1: in a sect. But um, I thought it was pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: In one part, it says, um, and this is a
Speaker 1: quote from someone writing about something and said inform, if
Speaker 1: not unconscious intent, it is to protest the sexual repressiveness,
Speaker 1: rigid double standard of female team culture. Um. But they
Speaker 1: were writing about Beatlemania, Yeah, which is interesting because it's
Speaker 1: sort of has a similar vibe of uh, young ladies
Speaker 1: being repressed, um, not having an outlet, and so they
Speaker 1: see the Beatles and they go berserk and faint and
Speaker 1: cry and scream collectively. Whereas boys they're more prone to
Speaker 1: just act out if they're not feeling good. Girls are
Speaker 1: trained to keep things inward. And they also point out
Speaker 1: that ladies and young ladies are more prone to seek
Speaker 1: a doctor's help for something. Uh, they say that may
Speaker 1: account for the bias right there, like guys just won't
Speaker 1: go to the doctor exactly. You have to be careful though,
Speaker 1: and in just diagnosing MATHS psychogenital disorder, you physicians out
Speaker 1: there who are listening to encounter a case like this
Speaker 1: UM it just by basing it on the fact that
Speaker 1: it is affecting more girls than boys. Because there's at
Speaker 1: least one case in Great Britain where I think girls
Speaker 1: were afflicted by more than half more than double the
Speaker 1: number of girls were afflicted by this, and it turned
Speaker 1: out that they were retaining cucumbers being served in the
Speaker 1: lunch room. Yeah, and everyone knows boys hate cucumbers, and
Speaker 1: so I mean they didn't need anyone, right. But this
Speaker 1: is one of the issues with dealing with UM MATHS
Speaker 1: psychogenic disorder, and that it looks and acts a lot
Speaker 1: like some sort of weird epidemic. That basically it looks
Speaker 1: like either a UM something like bioterrorism, uh, rapidly spreading
Speaker 1: affection infection or affection if lemania and then acute toxic exposure.
Speaker 1: That's what it looks like. It's like one person gets sick.
Speaker 1: This is your index case and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: everyone around them suddenly has the same symptoms. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's like you said, it's super dangerous to just dismiss
Speaker 1: that as oh it's all in your head, silly little ladies.
Speaker 1: You can't do that because what if it is something
Speaker 1: for real? But it's also a double edged sword, is
Speaker 1: that doctor pointed out, Um, you start ordering batteries of
Speaker 1: tests and it it It can go both ways. It
Speaker 1: can Um. What the old saying is, if you order
Speaker 1: enough tests, you're gonna find something, so it can fuel
Speaker 1: that fire. But you also can't not run any tests
Speaker 1: and just dismiss it. Uh. So it's a very fine
Speaker 1: line that physicians walk when dealing with stuff like this,
Speaker 1: for sure. Indeed, apparently UM study of mass psychogenic disorder
Speaker 1: has found that it's more prevalent in isolated communities and
Speaker 1: in situations where um, they are highly rigid, formalized, structured rules,
Speaker 1: like a Catholic school in Mexico exactly, um or again
Speaker 1: um Salem, Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: And apparently, between nineteen seventy three and half of all
Speaker 1: the outbreaks of psychogenetic or psychogenic illness took place in schools,
Speaker 1: so that that's possibly in part by due to kids
Speaker 1: being susceptible to it more um, but also because of
Speaker 1: that that rigid, formalized structure. Yeah. And there's also usually
Speaker 1: a top down effect, like it'll start with a teacher
Speaker 1: or an older student, and then the younger students follow suit,
Speaker 1: which if you're talking influence, would make sense for sure.
Speaker 1: There was one very famous case. Um. Apparently there's not
Speaker 1: very many actual academic studies on this, but there's one
Speaker 1: that came out of the New England Journal of Medicine
Speaker 1: UM that that described a case in Tennessee where a
Speaker 1: teacher noticed, um, some weird gas odor, a gassy odor, uh,
Speaker 1: like the chemical kind. Yeah, not like the guy on
Speaker 1: the front road to right exactly, um, and she apparently
Speaker 1: started suffering symptoms uh, And all of a sudden, like
Speaker 1: a hundred and eighties students and teachers had to go
Speaker 1: to the emergency room. The school was shut down for
Speaker 1: two weeks. They did all this environmental testing, couldn't find anything,
Speaker 1: and finally traced it back to UM psychogenic a mass
Speaker 1: psychogenic disorder, if that's what it didn't and then everyone
Speaker 1: In most of these cases we should point out everyone
Speaker 1: it starts feeling better. Yes, like in Mexico and then
Speaker 1: the school in Tennessee. It's it's not like they went
Speaker 1: on to die or anything. Yeah. So in the school
Speaker 1: in Mexico, the these girls were at a boarding school.
Speaker 1: They were only allowed to see their parents, I think
Speaker 1: like three times a year. Yeah, they couldn't even call.
Speaker 1: It's like it sounds more like a prison. They were
Speaker 1: allowed letters when they went home. Immediately their symptoms cleared up.
Speaker 1: The problem is that doesn't automatically say oh, well, it's
Speaker 1: obviously mass psychogenic distorder. It could be an environmental toxin
Speaker 1: that they were being exposed to still uh at the
Speaker 1: school and we're removed from But I think the the
Speaker 1: definite problem osis is mass psychogenic disorder in this case.
Speaker 1: That's right. What we're talking about is a sort of
Speaker 1: version of the no Seebo effect, which we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: and we will get into that right up to this break.
Speaker 1: So the no cebo effect, we talked about that, and
Speaker 1: what the placebo effect. Well, that makes sense. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was trying to be more clever. I thought we were
Speaker 1: more clever than that. Uh no cebo. I think we
Speaker 1: said in that other podcast he was Latin for eyeshall harm.
Speaker 1: And that's basically whereas you take a placebo thinking it's
Speaker 1: gonna help you out, and it does help you out
Speaker 1: because the mind is powerful. The no cebo effect is
Speaker 1: thinking something bad will result, like my teachers getting sick.
Speaker 1: I think I feel a little sick too, and then oh, hey,
Speaker 1: my neighbor is feeling a little sick. I think I'm
Speaker 1: feeling a little sick too. Or this this drug trial
Speaker 1: that I'm on, I was told that I could possibly
Speaker 1: get some sort of gastro intestin old distress. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: even I've been given a sugar pill. I'm now going
Speaker 1: yeah because in my mind because of the Noebo effect.
Speaker 1: There was a famous experiment or case from eight six
Speaker 1: where there was a woman who had a rose allergy
Speaker 1: and they showed her an artificial rose and she began
Speaker 1: to I guess it was convincing, and she began to
Speaker 1: have her allergic reaction and they said, ah, ha, it's
Speaker 1: fake and you're faking, and uh she said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I think I'm feeling better now, and supposedly that cured
Speaker 1: or of her real allergy to real roses. I couldn't
Speaker 1: find a lot to back that up. But is it
Speaker 1: it is a story. Yeah, well no, that's a I
Speaker 1: mean it was in I can't remember the journal, but
Speaker 1: it was really well yeah, it was a real deal thing.
Speaker 1: And um, I don't I didn't get to the bottom
Speaker 1: of why they presented this woman with a fake rose
Speaker 1: or whatever, but they definitely didn't. This definitely happened. And um,
Speaker 1: the even the author of the study was saying, like
Speaker 1: this woman, she wasn't faking. It was like she she
Speaker 1: had real symptoms hives or hives exactly. I can see those. Um.
Speaker 1: I think they call it like a rose cold or
Speaker 1: something like that. You can get you know, stuffy, your
Speaker 1: eyes are watering, your your nose is running, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. And what's interesting is some researchers have studied
Speaker 1: the no sebo effect and they basically have isolated this
Speaker 1: this chemical that gets released when the no cebo effects
Speaker 1: going on. And again we should say it's not just
Speaker 1: um making your nose running or releasing histamines or anything
Speaker 1: like that is pain too, Like you can you can
Speaker 1: experience pain even though nothing's there to give you pain,
Speaker 1: just because of the noebo effect. What they found was
Speaker 1: a um A, I guess, uh hormone, I believe. Are
Speaker 1: you ready? I'm gonna try this one? Uh, coli cisto kinon.
Speaker 1: That sounds great, thanks man. I haven't looked at the word,
Speaker 1: but it sounds right. Coli cisto kinon. Um. Do you
Speaker 1: see it now? That's totally right. I totally did. So.
Speaker 1: It's a hormone, right, and it gets released and it actually, um,
Speaker 1: it helps you experience pain. So it's a nasty little hormone.
Speaker 1: But they found in testing with the no cebo effect
Speaker 1: that if you block this, you can also block the
Speaker 1: no cebo effect. So that proves two things. Does that
Speaker 1: block pain though, like your pain receptors? So does that
Speaker 1: mean if you slam your pand in the door you
Speaker 1: won't feel it if you can block this? Yes? So um,
Speaker 1: if you can block coli cisto canon, yes, it will
Speaker 1: keep you from um hypersensitivity to pain. I believe. And
Speaker 1: this guy named Fabrizio Benedetti I think was also in
Speaker 1: the Strokes back. He uh, he was testing out the
Speaker 1: nocebo effect and found that if he told people that
Speaker 1: he was giving them an injection, which is it's a
Speaker 1: pretty cruel test. But effective. These post stop people who
Speaker 1: had just come out of surgery. Uh, We're given an
Speaker 1: injection and told this injection is going to increase your
Speaker 1: pain in thirty minutes. I'm sorry, we have to give
Speaker 1: it to it's part of the procedure. He gave some
Speaker 1: people an injection of saline and they reported an increase
Speaker 1: in pain, and they all went behind the two way
Speaker 1: mirror and laughed right there like yeah. And then they
Speaker 1: gave somebody, like the other group, the control group, uh,
Speaker 1: a chemical an injection that blocks that pain. But they
Speaker 1: were told that it was going to increase their pain.
Speaker 1: But they were given a chemical that blocks uh cola
Speaker 1: sister kinon and the effect didn't take place. They didn't
Speaker 1: report an increase in pain even though they were told
Speaker 1: they would. Yes, so they So this guy is saying,
Speaker 1: like the no cebo effect is real. Like when when
Speaker 1: they say it's not just in your head, it's you're
Speaker 1: experiencing the same thing as if you were experiencing somebody's
Speaker 1: stabbing you. You know, that's when you have to start
Speaker 1: asking yourself those deep philosophical questions. Interesting, Um, there's another
Speaker 1: case that's have you ever seen the movie Safe The
Speaker 1: Todd Haynes movie with Julianne Moore. No, it's from like
Speaker 1: the mid nineties, and she played a lady that um
Speaker 1: started to have environmental sickness. UM just in the air,
Speaker 1: and she's got sort of like increasingly UM crazy as
Speaker 1: the movie went on, as far as scrubbing things and
Speaker 1: locking herself in her house and making her house a
Speaker 1: clean environment. It was good and UM there's there's a
Speaker 1: true story though of a lady in London, UM named
Speaker 1: Debbie Bird. She's a health spot manager that says that
Speaker 1: she's allergic to e m F electromagnetic fields. And it's
Speaker 1: an actual thing now you know, there's more than her claiming.
Speaker 1: It's called e S electro magnetic sensitivity. Where she has
Speaker 1: basically transformed her house. She painted it black. She said
Speaker 1: she's allergic to computers, cell phones, microwaves. She had her
Speaker 1: house rewired, uh to make it basically e m F free. Uh.
Speaker 1: She and her husband's sleep under a silver plated mosquito
Speaker 1: net to keep out radio waves and covered all her
Speaker 1: windows with protective films. And she said she feel a
Speaker 1: lot better now. So I saw that, yes, electromagnetic sensitivity
Speaker 1: that if you expose somebody to a an electromagnetic field
Speaker 1: and then just tell them that you are, and don't
Speaker 1: they have the same reaction, which would suggest that it's
Speaker 1: it's no c bow. Well, it's super fascinating because you
Speaker 1: see cases like this from that to like gluten sensitivity
Speaker 1: becoming a big thing now and people some people contend that, well,
Speaker 1: it's maybe a collective hysteria going on. If you think
Speaker 1: you're going to be sensitive to gluten, then you're gonna
Speaker 1: be sensitive to things that contain gluten. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that people because that's a very hot topic it is,
Speaker 1: but um, some people have claimed that, well, we'll talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about things that exacerbate the mass
Speaker 1: psychogenic disorder and the no cebo effect right after this,
Speaker 1: so chuck back in two thousand seven, in New Zealand,
Speaker 1: UH a drug called el trokes in. It was a
Speaker 1: pretty widespread drug in New Zealand. It's a hormone replacement
Speaker 1: drug and it was the only one that the government
Speaker 1: would pay for. So most people who were on this
Speaker 1: hormone replacement therapy, we're using l trokes in. And it
Speaker 1: had been that way for like decades. It was just
Speaker 1: an established trug Glaxo Smith client hormone replacement Glaxo Smith Klein.
Speaker 1: I think just those there's no welcome involved. UM changed,
Speaker 1: just the like the outer the inert qualities of it,
Speaker 1: like the shape of the pill, the color um, and
Speaker 1: I think that's about it. But the the active ingredient
Speaker 1: was exactly the same in two thousand seven. Uh. And
Speaker 1: when they released it, all of a sudden, some reports
Speaker 1: of bad side effects were starting to trickle in, and
Speaker 1: the government was like, wait, what's going on here. It
Speaker 1: got a little bit of media attention and more reports
Speaker 1: started trickling in, and then the media attention grew, and
Speaker 1: the reports grew and grew, and apparently the reporting of
Speaker 1: adverse effects of el trucks in increased two thousandfold in
Speaker 1: a year and a half because of the look of
Speaker 1: the bill, because of the look of the pill. They
Speaker 1: went back and studied this and they found that in
Speaker 1: areas where there was more reporting about these adverse effects
Speaker 1: being reported for all trucks in the more adverse effects
Speaker 1: were being reported in that area. And that kind of
Speaker 1: reveals one of the um risk factors for mass psychogenic
Speaker 1: disorder is the media. It's actually spread through the media.
Speaker 1: Most easily. Yeah, they have a point though, I mean, um,
Speaker 1: I know. In this article too, it points out that
Speaker 1: pills that are blue and green are usually associated with drowsiness,
Speaker 1: pills that are orange or yellow are not. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's why they market it that way
Speaker 1: or if it's the opposite, as we just see it
Speaker 1: that way because of products like niquil and day quill.
Speaker 1: But the one that makes you sleepy is green and blue,
Speaker 1: and the one that keeps you awake or keep you
Speaker 1: awake but doesn't make you drowsy orange. I thought about it.
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, what do you associate with like
Speaker 1: daytime sunrise? Yellow? Orange? What do you associate with night time?
Speaker 1: Like something tranquil like blue? Yeah, Scotch scotch amber. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you think of That's what I think it
Speaker 1: came from. I think the pills came after the association
Speaker 1: rather than the other way around. Yeah, I think I even,
Speaker 1: like when I get a prescription for something, when I
Speaker 1: see the pill, I make a judgment on it before
Speaker 1: I've even had it, just by saying, well, don't look
Speaker 1: at that thing that Yeah, that's a horse pill or
Speaker 1: that's a capsule with you know, powdery stuff inside that's
Speaker 1: different than the chalky one. It's you. I think you
Speaker 1: just make an association. I don't think I have any
Speaker 1: preconceived notions on what a larger pill will do to
Speaker 1: me or a capsule will do to me other than
Speaker 1: a tablet. But I think it's interesting, though, how you
Speaker 1: make these judgment calls but without even thinking about totally.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean, like you're you're you probably don't
Speaker 1: sit there and look at a pill in your hand.
Speaker 1: You just take it and just make some sort of um,
Speaker 1: almost unconscious judgments about it. Yeah, it may remind you
Speaker 1: another pill that helps you that you're not even remembering exactly,
Speaker 1: so that would be placebo. Yeah that's great effect, not great, No,
Speaker 1: and it pusses a lot of problems. For instance, there
Speaker 1: was a study I think in the nineties that found
Speaker 1: that women who believed that they were prone to heart
Speaker 1: disease were four times likelier to die of heart disease
Speaker 1: than women who didn't believe they are prone to it,
Speaker 1: even though they had all the exact same risk factors,
Speaker 1: basically the same risk risk factors. There was nothing differentiating
Speaker 1: these women aside from a belief that they were going
Speaker 1: to die from heart disease or a belief that they weren't,
Speaker 1: and that led to a four time fourfold increase in
Speaker 1: deaths from that just basically from a belief, is what
Speaker 1: it suggests. Yeah, we well, it's sort of like the
Speaker 1: I know it's kind of cheesy, but the p M
Speaker 1: A the positive mental attitude. I think we've all know
Speaker 1: someone who walks around so and so sick. Oh, I
Speaker 1: know I'm gonna get it. I just know I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get sick, or you know, I just know I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get cancer because it runs in my family. That I
Speaker 1: think that has an effect on things. I have to agree.
Speaker 1: I know some of our more skeptical listeners will are
Speaker 1: pulling their hair out right now, but I totally agree
Speaker 1: with you. When we did our show in Toronto, on
Speaker 1: the way back, you me and I flow out of
Speaker 1: Buffalo and I was feeling a little down, but like
Speaker 1: at the point where I feel like you can talk
Speaker 1: yourself into staying healthy. Positive mental attitude. I guess that's
Speaker 1: what you call it. But we were leaving right at
Speaker 1: about dusk and the sun was just beaming through the
Speaker 1: windows and illuminating every single microbe visible microbe in the air.
Speaker 1: I could see them like just going into my nose
Speaker 1: in my mouth, and I'm like, I couldn't stop, Like
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I was like, I'm not gonna get sick.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get sick. And man, did I ever
Speaker 1: get sick. But I noticed that right when we took off,
Speaker 1: and no, you know what it was. Somebody shut one
Speaker 1: of their um their window covers shade exactly is the
Speaker 1: word that I was looking for. Somebody shut their shade
Speaker 1: and I couldn't see anymore, and I immediately started to
Speaker 1: feel less symptomatic. Immediately. It was like turning off a light.
Speaker 1: And I still got sick, but I was just drowning.
Speaker 1: And basically what my brain was interpreting is like being
Speaker 1: assaulted by foreign invaders, which I am all the time,
Speaker 1: but I normally can't see them. Yeah, well I've done
Speaker 1: I do that all the time. When I opened my
Speaker 1: uh the curtains in the bedroom and I'll see you
Speaker 1: in the morning, I'll see that stuff in the air,
Speaker 1: and I'm just thinking, oh, man, that's what I'm walking
Speaker 1: around breathing in everything dog hair and cat hair and
Speaker 1: Emily hair. So your lungs are just chocked full of it.
Speaker 1: So one of the one of the problems this poses
Speaker 1: chuck for physicians is that we expect doctors, or we
Speaker 1: want doctors to be transparent, to not lie to us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked a lot about this lately. I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've talked a lot about diseases. Some of our um
Speaker 1: hypochondria listeners have been like, police, stop that talking about
Speaker 1: diseason because now I've got more orgal on, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have like some sort of toxic exposure um and then
Speaker 1: very soon leprosy spoiler. So, uh, the problem is if
Speaker 1: you tell somebody that's going into surgery, hey, by the way, um,
Speaker 1: you know you you might have trouble walking, you might
Speaker 1: feel nauseous for the next six months, you like, all
Speaker 1: this stuff that could be associated with which we demand
Speaker 1: from our doctors. It's been shown that if you are
Speaker 1: fearful or in despair going into surgery, that's associated with
Speaker 1: longer healing times and a higher risk of post operative infection. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you have the no cebo effect where doctors
Speaker 1: are saying, okay, if I tell somebody, and it's been
Speaker 1: proven time after time that in drug trials, people who
Speaker 1: are still are given placebo will drop out of drug
Speaker 1: trials because they're experiencing these negative side effects even though
Speaker 1: they're given the sugar pill. So if you're a doctor
Speaker 1: and you you know that you are telling somebody something
Speaker 1: that ultimately may end up harming them, and you've sworn
Speaker 1: an oath to do no harm, you've got a conundrum
Speaker 1: going on right now. And that's what the no cebo
Speaker 1: effect poses. It's the problem the no cebo effect poses
Speaker 1: for modern physicians, like how much should they tell you
Speaker 1: if you're gonna tell somebody that they're gonna feel nauseous
Speaker 1: for six months even though they probably won't, should you
Speaker 1: tell them and give them a chance to to basically
Speaker 1: have the psychosomatic symptom, or tell them they're going to
Speaker 1: feel great. Well, that's another one. Somebody says the solution
Speaker 1: to this is just frame it differently, Like, don't say
Speaker 1: there's a chance you're gonna have um nausea for six months.
Speaker 1: Say half of a percent of patients who go through
Speaker 1: the same procedure that you're about to go through have
Speaker 1: nausea for six months five percent. Don't you're giving them
Speaker 1: the same information. It's just framework positively, Yeah, and uh
Speaker 1: that one doctor who wrote the article on collective hysteria said, Um,
Speaker 1: what he recommends is not naming the illness, said that
Speaker 1: can help out. Um, because as soon as you give
Speaker 1: something a name, then it just instantly you know you
Speaker 1: have something you can call it, and everyone's calling it that,
Speaker 1: or the media picks up on it and it's a thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's actually again one of the one of the
Speaker 1: risk factors in the spread of mass psychogenic illness is
Speaker 1: the larger the response, the emergency medical response to it,
Speaker 1: and then hence the larger the media response to it,
Speaker 1: the larger the outbreak tends to be. It's called line
Speaker 1: of sight exposure. Just knowing somebody is sick or seeing
Speaker 1: somebody sick can give you the same symptoms. I'm sure
Speaker 1: if you see a news story that all the other
Speaker 1: news agencies are running that says, uh, there's been some
Speaker 1: weird chemical leak in the air in Atlanta. Uh, people
Speaker 1: are gonna start walking around and coughing and saying, I'm
Speaker 1: not feeling so good. I have a bitter taste in
Speaker 1: my mouth. There's microbes everywhere. Well, here's a case from
Speaker 1: that article you sent that I think is super fascinating
Speaker 1: the one in upstate New York because it is not
Speaker 1: a rash or um a call for nausea, It is
Speaker 1: Tourette syndrome. Uh. Sixteen year old UM, young lady named
Speaker 1: Laurie Brounwell, Uh what year was this? A couple of
Speaker 1: years ago? Yeah, not too long ago, I think um
Speaker 1: and Corinth, New York. Um was at her school's homecoming
Speaker 1: dance and lost consciousness. Um, this is after she banged
Speaker 1: at a concert. Sorry, man, I thought, yeah, she was
Speaker 1: head banging at a concert. I wish I knew a
Speaker 1: concert that was so me too. I didn't find it anywhere.
Speaker 1: Apparently passed out there and had passing outfits. Uh, involuntary
Speaker 1: twitching and clapping, started twisting her hair, fluttering her fingers, Hey, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: starting stuff like that, and the doctor said, you know
Speaker 1: what You've got, Turette syndrome. So Tourette's syndrome is is.
Speaker 1: We've had a podcast on It's real and it's not psychosomatic. Um.
Speaker 1: But uh, since that time, fourteen other students along with her,
Speaker 1: thirteen girls and one boy started exhibiting at Leroy Junior
Speaker 1: High School. I'm sorry, Junior Senior High School. Started coming
Speaker 1: down with threats, right, which is not contagious, and it
Speaker 1: is not contagious at all. Um. Aaron Brockovitch got on
Speaker 1: the case, um, famous environmental activists, and she said, now,
Speaker 1: I think this has got to do with this train
Speaker 1: derailment from nineteen seventy that dumped cyanide all over this town. Um,
Speaker 1: and I didn't see where they found any uh legitimate effects. Right. Again,
Speaker 1: that's the confounding thing about mass psychogenetic disorders, that it
Speaker 1: is still possible that there is some weird toxin in
Speaker 1: the environment that is causing this. Like maybe there was
Speaker 1: exposure to cyanide that gotten these people's brains and all
Speaker 1: gave them to it. And if you stand back and
Speaker 1: look at it, you're like, to Turette syndrome isn't contagious.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that you can't all come down with
Speaker 1: Thurette syndrome from exposure to a toxin. It's just still
Speaker 1: it's this X factor that's out there that you can't
Speaker 1: just necessarily rule out. Yeah, and I believe in that
Speaker 1: case too, the UM those fourteen students didn't end up
Speaker 1: with Thurette syndrome. That was a good episode Man, I
Speaker 1: love Turette syndrome one. Yeah, it's an oldie, oldie, but
Speaker 1: a goody and it all came from head banging. That's
Speaker 1: how it started at a Nickelback show. Yeah, because Corinth
Speaker 1: is near Canada. Canada isn't let nickel Back out any longer?
Speaker 1: Are they caged in there? Nice? Uh? There's another case
Speaker 1: of the Toxic Lady. Did you hear this one? In Riverside, California,
Speaker 1: woman named Gloria Ramirez. Um. Yeah, she was dubbed the
Speaker 1: toxic Lady in n She had cervical cancer and was
Speaker 1: being treated and all the medical staff started to get
Speaker 1: sick that was treating her. Um. This sounds gross, but
Speaker 1: they say her body exuded a garlicky fruity smell and
Speaker 1: her blood had flecks of what looked like paper um,
Speaker 1: which sounds called Morglon's actually nice, you like that um.
Speaker 1: And they said that most of the people that got
Speaker 1: sick while treating her were women, more women than men,
Speaker 1: and they all took blood test and came back normal
Speaker 1: and the health department said mass hysteria. So that's funny.
Speaker 1: Because I looked, I remembered that story and I was like,
Speaker 1: I wonder if that was mass hysteria, and I looked
Speaker 1: it up and I found that No, it was an
Speaker 1: environmental toxic O it was. That's what I found. So
Speaker 1: they called it mass hysteria the time, and then later
Speaker 1: found out, I think like a year or two later,
Speaker 1: she was using some sort of salve or something on
Speaker 1: her skin and they think that in interactive with her
Speaker 1: biochemistry and really did produce toxic toxic gas. She said
Speaker 1: it maybe this fruit garlic salv exactly. That's interacting badly
Speaker 1: with my pancreas. Oh well, uh, this list needs to
Speaker 1: be updated. That that That is a fascinating in case
Speaker 1: people got really sick from that. I think I remember
Speaker 1: hearing about that too. Yeah. Well, I'm glad they found
Speaker 1: a real cause in that case from what I understand.
Speaker 1: But that's that's that's the point. Like you can say, well,
Speaker 1: obviously there's women were more affective than men, right, Well,
Speaker 1: is that because there's more women in the nursing profession
Speaker 1: and there were more nurses in the room. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of different things you have to take into account
Speaker 1: before you just write it off. Sometimes it is reel
Speaker 1: like sick building syndrome. Yeah, that's a tough one because
Speaker 1: after the Opeque oil embargo, apparently people started designing buildings
Speaker 1: to be more air tight, so your ventilation ventilation system
Speaker 1: was really important, and these buildings have an age necessarily
Speaker 1: very well, so the ventilation system is not doing what
Speaker 1: it's supposed to any longer, and so they think possibly
Speaker 1: that's leading to what we know as sick building syndrome,
Speaker 1: which is malaise when you don't feel good when you
Speaker 1: go to work. But some studies have found like, no,
Speaker 1: that is the better predictor of sick building syndrome is
Speaker 1: job stress or job dissatisfaction. Um, if you have a
Speaker 1: building full of people who don't like their jobs, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have a building full of people with sick building syndrome.
Speaker 1: But if you go on to say like a local
Speaker 1: government's website or whatever, and you look at sick building syndrome,
Speaker 1: it's a it's treated as a real thing. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it definitely affects your gastro intestinal like stress does. We
Speaker 1: also apparently you can set off bouts of asthma um,
Speaker 1: which is another reason why they think you might have
Speaker 1: something to do with like volatile organic compounds in the
Speaker 1: ventilation system or new carpeting, that kind of stuff offcasting. Man,
Speaker 1: you you smell that stuff when you open up a
Speaker 1: new product. Right. There's also the dancing plague, which we
Speaker 1: mentioned briefly. Tell me about it. Uh, Fraul Trophia July
Speaker 1: fourteen eighteen, went out on the streets of Strasbourg, France
Speaker 1: and started dancing even though there was no music, and
Speaker 1: dancing like a maniac for three straight days, and all
Speaker 1: these people started dancing with her, saying this is a
Speaker 1: good time. Um said, within a month, a hundred people
Speaker 1: were dancing with her and couldn't stop and hyperventilating, hallucinating.
Speaker 1: Some drop dead of heart attack and stroke and exhaustion.
Speaker 1: And the authority said, let's just hire a band and
Speaker 1: let him dance it out, because they've got the hot blood,
Speaker 1: is what they called it. And so they did, and UM,
Speaker 1: a lot of people died as a result, and it
Speaker 1: said four hundred people in the end were struck. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't think they died, but we're dancers. And then
Speaker 1: it just stopped. And that's when they blame a lot
Speaker 1: of people blame on ergot poisoning, which we've mentioned before.
Speaker 1: Got poisoning. Those people were clearly tripping on something, they
Speaker 1: got the hot blood. But what it sounds like you
Speaker 1: just described is basically how Tom Hanks invented jogging in
Speaker 1: the seventies. Yogging. Yeah, they just started running and people
Speaker 1: started following. I wish that part had been cut out
Speaker 1: of that movie. Yeah, I thought that it was a
Speaker 1: weird thing that should have been on the editing room floor.
Speaker 1: They really kind of derailed things for a while for me.
Speaker 1: I don't think that movie's age well though. Uh. Other
Speaker 1: people say though that it was Sydenham's Korea disorder linked
Speaker 1: to strep throughout in rheumatic fever that causes dance like
Speaker 1: twitches um. And then of course modern medical historians say
Speaker 1: it was mass psychosis. I would go with that one, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean back then it made more sense though, when
Speaker 1: during the Salem witch trials and before they knew anything
Speaker 1: about medicine, and you could just say you got the
Speaker 1: hot blood or you're having the fits, like yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: These modern cases the ones that really freaked me out
Speaker 1: because so much as explainable. Now here's the thing that chuck.
Speaker 1: We've always explained. It was something that comes easily to mind.
Speaker 1: So back in the day before science and medicine. It
Speaker 1: was the devil possessing you. And don't think that people
Speaker 1: weren't freaked out when they thought that the devil was
Speaker 1: there and possessing people in the same way that you know,
Speaker 1: you're freaked out by the idea that it's cyanide in
Speaker 1: the soil from a train derailment, from just exactly, which
Speaker 1: is the deadliest of all the manias. But it's just
Speaker 1: as real to the experiencer. And it all comes down
Speaker 1: to people just basically being stick of the establishment and
Speaker 1: letting loose for a while. I don't want to go
Speaker 1: to work nice, so I'll dance. Have you got anything else? Uh?
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about collective hysteria, which
Speaker 1: is the name of this article, type those words in
Speaker 1: the search bar at how stuff works dot com and
Speaker 1: it will bring it up. And I said, search bars
Speaker 1: means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this
Speaker 1: UM episode on grief. We've got a lot of great
Speaker 1: feedback and that continue. Uh, they continue to roll in. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: just dumbled upon your podcast through my tune in radio app.
Speaker 1: I guess that's a mini plug We're available there now. Um,
Speaker 1: I've devoured all all of the six hundred plus shows
Speaker 1: and maybe a new listener. But I'm already a lifelong fan.
Speaker 1: So why I'm writing in guys is I lost my
Speaker 1: twin sister back in two thousand ten. It was a
Speaker 1: rough time because as a fraternal twin me being the boy,
Speaker 1: I looked at her not only as a sister, but
Speaker 1: as a mother and friend. Too, long story short, I
Speaker 1: wanted to comment on the Grief show some time ago.
Speaker 1: I've dealt with my grief through my artwork. I'm a
Speaker 1: small town artist from Johnson City, Tennessee, and I rarely
Speaker 1: can get noticed or any attention with my art. I
Speaker 1: wanted to share my new piece I've just finished after
Speaker 1: listening to how comic books work. I'm a huge fan
Speaker 1: of Marvel comics and I hope you both enjoy this.
Speaker 1: And he sent this really cool. I think it was
Speaker 1: like every member of the Marvel universe had to be
Speaker 1: in this picture that he did. I didn't see that.
Speaker 1: It's really really neat, just jam packed full of Marvel
Speaker 1: comic heroes and villains. Um So, Josh and Chuck, thanks
Speaker 1: for the inspiration, laughs and getting through every day at
Speaker 1: the office. PS. My twin Jessica passed away from epilepsy
Speaker 1: actually a condition called sue dep sudden unexplained death of epilepsy.
Speaker 1: My mother is trying to raise awareness because November is
Speaker 1: Epilepsy Awareness Month. So if you guys wouldn't mind mentioning
Speaker 1: this on the show, she would be so happy for that. Also,
Speaker 1: an epilepsy show would be cool too. Um. Not a
Speaker 1: lot is discussed about it, and that is Jason Flack.
Speaker 1: And Jason wrote you back that is heartbreaking about your
Speaker 1: twin sister. Very sorry to hear that, um, And we
Speaker 1: will definitely do a show on epilepsy. And since this
Speaker 1: is November though, people should go out and find out
Speaker 1: what they can during National Epilepsy Month. We'll follow up
Speaker 1: with the show. I don't know if it'll be in November,
Speaker 1: but we'll get to that one for sure. And thanks
Speaker 1: for that piece of art. And if anyone is interested
Speaker 1: in a great comic book artist from Johnson City, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: if a lot worse than Jason Flack. Jason, thank you
Speaker 1: very much for sharing that with everybody. That means a
Speaker 1: lot to us. If you want to share with us
Speaker 1: and all of our listeners out there, you can tweet
Speaker 1: to us at s y s K podcast. You can
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email with attached artwork to
Speaker 1: stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com and has
Speaker 1: always joined us at our home on the web, stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know dot com. For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com