Speaker 1: Now Really.
Speaker 2: Really Real Hello, and welcome to Really Know Really, with
Speaker 2: Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden, who note that subscribing to
Speaker 2: our show has improved the health of our subscribers, or
Speaker 2: at least it seems that way, because as much as
Speaker 2: we'd love you to subscribe, it might just be a
Speaker 2: case of the placebo effect.
Speaker 1: A recent YouTube video shows.
Speaker 2: College freshmen acting obviously intoxicated after drinking what they were
Speaker 2: told were several beers, but the beers were completely non alcoholic,
Speaker 2: hence the placebo effect, which refers to a fake treatment
Speaker 2: of ailments by administering sugar pills in place of an
Speaker 2: actual medication that is nonetheless successful. So how does it
Speaker 2: work and how can it be so powerful and defective?
Speaker 2: To answer that and other questions, we sought out the
Speaker 2: world's foremost expert on placebos, doctor Luana Coloca, And what
Speaker 2: we found out is a prescription for a fascinating episode
Speaker 2: or a viable substitute anyway.
Speaker 1: And now here are two guys who are almost as
Speaker 1: good as the real thing, Jason and Peter.
Speaker 3: There is a product that Jerry Seinfeld does a great
Speaker 3: routine about that actually is a good pick me up
Speaker 3: for me, is the five hour energy shot works? I
Speaker 3: find it works. As Jerry said, why five hours five
Speaker 3: hours of energy? You need an hour, two hours, four hours,
Speaker 3: six or eight hours? Who needs five hours? They probably
Speaker 3: did research that said, oh people, people will like the title.
Speaker 4: Five five hours, five.
Speaker 5: Hours, seven hour energy drinking. I don't have, Yeah, I
Speaker 5: don't doing anything that long.
Speaker 4: Six hours hard to say.
Speaker 3: Two hours, you know, one hour, two hours you barely
Speaker 3: get through late. I'm just thinking if they told me
Speaker 3: it was a five hour energy shot, and I drank
Speaker 3: it and it was grape juice, but I go.
Speaker 6: Well, and that discussed. Today's episode is about the power
Speaker 6: of nothing right placebo effect, which basically started. I should
Speaker 6: mention that it's being recognized as powerful enough that the
Speaker 6: American Medical Association considers it ethical to use placebos to
Speaker 6: enhance healing on their own. I was trying to find
Speaker 6: something to denote how powerful this can be. So a
Speaker 6: twenty six year old man was taken to an emergency
Speaker 6: room after arguing with his girlfriend. He attempted suicide by
Speaker 6: swallowing twenty nine capsules of an experimental drug that he
Speaker 6: obtained from a clinical trial that he was testing on antidepressants.
Speaker 6: When he arrived at the hospital, he was sluggish, shaking, sweating,
Speaker 6: had rapid breathing. His blood pressure was extremely low eighty
Speaker 6: over forty, and his pulse was one ten doctors who
Speaker 6: are finally successful at raising his blood pressure. Over the
Speaker 6: course of four hours, they injected him with six leaders
Speaker 6: of saline solution. His blood pressure increased to one hundred
Speaker 6: and over sixty two, which is at the lower end
Speaker 6: of the normal range, but his pulse remained high. On six.
Speaker 6: What finally cured the patient wasn't anything the hospital emergency
Speaker 6: room staffed it. Instead, a doctor from the clinical trial
Speaker 6: arrived at the hospital. He told the patient that those
Speaker 6: antidepressant tolls weren't antidepressants because he had been randomized into
Speaker 6: the control arm of the trial, he had overdosed on placebos.
Speaker 6: Within fifteen minutes, the patient's blood pressure stabilized at one
Speaker 6: twenty six over eighty and his heart rate dropped to
Speaker 6: a perfectly normal eighty beats per minute, which shows you
Speaker 6: the power of thinking you've taken something that he can
Speaker 6: actually physically manifest itself. An overdose of placebo. The guy
Speaker 6: thought he was going to die, and it actually took
Speaker 6: yeah pretty pretty amazing.
Speaker 3: So that's that's a power that cut in all directions,
Speaker 3: Like if I if I want to tell myself that
Speaker 3: the chocolate cake I ate was really just a placebo,
Speaker 3: will I not Will my insulin level not spike? Will
Speaker 3: my beltline not expand?
Speaker 6: But the placebo effect, And they're also said there's a
Speaker 6: no cebo effect, which is the opposite, which is about
Speaker 6: believing that something's bad for you.
Speaker 3: Well, I have a question for our guess because I
Speaker 3: was once in a desperate situation given a drug that
Speaker 3: was the only thing that solved it. But I want
Speaker 3: to know if it could have been solved with because
Speaker 3: it is a pain management thing, and that is an
Speaker 3: area that pusedly. Placebos have had a great deal of efficacy.
Speaker 6: And by the way, seventeen ninety nine is the beginning
Speaker 6: when a British physician named John Hagar set out the
Speaker 6: test this quack remedy. It was expensive metal rods named
Speaker 6: perkinstractors that purported to draw disease in the body, and
Speaker 6: he pitted the metal rods against wooden rods that looked
Speaker 6: the same. Four or five patients with rheumatism reported that
Speaker 6: the pain improved.
Speaker 3: Well, that is supposedly the science behind natural healers or
Speaker 3: shamanistic healers, and a.
Speaker 4: Lot of it is.
Speaker 3: You know, there was one one thing I read in
Speaker 3: the research you sent me that said, left alone nothing,
Speaker 3: you don't do anything.
Speaker 4: Three out of five times people just get better.
Speaker 3: Nature takes nature. So if you if you say, oh, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm making.
Speaker 4: You better, I'm making gaha making you better.
Speaker 3: Along with natural feeling, the mind goes, oh, I do
Speaker 3: you know what?
Speaker 4: I feel a little better?
Speaker 3: And that that that is you know, I say what
Speaker 3: acupuncture may be or acupressure or reiki or shaman is.
Speaker 6: The minerals that you take forever. But man, I say something,
Speaker 6: I feel a little better. Whatever you did, what I
Speaker 6: just did to you, I feel a lot of that.
Speaker 3: That's the ancient practice of BS.
Speaker 6: But it is fascinating how the mind, the mind actually
Speaker 6: can heal itself.
Speaker 3: So we went out and found a placebo expert.
Speaker 5: Yeah, why wouldn't we do that?
Speaker 6: Why wouldn't we Why wouldn't we could stop in this?
Speaker 4: Why would they agree come on our show?
Speaker 5: Hey, we have said every episode I.
Speaker 4: Know we have with us today.
Speaker 3: Doctor Lewana Coloca is an empowered distinguished professor at the
Speaker 3: University of Maryland and the director of the Placebo Beyond
Speaker 3: Opinions Center, which I need to find out more about.
Speaker 3: It's at NIH funded, internationally recognized expert. Doctor Klocha and
Speaker 3: her team research human pain modulation in patients suffering from
Speaker 3: chronic pain, hoping to deepen understanding of placebo and no
Speaker 3: Cibo effects, which is what we've been talking about. She
Speaker 3: has an MD, a PhD in neuroscience, a master's degree
Speaker 3: in neuron Oh my god, she's done postdoctoral training at
Speaker 3: the Brain Imaging Center in Stockholm, Sweden. And it is
Speaker 3: a pleasure to welcome you, to really know, really, doctor
Speaker 3: Lewana Kaloka.
Speaker 4: Nice to see you, Thank you very much.
Speaker 6: So I wanted to just alert you the fact that
Speaker 6: I just told a story that I thought was one
Speaker 6: of the better examples of the guy who overdosed when
Speaker 6: placebo went to the hospital and because he took all
Speaker 6: the antidepressants and his blood pressure, everything responded as if
Speaker 6: he had overdosed until the doctor said you were in
Speaker 6: the placebo group, and then within fifteen minutes to adjust it.
Speaker 6: And that kind of is the most dumb down way,
Speaker 6: easiest way to show the power of the brain that
Speaker 6: the brain believes something, it can actually create physiological response
Speaker 6: to something that's not happening, which is insane.
Speaker 7: The brain is very powerful and still one of the
Speaker 7: organs will know less. So we truly excited to use
Speaker 7: plusy boats as a tool to understand how the brain
Speaker 7: can influence body responses.
Speaker 3: Was there a particular bit of research or an event
Speaker 3: that because you really this is like part of your
Speaker 3: full time work in research, was there something that just
Speaker 3: made you go, oh, I just want to know more
Speaker 3: about this placebo thing.
Speaker 7: Actually there is. I was a fresh PhD student and
Speaker 7: I had to finish my medical degree since a few
Speaker 7: months and I started starting plasive effects with Parkinson patients
Speaker 7: receiving a very complex surgical procedure that we call diffibent stimulation.
Speaker 7: I was very skeptical. I even told my.
Speaker 8: Mentor I wanted to do science that really matters, and
Speaker 8: I didn't feel like Placibo is exactly that in those
Speaker 8: science until I was in the interpretative room and we
Speaker 8: started recording neurons from a patient with only local ants teacher,
Speaker 8: so it was collaborating with pass and so on, and
Speaker 8: then we gave a Placibo that was subercutaneous injection of
Speaker 8: the fake doose of dopamine.
Speaker 7: Actually it was just a selling solution, and we started
Speaker 7: recording and the spike of the neurons decreased as if
Speaker 7: we had given the active treatment. They add apomorphine, which
Speaker 7: is shocking.
Speaker 5: It was shocking.
Speaker 6: So you're saying instead of dopamine, you gave it fake dopamine.
Speaker 5: Exactly.
Speaker 7: The patients heard better, they said, oh, I feel better,
Speaker 7: might remor disappear. A neurologist enter into the room to
Speaker 7: assess the rigidity and was also decreased. The most important
Speaker 7: for me as neurophysiologist, I was on the left side
Speaker 7: before the equipment. See the spike of the neurons, and
Speaker 7: the spike become flower and as if we had given
Speaker 7: the active treatment.
Speaker 4: So it wasn't just the patient's experience.
Speaker 3: You could actually see that the body was responding neurologically
Speaker 3: as if it had received.
Speaker 5: The real thing.
Speaker 7: I love that you say that, because as a NEUROSCIENTI
Speaker 7: I want something changing in the brain for me as
Speaker 7: much as as physician opinion of a patient. The release
Speaker 7: of I want something true, you know, so objective, and
Speaker 7: that objective sign was the reduction of the spike and
Speaker 7: the neuronal activity as if the patient had receive an
Speaker 7: active treatment. So for me, when we go wine all
Speaker 7: the results, the clinical evidence and the objective evidence, but
Speaker 7: me pujective evidence it's real.
Speaker 3: So you mentioned something in that example that I that
Speaker 3: I want to ask about. Years ago, I started getting
Speaker 3: kidney stones and the first time I got one, I
Speaker 3: was I was on a set and I was being
Speaker 3: treated with vicodin. I it wasn't working, and eventually I
Speaker 3: was rushed to the hospital. Now, I have never in
Speaker 3: my life prior to this moment, had morphine.
Speaker 4: But vicodin wasn't helping. Nothing was helping this pain.
Speaker 3: All of a sudden, they gave me morphine and instantaneously
Speaker 3: my pain disappeared. My question to you is if they
Speaker 3: had just told me I was getting morphine, would I
Speaker 3: have had the pain reduction? Even though I don't know
Speaker 3: what morphine feels like.
Speaker 7: Some patients respond very well even if they never had
Speaker 7: the experience. Some other patients may not. But the Blasibo
Speaker 7: research started with beech Air that was an anesthesiologist working
Speaker 7: with saltiers in Sicily during the Second World WARLD and
Speaker 7: it odd soldiers this is morphine your pain will be released,
Speaker 7: and the observe that some patients were able to manage
Speaker 7: their pain, do not feel pain, whether some patients do
Speaker 7: not do that, and that is one of the main
Speaker 7: line of research in my lab currently. We are interested
Speaker 7: to know where this lucky one and those people a
Speaker 7: little bit less if.
Speaker 6: People, yeah, well you also did you did the thing
Speaker 6: that was fascinating to me where I know you did
Speaker 6: the pain experiment where you would show a red light
Speaker 6: when you when you hit people with a certain voltage,
Speaker 6: and a green light when it was low. And after
Speaker 6: a while you started messing with it and doing the
Speaker 6: high voltage but showing them green, and they didn't feel
Speaker 6: the pain that they had registered that they felt when
Speaker 6: it was a red light. So the mind was told
Speaker 6: to associate low with green and it adjusted.
Speaker 7: We observe the fifty five percentage of people responding to that.
Speaker 7: It's a huge number. We don't even get this proportion
Speaker 7: of responder when we run a try and or pharmacological
Speaker 7: treatment of paint. Five is a very large proportion and
Speaker 7: it may explain why many trials for pain, chronic acute
Speaker 7: pain pain because the placebo response is so relevant. That's
Speaker 7: somehow creating what we would call it sell effects. It
Speaker 7: masks the effects of the active treatment.
Speaker 6: If the results are so good, do doctors ethically can
Speaker 6: they prescribe a placebo.
Speaker 7: We call this open labeled placibo, telling patients we give
Speaker 7: you placypo And over the last you know, five seven years,
Speaker 7: several labs have published that even placibo and telling patients
Speaker 7: they're taking placibo improve different kind of pain disorders, no
Speaker 7: back pain as their tritis, irritable bowel syndrome related the pain.
Speaker 7: And we felt too bad to let them go without anything.
Speaker 7: So what do we start doing was telling a patient, look,
Speaker 7: that is how you respond in this cant while we
Speaker 7: were running this brain imaging experiment, and we offer you
Speaker 7: the possibility to continue to benefit in another way. The
Speaker 7: only way we have to give you placimbol. And you
Speaker 7: understand this are placibo that you will bring home and
Speaker 7: you will take for forty five days. So we start
Speaker 7: doing that. The results are amazing. Their clinical pain decrease
Speaker 7: when they receive open label placibo, and they understood, they
Speaker 7: verbalized get it. They still respond that's that is not
Speaker 7: one day, you know.
Speaker 6: So you're sending a home with forty five days of
Speaker 6: sugar pills and their pain is still gone, even though
Speaker 6: I know that it's sugar pills. Is it is it?
Speaker 6: Is there a guess? Is it the attention they're getting?
Speaker 6: Is it the treatment that they're getting.
Speaker 7: We have several control groups and still they receive the
Speaker 7: attention because we were monitoring people without we call no
Speaker 7: LP without any placibo. So the people that is the
Speaker 7: more were, you know, monitoring daily the information and the
Speaker 7: interaction with my team, they didn't improve. So there must
Speaker 7: be something in the action of choosing to take up
Speaker 7: placbo that trigger probably again this endogenous mechanism more healing.
Speaker 3: After Could has anyone tried or do you do you
Speaker 3: speculate that this could work the other way? So, for instance,
Speaker 3: if you have a patient who is now addicted to
Speaker 3: an opioid, is there has anyone tried a placebo opioid
Speaker 3: to sort of get them off opioids where their mind
Speaker 3: is thinking, well, I'm still getting this thing, but in
Speaker 3: fact they are not.
Speaker 1: This is.
Speaker 3: Has anyone tried a placebo opioid to sort of get
Speaker 3: them off opioids where their mind is thinking, well, I'm
Speaker 3: still getting listening, but in fact they are not.
Speaker 7: This is brilliant and it should be the next line
Speaker 7: of research to try to use placebo to taper the
Speaker 7: opioids or help those people. So today we don't have
Speaker 7: any trial begin done with open label placibo, and it
Speaker 7: is still an open question. And the challenge has been
Speaker 7: and the offer this podcast will help to be contacted
Speaker 7: from many patients who use opioids to manage their pain.
Speaker 7: The challenge is to enroll patients who use oois and
Speaker 7: that has been the you know, difficulties so far, but
Speaker 7: we do want to do that. We do to enroll
Speaker 7: patients to work with us because this is literally an alliance,
Speaker 7: a partnership where we want to see how the brain
Speaker 7: can play a or in helping managing given situations that
Speaker 7: are very difficult.
Speaker 6: Does this have to do also, because again there's a
Speaker 6: novel effect, which is if you're negative and you believe
Speaker 6: it's not going to work. Does this have to do
Speaker 6: with a level of I mean there are different levels
Speaker 6: of positiveness in people and dourness and sadness and depression
Speaker 6: that other people are more apt because they're more positive,
Speaker 6: they're more hopeful.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, What do we consistently see is that those people
Speaker 7: who tended to be distress fearful tend to have lower
Speaker 7: expectations of benefit, and often they also have lower plasive effects.
Speaker 7: But what is interesting is that place ebo somehow, or
Speaker 7: even in people without any of we see people that.
Speaker 8: We ask you know, how much do you wish to improve?
Speaker 8: As well?
Speaker 7: Letter everything? I have zero, there is nothing that can
Speaker 7: help me. Well, when we do this rhet the green
Speaker 7: exposure to reduction of pain, we can observe plasive effects
Speaker 7: even in hopeless people, people who don't believe, people who
Speaker 7: don't have anymore desire a drive to.
Speaker 6: Improve our people are doctors right now writing prescriptions for
Speaker 6: policles for people.
Speaker 7: No, I don't think so not yet, So I.
Speaker 3: Can't go to the CBS yet.
Speaker 5: I'm generic.
Speaker 7: Some of my colleagues hope that that will be the
Speaker 7: next step that at least in the States, we're not there.
Speaker 7: You can't prescribe about as.
Speaker 3: There is something that I have done for years that
Speaker 3: I discovered I could do and it has been very
Speaker 3: helpful to me.
Speaker 4: So I don't get migraines.
Speaker 3: But you know, like anybody, I get a headache now
Speaker 3: and then if I take a pain reliever it's great.
Speaker 3: It knocks my headache out, but there are times when
Speaker 3: I don't have it nearby. So I have been able
Speaker 3: to mentally change the sensation of pain to a sensation
Speaker 3: of pressure. And when it's pressure it it doesn't. I
Speaker 3: just say to myself, Okay, where does it hurt. Okay,
Speaker 3: it hurts right there. So don't think of it as
Speaker 3: like this throbbing, radiating thing that's irritating your nerves. Think
Speaker 3: of it as literally someone is pushing from the inside,
Speaker 3: like a massage from the inside. It's just pushing on
Speaker 3: that spot and what you're feeling is the tenderness of
Speaker 3: the spot.
Speaker 4: And by doing that.
Speaker 3: Emotionally, I don't go oh something, you know, it's like
Speaker 3: when you Sometimes it can actually take the headache away.
Speaker 3: What it can certainly do is keep me at a
Speaker 3: place where I'm very comfortable until I can get to
Speaker 3: a place where I can lie down on a massage
Speaker 3: ball or get to a pain reliever.
Speaker 7: The experience is shed is so important because in chronic
Speaker 7: pain patient or those who have even acute pain, this
Speaker 7: scene can be amplified by the level of attention with pain.
Speaker 7: So when you describe the lack of ability to have
Speaker 7: the drug. You know, the logos of control. You want
Speaker 7: to be in control, so you say, okay, in one hour,
Speaker 7: I will be home. I can lie down and I
Speaker 7: feel better. And many times we take up and kill
Speaker 7: immediately because we want Somehow, this feeling of pen reduction
Speaker 7: and the response also can occur quite fast, even before
Speaker 7: you know we metabolized to that medication. Feeling that how
Speaker 7: the placebo component is power fully. You know, many time
Speaker 7: we experience an lgsmmediately after taking appeal. That is a
Speaker 7: ready deplasible component. Also, it is interesting that we panic
Speaker 7: when we don't have access to a bankiller. Unfortunately, for
Speaker 7: many patients this sort of ability to tackle the inner
Speaker 7: mechanism of descending modulation of a pain become a very
Speaker 7: unusual or difficult because they never tried or they never
Speaker 7: were told of, and so the action of them is
Speaker 7: taking appill immediately and then if the first doesn't work,
Speaker 7: taking two or three or four and then escalating to
Speaker 7: the next more powerful pain medication that mechanism can create.
Speaker 7: You know, this sort of need of escalating and multitaire
Speaker 7: be and so on. That is why I still believe
Speaker 7: that even treatments that may work by virtual of placbo
Speaker 7: mechans so important as long as they empower a patient
Speaker 7: to be able to harness what I love to call informacy.
Speaker 5: We all have that.
Speaker 3: Has anyone this is good? This is my last question,
Speaker 3: because you're gonna all judge me. I don't want to
Speaker 3: judge you anyway, because I don't want to be judged.
Speaker 3: So we've been talking about Placibo's primarily for pain management.
Speaker 3: For a patient that would have to take viagra, mm hmm,
Speaker 3: if you give them a placebo viagra, do they get
Speaker 3: the desired effect?
Speaker 5: Probably they will.
Speaker 3: I mean, has anyone to your knowledge as anyone, don't
Speaker 3: don't research on that because I also think I have
Speaker 3: to assume a large part of that result is psychological.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, there are studies showed that side the effects of
Speaker 7: treatment for prostate cancer that actually, you know, delifless the
Speaker 7: physician described have reduction of a libido and sexual dysfunction.
Speaker 7: So those patients who are alect about the side effects
Speaker 7: of cancer related the therabists tended to experience a larger
Speaker 7: amounts of side effects for dysfunction compared to those patients
Speaker 7: who were taught in a different way or even not
Speaker 7: told about the side effects related to sexual functions. So
Speaker 7: they're literally the mind somehow influence in both the positive
Speaker 7: and negative way, and the azybol the bar between of
Speaker 7: the placebo works in a more you know, effective way.
Speaker 7: I mean when we need that. If someone tells us
Speaker 7: you will experience the science of defense, this will become self
Speaker 7: profit most all the time.
Speaker 6: Belief is the oldest medicine known command. So thank you,
Speaker 6: thank you very much for coming on, and work faster
Speaker 6: and harder.
Speaker 5: Would you please or at least believe you believe you are.
Speaker 6: Yes, we believe you are and that will that will
Speaker 6: help Jason, And thank you for coming on.
Speaker 4: Thank you doctically.
Speaker 1: Appreciate your work than you you.
Speaker 6: Just inside you may you may need to placey of
Speaker 6: us for the for for little j Why.
Speaker 4: Can't I can I not be spec with it? Why
Speaker 4: do you know what I see?
Speaker 3: I knew the minute I said started talking about sexual
Speaker 3: dysfunction you were going to make it.
Speaker 5: Excuse me?
Speaker 4: And when you assume.
Speaker 6: Would yeah, you're pretty right here, You're right based on
Speaker 6: a Plazero fifty, you would have done the same to me.
Speaker 5: It is.
Speaker 6: It's really interesting how powerful the mind can be and
Speaker 6: what what it can do.
Speaker 3: You're right, there was so that that whole thing I
Speaker 3: was sharing with the doctor about that notion of turning
Speaker 3: pain to pressure for me came from when I watched
Speaker 3: and an old Star Trek episode, And there was a
Speaker 3: Star Trek episode where they get sucked into this galaxy
Speaker 3: and they they are back in the Old West.
Speaker 4: They're actually at the the.
Speaker 3: Ok Corral, and they're going to be replaying this moment
Speaker 3: in history where they're going to be in the gunfight.
Speaker 4: And what Spock realizes is the whole thing.
Speaker 3: Everything though it feels real and tangible to their senses,
Speaker 3: all of it's an illusion, he says, when you know that,
Speaker 3: the illusion is ineffective. So if you know that the
Speaker 3: bullets are not real, when they get fired at you,
Speaker 3: they won't hurt you. And the humans are going, well, that's.
Speaker 4: Great for you. With your vulcan brain, you can do that.
Speaker 4: But if we have even a shadow of a doubt,
Speaker 4: we're dead. And so he does the Vulcan mind mold
Speaker 4: on them, convinced that the.
Speaker 5: Bulletin reload. Now they of.
Speaker 3: Course the bullets don't hurt them, and the aliens go, oh,
Speaker 3: you're fascinating.
Speaker 5: I love you.
Speaker 6: Bring up Star Trek, and every time we have Star Trek,
Speaker 6: I'll say, why do they have to go to the
Speaker 6: transporter room?
Speaker 5: Anyway?
Speaker 3: I just so that that got me to, you know,
Speaker 3: the same thing. And then the other thing that was
Speaker 3: true for me is years ago, I used to have
Speaker 3: a kind of a bad ssiatic thing. I would might,
Speaker 3: I'd tweak my back all the time. And we were
Speaker 3: in Vegas. This happened when you and I were in
Speaker 3: Vegas and we were doing the Donnie Clay Show and
Speaker 3: my back was bad, and you know, and then you're
Speaker 3: in Vegas and you're keeping weird hours and you're not
Speaker 3: sleeping in your own bed. And I get up one
Speaker 3: morning and I already bad back tweaks again. And a
Speaker 3: friend of mine had given me this book called Healing
Speaker 3: the Back by doctor John Sarno.
Speaker 4: Now John Sarno is a backstort.
Speaker 6: What is it?
Speaker 3: Howard talked about around and you know, he's a back surgeon,
Speaker 3: so he knows that there are mechanical reasons why people
Speaker 3: have back pain and back failure. But he also had
Speaker 3: done a lot of research about patients that were stressed,
Speaker 3: patients that were exhausted, patients that you know, just where
Speaker 3: a lot of this pain could be psychosomatic or self inflicted.
Speaker 3: And I was reading the book and my my friend,
Speaker 3: who gave it to me, said, just read the book.
Speaker 3: I said, I don't have time to do a program.
Speaker 3: She said, no program, Read the book. I said, what
Speaker 3: do you mean, read the book. I'm gonna have to
Speaker 3: do a thing. There's exercises. She said, just read the book.
Speaker 3: So I had read when this thing happened. I had
Speaker 3: read only about five chapters, but I understood the gist
Speaker 3: of it, which was, you know, there's a psychosomatic component.
Speaker 3: And I got up that morning I retweaked my back
Speaker 3: and in the room I yelled out, all right, I got.
Speaker 4: At I'm exhausted, I'm stressed, I'm this.
Speaker 3: I'm not pick something else, pick something else other than
Speaker 3: the back pain. By that night, the back pain was gone,
Speaker 3: and I have never tweaked my back again.
Speaker 4: And that was how many years ago?
Speaker 5: We were doing that? A long time ago.
Speaker 6: And I've heard how we talk about other people talk
Speaker 6: about unbelievable.
Speaker 5: Did they have a cliff notes version?
Speaker 4: I just gave it.
Speaker 3: But it's it's that a lot of people experiencing true pain,
Speaker 3: real pain, debilitating pain in their back, were having it
Speaker 3: exacerbated by the fact that they were holding onto a stress.
Speaker 3: They were holding on to which is really dangerous stuff.
Speaker 3: Unce you decide to let it go. Look, I believe
Speaker 3: that's why we had her on. It's fascinating to me
Speaker 3: the advance was going to make But somehow it's a
Speaker 3: learning a part of the brain. So if you could
Speaker 3: stimulate that part of the brain yourself without having things
Speaker 3: that If we could do that, there's a whole area
Speaker 3: of things that I've thought about where they could be
Speaker 3: placeboie things and we'd still have a like imagine a
Speaker 3: placebo vacation, not an actual vacation, but you think you're
Speaker 3: on vacation. Imagine placebo foods. You're eating a sandwich, but
Speaker 3: you placebo it's a steak. Imagine a different career. You're
Speaker 3: you're digging a ditch, but you're imagining that. You know,
Speaker 3: sexual partners that I just always wondered about that. David,
Speaker 3: what's happening to.
Speaker 4: David in your imagination? How are you feeling, sir?
Speaker 1: My imagination? I feel great.
Speaker 9: But did you tell the end of that Vegas backstory?
Speaker 1: Because you were.
Speaker 9: Saying pick something else, pick something else, or was that
Speaker 9: just went to the viager question.
Speaker 4: No, it's actually what happened.
Speaker 3: But is by the end of that day, that chronic
Speaker 3: backman that I had been having for weeks was gone.
Speaker 4: I mean, was was so gone to the point that
Speaker 4: it was not.
Speaker 3: An issue for me. It wasn't inhibiting anything. And over
Speaker 3: the next few days it was completely gone. And I've
Speaker 3: never tweaked my back again.
Speaker 5: Is he still around that off?
Speaker 3: Because for a while was out there and all the
Speaker 3: book is still very much available, Healing the Back Doctor
Speaker 3: John Sarno. But it was, it was remarkable, and it
Speaker 3: really I think it was this sort of violent expulsion
Speaker 3: of emotion where.
Speaker 1: I went I got by the way.
Speaker 6: You realize we're kidding and joking, but when you say
Speaker 6: a place of a vacation, you know what that is.
Speaker 6: That's meditation. Yes, it's taking a different place. So and
Speaker 6: that pot that's only been around.
Speaker 3: Or some people call it a staycation where you suddenly
Speaker 3: look at the place you are in a different way
Speaker 3: and take it in for its beauty, take it in
Speaker 3: for what's positive and wonderful about it, rather than going
Speaker 3: it's the rut of you know, it's the same, you know,
Speaker 3: I believe.
Speaker 5: That, David, what do we have or virtual reality?
Speaker 9: No mistakes? Today, you guys were really hitting it out
Speaker 9: of the park. But the thing that occurred to me
Speaker 9: was that that a placebo of course, is anything that
Speaker 9: seems to be a real medical treatment that that isn't.
Speaker 9: I thought that I'd sort of looked for a few
Speaker 9: of those things that most of us considered to be
Speaker 9: facts but are in fact not true, okay, all such.
Speaker 1: As, Oh, I don't know, how about bagpipes?
Speaker 4: Where were bagpipes invented?
Speaker 3: Not in Ireland, not in Scotland, not in Scotland. I
Speaker 3: think they were probably if I had to guess, I
Speaker 3: would say it was someplace like a Turkey or you know,
Speaker 3: something like, Yes.
Speaker 9: Ancient Turkey and Egypt have have found in fact they
Speaker 9: were made from dogs skin and boats.
Speaker 4: So that I did not know.
Speaker 6: By the way, can you imagine who's the first guy
Speaker 6: to sit around and go, I bet if we're blown
Speaker 6: to death, we got a high g.
Speaker 5: I mean, seriously, you always want.
Speaker 4: Reverse a little hole in each We'll get four notes.
Speaker 5: You got it?
Speaker 6: You gotta get busy still, Hey mo, how's still talking about?
Speaker 5: From there in the dog?
Speaker 1: So yeah, all right, ancient Egyptian.
Speaker 4: How that's an interesting.
Speaker 1: And and who said, boy, we've done a great job that.
Speaker 4: We've really you're knocked.
Speaker 5: Everybody, all right.
Speaker 1: Napoleon not short?
Speaker 9: He was.
Speaker 4: He was like five seven.
Speaker 1: There was a there is not short.
Speaker 6: No, but they picture him Billy Bardy. They say like that,
Speaker 6: he's this really small person. He's not that small.
Speaker 4: Five seven is not short.
Speaker 3: Well, because I'm very not short, adjacent that's short.
Speaker 4: I'm five five.
Speaker 5: Well that's short.
Speaker 6: You know, when you go to the musement park, if
Speaker 6: you can't go into tilted world, I can't.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 9: The thing, yeah, no, the rumor, the myth is that
Speaker 9: he was five to two. But apparently back then there
Speaker 9: was something called French inches, which were a different measurement.
Speaker 5: Five years.
Speaker 4: Well, we're all aware, we're all aware.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, they went back.
Speaker 1: Two more quick ones. Drinking milk does not produce mucus.
Speaker 9: So if you're sick and you're mucacy and stuff like that,
Speaker 9: you could drink milk, not gonna not three products don't
Speaker 9: don't produce.
Speaker 5: No generations of Tilden's are not wrong with that.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: I cannot alter my belief system. There mere scientific studies
Speaker 6: I'm going to.
Speaker 9: And the last one that got me was, it's quite
Speaker 9: likely that Vincent van Go did not cut.
Speaker 1: Off his own ear.
Speaker 4: Who cut it up?
Speaker 9: Well, uh, they think that it was Paul Gogan who
Speaker 9: came at him with a rapier of some kind, and
Speaker 9: they they came up with this story when the authorities
Speaker 9: showed up and and van Go didn't want Gogain to
Speaker 9: be a risk.
Speaker 3: That would be an incredibly dexterous lunge to come at
Speaker 3: a guy, and you know that's like a surgical strike
Speaker 3: to lop off an ear.
Speaker 4: Well, I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't think the whole thing was lopped off.
Speaker 3: I think the whole thing was not lopped off. In
Speaker 3: a matter of fact, there was I saw what I
Speaker 3: do in my spirit time. There was a huge documentary
Speaker 3: on van Go about the controversy of.
Speaker 5: Of the ear.
Speaker 3: They they have presented what seemed to be ample proof
Speaker 3: that it was self inflicted.
Speaker 4: But that what he did is he didn't take the
Speaker 4: whole year.
Speaker 3: It was kind of on a diagonal and he left
Speaker 3: sort of the top ridge and got.
Speaker 5: Them based on this. What was the reason that he did.
Speaker 4: He was madly in love.
Speaker 3: It's this prostitute that he was seeing and she was
Speaker 3: not leaving her life to make her way.
Speaker 5: We don't.
Speaker 3: He was he and he was you know, uh, clinically depressed,
Speaker 3: and and then that was the kapper and so he
Speaker 3: as a gesture of he's dying, dying love or or despair.
Speaker 3: Didn't want to despair. Did it turn the prostitute around?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 4: I think she went what they called the geen darns.
Speaker 5: Did they say? I'm sure? Did they save the ear?
Speaker 5: Did try to reattach it or I don't.
Speaker 3: Know, but there was I believe I'm remembering this very sporadically.
Speaker 3: I think they made a death mask of van Go
Speaker 3: and that's how they know.
Speaker 6: That part of his ear was still there, because all
Speaker 6: the pictures him with the thing that right, dirty not
Speaker 6: pictures dirty rot.
Speaker 5: You put you put some clean on.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they didn't know that back they didn't know from
Speaker 6: David Snyk you very much, It's very welcome. I think
Speaker 6: the amazing thing was he took up Placebo for the
Speaker 6: Pain of the Year and was still screaming and was
Speaker 6: still he was actually the model for Munches of the
Speaker 6: screen Placo.
Speaker 5: The first experiment in place above failure.
Speaker 4: So there you go exactly.
Speaker 6: No, thank you, David, very good and she was fascinating.
Speaker 6: Thank you, And I hope she's doing her work so
Speaker 6: we can get plus cibos sooner rather than later. And
Speaker 6: one last thing would hell, because you have asthma. I do,
Speaker 6: And she's absolutely right. If I leave that, I never
Speaker 6: have an asthma problem. If I leave the house without
Speaker 6: the inhaler, I'm like, oh.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 6: In twenty eleven, one group received an inhaler with albuterol. Yeah,
Speaker 6: another group gun inhaler with a placi about third group
Speaker 6: got a sham acupuncture before it's got nothing to study.
Speaker 6: Authors evaluated lung function on two metric software port from
Speaker 6: the patients on the asthma symptoms. Yeah, if you go
Speaker 6: by software, it looks like the placebo, a butterol, and
Speaker 6: the sham acupuncture are all equally effective.
Speaker 5: That amazing act.
Speaker 3: I know, I know from when I have had I
Speaker 3: know I don't get asthma attacks. But there are times
Speaker 3: when I go ooh, that feels tight. And if you
Speaker 3: start to panic, it makes it word, it makes it worse.
Speaker 3: And if you go all right, so stretch open an up,
Speaker 3: take a couple of deep breaths.
Speaker 5: It's amazing.
Speaker 6: With all the research, we still don't know a lot
Speaker 6: about the human body.
Speaker 3: What do yes, I know a little more about.
Speaker 5: Thanks.
Speaker 3: Thanks for being I need to forget next time, producer, Laurie.
Speaker 6: Thanks for even hanging and not walking out on us.
Speaker 6: We really appreciate that, and for producing the day that.
Speaker 6: Thank you the most importantly. Thank you for watching, listening,
Speaker 6: and contributed. I made the contributing part up. I don't
Speaker 6: know what they contributed.
Speaker 5: They contributed, that's.
Speaker 2: Another episode if Really Really comes to a close. I
Speaker 2: know you're wondering about unusual examples of the no cebo effect,
Speaker 2: in which people experience symptoms without actual cause.
Speaker 1: Well, you bet your sweet sugar pill. There are plenty.
Speaker 2: But before I share some of those, let's thank our
Speaker 2: guests to doctor Luana Kaloka. You can watch doctor Koloka's
Speaker 2: fascinating research with her many videos on YouTube and ted Talks.
Speaker 2: Additional contact infolk and we found in our show notes
Speaker 2: at Reallyno Really dot com. Our little show hangs out
Speaker 2: on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and threads at Really No Really Podcasts,
Speaker 2: And of course, you can share your thoughts and feedback
Speaker 2: with us.
Speaker 1: Online at Reallynoreli dot com.
Speaker 2: If you have a really some amazing fact or story
Speaker 2: that boggles your mind, share it with us and if
Speaker 2: we use it, we will send you a little gift.
Speaker 2: Nothing life changing, obviously, but it's the thought that counts.
Speaker 2: Check out our full episodes on YouTube, hit that subscribe
Speaker 2: button and take that bell. So here updated when we
Speaker 2: release new videos and episodes, which we do each Tuesday,
Speaker 2: So listen and follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Speaker 2: podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And now to
Speaker 2: answer the question, are there any unusual examples of the
Speaker 2: no cebo effect? Well, recently, a man in his twenties
Speaker 2: was rushed to a hospital after accidentally jumping onto a sharp,
Speaker 2: six inch long nail which went.
Speaker 1: Right through the soul of his workboot.
Speaker 2: The nail proved to be so painful that he had
Speaker 2: to be given major painkillers before attempting to remove it,
Speaker 2: But when his boot was finally removed to doctors discovered
Speaker 2: that the nail was actually located between the guy's toes. Apparently,
Speaker 2: the man's excruciating pain was created by the belief that
Speaker 2: the nail had gone through his foot. In another reported incident,
Speaker 2: a kitchen worker accidentally got himself locked inside a walk
Speaker 2: in freezer unit and sadly died of hypothermia several hours later. However,
Speaker 2: the report claims that the freezer was actually not working
Speaker 2: at the time, and whatever chill the man perceived was
Speaker 2: left over from when the motor had been on. The
Speaker 2: freezer was actually warming up while he was in there,
Speaker 2: but he apparently succumbed to the belief that the cold
Speaker 2: was severe and as bizarre as it sounds, Indigenous people
Speaker 2: of Australia practice a ritual called pointing the bone, in
Speaker 2: which a sharpened bone that has been endowed with a
Speaker 2: curse is pointed at someone condemned to death. As reported,
Speaker 2: once the unfortunate soul realizes they have been quote unquote boned,
Speaker 2: they usually die within three days from no other obvious reasons.
Speaker 2: So while it seems that placebos and no sebos are
Speaker 2: active and have a place in this world, I'm just
Speaker 2: going to say categorically, I like my meds the way
Speaker 2: I like my friends as real as possible. So by
Speaker 2: for now, my unseen unknown podcast listening piles, you guys
Speaker 2: are my besties? Really No Really, is a production of
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio and Blase entertainment,