Speaker 1: M Hey everyone, it's Josh and I've chosen for this
Speaker 1: week's s Y s K Select our two thousand fourteen
Speaker 1: episode on the inappropriately named collective Hysteria. It turns out
Speaker 1: that people can have a real effect on how other
Speaker 1: people feel and behave. So take this as a sign
Speaker 1: to be nice and maybe even soothing to others. And
Speaker 1: while you're working on that, enjoy the super cool episode
Speaker 1: on some super weird psychology. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's over there to the left,
Speaker 1: and that makes the Stuff you Should Know got the
Speaker 1: a team. Yeah, in the hissy, I call face what Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm face of course your face look at you. I
Speaker 1: would be a combination of Murdoch and Mr Tamnik. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh your hair is kind of spiky in the middle today. Yeah, Jerry,
Speaker 1: I don't know what she'd be. I guess she'd be
Speaker 1: the leader. She'd be Hannibal. Oh, yeah, you know she's
Speaker 1: smoking a cigar right now and wearing a black glove.
Speaker 1: When did you start smoking cigars? Jerry, that's weird. Very timely,
Speaker 1: I said, a team. I don't want to slag off
Speaker 1: guest produce a knoll. He's not exactly be team. No,
Speaker 1: we'll just call ourselves the O G S. Okay, now
Speaker 1: that we have that established, we are the O G S.
Speaker 1: We need bowling shirts that say as much on the
Speaker 1: bad are you're feeling good? I'm feeling uh nauseous and dizzy?
Speaker 1: Oh well, Chuck, did you happen to see somebody else
Speaker 1: who is nauseous and dizzy? Well, Jerry was last week,
Speaker 1: and then a few more people in the office, So
Speaker 1: I just figured we all had the same thing. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna diagnose this, okay. It's called collective hysteria, also known,
Speaker 1: I think more appropriately is mass psychogenic disorder. I think
Speaker 1: when you add the word hysteria to this, it ticks
Speaker 1: on certain dimensions that a lot of people could find
Speaker 1: very objectionable, you know, hysterics, hysteria. It's like um dogs
Speaker 1: and cats living together. Yeah, but I think it has
Speaker 1: it has a definite um gender specific connotation to it
Speaker 1: from over the years, like women were supposedly very hysterical.
Speaker 1: So the the idea of diagnosing somebody as hysterical under
Speaker 1: any circumstances. It's kind of it's had him out to
Speaker 1: panning the patting him on the head. Yeah, here, nice lady,
Speaker 1: you're you're just a little hysterical. Do you just go
Speaker 1: calm down and bake something? Right? Yeah? Stop being crazy?
Speaker 1: Uh no. 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? Yeah, I think so. He wasn't like
Speaker 1: 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? Yeah uh, and
Speaker 1: they had no idea. The girls went on Christmas break
Speaker 1: for ten days, came back, and the thing just took
Speaker 1: off again like wildfire. Yeah, six hundred girls, um showed
Speaker 1: these symptoms and nobody could figure it out. Um. They
Speaker 1: did a lot of tests, they brought in people to
Speaker 1: like check out the facilities, and because as you'll see,
Speaker 1: there's 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 toxin present that is poisoned everybody. 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 of 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, but
Speaker 1: so you're not really sick. But that is not exactly true,
Speaker 1: because that's one thing that differentiates this from something that's
Speaker 1: just in your head, as you actually do manifest physical symptoms. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this article written by a m d Named Timothy F.
Speaker 1: Jones from the Tennessee Department of Health way back in
Speaker 1: the heady days of two thousand, your two thousand the future, um,
Speaker 1: and he writes that you, if you are experiencing mass
Speaker 1: psychogenic disorder, it is not just in your head. That
Speaker 1: the symptoms that you have are actually very real. Even
Speaker 1: though there's no toxic cause they couldn't find some sort
Speaker 1: of environmental poison or anything like that, the symptoms are
Speaker 1: extremely real. Yeah, it's just psycho somatic. It's just basically
Speaker 1: the brain has been tricked into causing this response. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this has happened. Um. They've documented about eighty cases
Speaker 1: throughout history, and apparently the National Institutes of Health gets
Speaker 1: about two cases per week reported. But um, which is
Speaker 1: I mean, like that's that's way more yeah, common than
Speaker 1: than you would think. You know, yeah, I would think
Speaker 1: there'd be more than eight, because I mean, these have happened.
Speaker 1: If you go back and look at I mean, there's
Speaker 1: all sorts of crazy list on the internet about these
Speaker 1: cases that date back to like the fourteenth century medieval
Speaker 1: dancing mania was one of them. Yeah, the dancing plague, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's in there. The Salem witchcraft trials or the Salem witchcraft.
Speaker 1: I guess what led to the trials was UM supposedly
Speaker 1: attributed to this kind of thing. Uh. One weird thing
Speaker 1: about this condition is more times than not it is
Speaker 1: affects females, Yeah, and young females even more specifically teenagers
Speaker 1: or even younger, which is as far as it goes
Speaker 1: right now, inexplicable UM. And it's kind of a prickly issue,
Speaker 1: you know, Like again you kind of come back to
Speaker 1: the idea of calling it hysteria. You know the fact
Speaker 1: that it does tend to afflict women or girls more
Speaker 1: than them boys. UM is apparently one means of diagnosing
Speaker 1: psychogenic disordered mass psychogenically that's like one of the first
Speaker 1: things we'll say is like all this the sickness is
Speaker 1: happening in this place, the school wherever, and the doctor
Speaker 1: will say is it a bunch of girls? And then
Speaker 1: that will clue them in that hey, this might be
Speaker 1: what we're dealing with here and the but the problem
Speaker 1: is no one has any idea why. And there have
Speaker 1: been explanations of things like, um, uh, I guess girls
Speaker 1: this is this is girls culturally acceptable outlet for raging
Speaker 1: against the patriarchy. Sure, even if they don't necessarily feel
Speaker 1: that that's what they're doing, this is there there? Uh,
Speaker 1: this is the symptoms of that. That's one. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought this was a pretty interesting part. What article was
Speaker 1: that from Slate? Uh? There was h Yeah, one called
Speaker 1: mass Asteria and Upstate New York by Ruth Graham was
Speaker 1: on Slate. That was a good one. It was a
Speaker 1: really good one. And we'll get to that case in
Speaker 1: 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. Um. 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 mass psychogenic disorder, you physicians out
Speaker 1: there who are listening the encounter a case like this, um,
Speaker 1: it just by basing it on the fact that it
Speaker 1: is affecting more girls than boys. Because there's at least
Speaker 1: one case in Great Britain where I think girls were
Speaker 1: afflicted by more than half. More than double the number
Speaker 1: of girls were afflicted by this, and it turned out
Speaker 1: that they were retaining cucumbers being served in in the
Speaker 1: lunch room. Yeah, and everyone knows boys hate cucumbers, and
Speaker 1: so I mean this is they didn't need anyone, right,
Speaker 1: But this is one of the issues with dealing with
Speaker 1: UM mass psychogenic disorder, and that it looks and acts
Speaker 1: a lot like some sort of weird epidemic. That basically
Speaker 1: it looks like either a UM something like bioterrorism. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: a rapidly spreading affection infection or affection of telemania and
Speaker 1: then acute toxic exposure. That's what it looks like. It's
Speaker 1: like one person gets sick, this is your index case,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, everyone around them suddenly has
Speaker 1: the same symptoms. Yeah. And it's like you said, it's
Speaker 1: super dangerous to just dismiss that as oh it's all
Speaker 1: in your head, silly little ladies. Uh, you can't do
Speaker 1: that because what if it is something for real? But
Speaker 1: it's also a double edged sword, is that doctor pointed out, Um,
Speaker 1: you start ordering batteries of tests and it it It
Speaker 1: can go both ways. It can Um. What the old
Speaker 1: saying is, if you order enough tests, you're gonna find
Speaker 1: something so it can fuel that fire. But you all
Speaker 1: so can't not run any tests and just dismiss it. Uh.
Speaker 1: So it's a very fine line that physicians walk when
Speaker 1: dealing with stuff like this. For sure. Indeed, apparently UM
Speaker 1: study of mass psychogenic disorder has found that it's more
Speaker 1: prevalent in isolated communities and in situations where um, they
Speaker 1: are highly rigid, formalized structured rules, like a Catholic school
Speaker 1: of Mexico exactly UM. Or again um Salem, Massachusetts in
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, you know. Um. And apparently between nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three and half of all the outbreaks of psychogenetic
Speaker 1: or psychogenic illness took place in schools, so that that's
Speaker 1: possibly in part by due to kids being susceptible to
Speaker 1: it more um, but also because of that that rigid
Speaker 1: formalized structure. Yeah. And there's also usually a top down effect,
Speaker 1: like it'll start with a teacher or an older student,
Speaker 1: and then the younger students follow suit, which if you're
Speaker 1: talking influence, would make sense for sure. There was one
Speaker 1: very famous case UM. Apparently there's not very many actual
Speaker 1: academic studies on this, but there's one that came out
Speaker 1: of the New England Journal of Medicine UM that that
Speaker 1: described a case in Tennessee where a teacher noticed, um,
Speaker 1: some weird gas odor, A gassy odor, uh, like the
Speaker 1: chemical kind, Yeah, not like the guy on the front
Speaker 1: road too, did right exactly um, and she apparently started
Speaker 1: suffering symptoms. Uh, and all of a sudden, like a
Speaker 1: hundred and eighties students and teachers had to go to
Speaker 1: the emergency room. The school was shut down for two weeks.
Speaker 1: That did all this environmental testing, couldn't find anything, and
Speaker 1: finally traced it back to UM psychogenic a mass psychogenic disorder,
Speaker 1: if that's what didn't and then everyone In most of
Speaker 1: these cases we should point out everyone. It starts feeling better, yes,
Speaker 1: like in Mexico, and then at school in Tennessee. It's
Speaker 1: it's not like they went on to die or anything. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in the school in Mexico, the these girls were
Speaker 1: at a boarding school. They were only allowed to see
Speaker 1: their parents, I think like three times a year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they couldn't even call. It's like it sounds more like
Speaker 1: a prison. They were allowed letters when they went home.
Speaker 1: Immediately their symptoms cleared up. The problem is that doesn't
Speaker 1: automatically say oh, well, it's obviously mass psychogenic disorder. It
Speaker 1: could be an environmental toxin that they were being exposed
Speaker 1: to still at the school and we're removed from. But
Speaker 1: I think the the definite prognosis is mass psychogenic disorder
Speaker 1: in this case. That's right. So the no Seebo effect
Speaker 1: we talked about that and what the placebo effect, Well,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Yeah, I was trying to be more clever.
Speaker 1: I thought we were more clever than that. Uh, no cebo,
Speaker 1: I think we said in that other podcast it was
Speaker 1: Latin for eyeshall harm. And that's basically whereas you take
Speaker 1: a placebo thinking it's going to help you out, and
Speaker 1: it does help you out because the mind is powerful.
Speaker 1: The no Seebo effect is thinking something bad will result,
Speaker 1: like my teachers getting sick. I think I feel a
Speaker 1: little sick too, and then oh, hey, my neighbor is
Speaker 1: feeling a little sick. I think I'm feeling a little
Speaker 1: sick too. Or this this drug trial that I'm on,
Speaker 1: I was told that I could possibly get some sort
Speaker 1: of gastro intestinal distress. Yeah, and even though I've been
Speaker 1: given a sugar pill, I'm now going yeah because in
Speaker 1: my mind because of the no cebo effect. Uh. There
Speaker 1: was a famous experiment or case from six where there
Speaker 1: was a woman who had a rose allergy and they
Speaker 1: showed her an artificial rose and she began to I
Speaker 1: guess it was convincing and she began to have her
Speaker 1: allergic reaction and they said, ah, ha, it's fake and
Speaker 1: you're faking, and uh she said, oh, well, I think
Speaker 1: I'm feeling better now, and supposedly that cured her of
Speaker 1: her real allergy to real roses. I couldn't find a
Speaker 1: lot to back that up. But is it it is
Speaker 1: a story? Yeah, well no, that's a I mean it
Speaker 1: was in I can't remember the journal, but it was
Speaker 1: really Yeah, it was a real deal thing. And um,
Speaker 1: I don't I didn't get to the bottom of why
Speaker 1: they presented this woman with a fake rose or whatever,
Speaker 1: but they definitely didn't. This definitely happened. And um, the
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 cebo 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 runny 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 no cebo effect. What they found
Speaker 1: was a um, A, I guess, uh, hormone, I believe
Speaker 1: Are you ready? I'm going to try this one. Uh,
Speaker 1: Cola cisto kinon. That sounds great, thanks man. I haven't
Speaker 1: looked at the word, but it sounds right. Coli cisto kinon. Um.
Speaker 1: Do you see it now? Yeah, that's totally right. I
Speaker 1: totally did. So. It's a hormone, right, and it gets
Speaker 1: released and it actually, um, it helps you experience pain.
Speaker 1: So it's a nasty little hormone. But they found in
Speaker 1: testing with the no cebo effect that if you block this,
Speaker 1: you can also block the no sebo effect. So that
Speaker 1: proves two things. Does that block pain though, like your
Speaker 1: pain receptors. So does that mean if you slam your
Speaker 1: hand in the door you won't feel it if you
Speaker 1: can block this? Yes? So um, if you can block
Speaker 1: Coli cisto knon, yes, it will keep you from um
Speaker 1: hypersensitivity to pain, I believe. And this guy named Fabrizio
Speaker 1: Benedetti I think was also in the Strokes Back. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He uh. He was testing out the no eebo effect
Speaker 1: and found that if he told people that he was
Speaker 1: giving them an injection, which is it's a pretty cruel
Speaker 1: test but effective. These post stop people who had just
Speaker 1: come out of surgery. Uh, We're given an injection and
Speaker 1: told this injection is going to increase your pain in
Speaker 1: thirty minutes. I'm sorry, we have to give it to
Speaker 1: it's part of the procedure. He gave some people an
Speaker 1: injection of saline and they reported an increase in pain
Speaker 1: and they all went behind the two way mirror and laughed,
Speaker 1: right yeah, they're like yeah. And then they gave somebody,
Speaker 1: like the other group, the control group, a chemical an
Speaker 1: injection that blocks that pain. But they were told that
Speaker 1: it was going to increase their pain. But they were
Speaker 1: given a chemical that blocks coal is sister kinon, and
Speaker 1: the cbo effect didn't take place. They didn't report an
Speaker 1: increase in pain even though they were told they would. Yes,
Speaker 1: so they So this guy is saying, like the no
Speaker 1: cebo effect is like when when they say, it's not
Speaker 1: just in your head. You're experiencing the same thing as
Speaker 1: if you were experiencing somebody stabbing you. Well, what it
Speaker 1: is really? 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 electro magnetic fields. And
Speaker 1: it's an actual thing now you know, there's more than
Speaker 1: her claiming. It's called e S electro magnetic sensitivity. Where
Speaker 1: she has basically transformed her house. She painted it black.
Speaker 1: She said she's allergic to computers, cell phones, microwaves. She
Speaker 1: had her house rewired UH to make it basically e
Speaker 1: M F free. Uh. She and her husband sleep under
Speaker 1: a silver plated mosquito net to keep out radio waves
Speaker 1: and covered all her windows with protective films, and she
Speaker 1: said she feel a lot better now. So I saw that, Yes,
Speaker 1: electromagnetic sensitivity, that if you expose somebody to a an
Speaker 1: electromagnetic field and then just tell them that you are
Speaker 1: and don't they have the same reaction, which would suggest
Speaker 1: that it's it's no cibo. Well, it's super fascinating because
Speaker 1: you cee cases like this from that to like gluten
Speaker 1: sensitivity becoming a big thing now and people some people
Speaker 1: contend that, well, it's maybe collective hysteria going on, and
Speaker 1: if you think you're going to be sensitive to gluten,
Speaker 1: then you're gonna be sensitive to things that contain gluten.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that people because that's a very
Speaker 1: hot topic. Sure it is, but um, some people have
Speaker 1: claimed that, well, we'll talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: things that exacerbate the mass psychogenic disorder and the no
Speaker 1: cebo effect right after this, so chuck. Back in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, in New Zealand, UH, a drug called el
Speaker 1: trokes in it was a pretty widespread drug in New Zealand.
Speaker 1: It's a hormone replacement drug, and it was the only
Speaker 1: one that the government would pay for, so most people
Speaker 1: who were on this hormone replacement therapy, we're using l
Speaker 1: trokes in. And it had been that way for like decades.
Speaker 1: It was just an established trug Glaxos Smith client hormone
Speaker 1: replacement Glaxo Smith Klin. I think just those there's no
Speaker 1: welcome involved. Um changed just the like the outer the
Speaker 1: inner qualities of it, like the shape of the pill,
Speaker 1: the color um and I think that's about it. But
Speaker 1: the the active ingredient was exactly the same in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, uh And when they released it, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, some reports of bad side effects were starting
Speaker 1: to trickle in, and the government was like, wait, what's
Speaker 1: going on here. It got a little bit of media
Speaker 1: attention and more reports started trickling in, and then the
Speaker 1: media attention grew, and the reports grew and grew, and
Speaker 1: apparently the reporting of adverse effects of altrusin increased two
Speaker 1: thousandfold in a year and a half because of the
Speaker 1: look of the bill. Because of the look of the pill,
Speaker 1: they went back and studied this, and they found that
Speaker 1: in areas where there was more reporting about these adverse
Speaker 1: effects being reported for all trucs, and the more adverse
Speaker 1: effects were being reported in that area. And that kind
Speaker 1: of reveals one of the um risk factors for mass
Speaker 1: psychogenic disorder is the media. It's actually spread through the
Speaker 1: media 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 makes sense? What do you associate
Speaker 1: with nighttime like something tranquil like blue? Yeah, Scotch gotch
Speaker 1: Hamber Uh, yeah, I mean you think of that's what
Speaker 1: I I think it came from. I think the pills
Speaker 1: came after the association rather than the other way around. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I even like when I get a prescription
Speaker 1: for something, when I see the pill, I make a
Speaker 1: judgment on it before I've even had it, just by saying, well,
Speaker 1: don't look at that thing that Yeah, that's a horse pill,
Speaker 1: or that's a capsule with you know, powdery stuff inside
Speaker 1: that's different than the chalky one. It's you. I think
Speaker 1: you just make an association. I don't think I have
Speaker 1: any preconceived notions on what a larger pill will do
Speaker 1: to me or a capsule will do to me other
Speaker 1: than a tablet. But I think it's interesting, though, how
Speaker 1: you make these judgment calls, but without even thinking about Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally you know. I mean like you're you're you probably
Speaker 1: don't 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. No cebo
Speaker 1: effect not great. Poses no, and it poses a lot
Speaker 1: of problems. For instance, there was a study I think
Speaker 1: in the nineties that found that Women who believed that
Speaker 1: they were prone to heart disease were four times likelier
Speaker 1: to die of heart disease than women who didn't believe
Speaker 1: they are prone to it, even though they had all
Speaker 1: the exact same risk factors, basically the same risk risk factors.
Speaker 1: There was nothing differentiating these women aside from a belief
Speaker 1: that they were going to die from heart disease or
Speaker 1: a belief that they weren't, and that led to a
Speaker 1: four time four fold increase in deaths from that. Just
Speaker 1: basically from a belief, is what it suggests. Yeah, we well,
Speaker 1: it's sort of like the I know it's kind of cheesy,
Speaker 1: but the p M A the positive mental attitude. I
Speaker 1: think we've all know someone who walks around so and
Speaker 1: so sick. Oh I know I'm going to get it.
Speaker 1: I just know I'm going to get sick, or you know,
Speaker 1: I just know I'm gonna get cancer because it runs
Speaker 1: in my family. That I think that has an effect
Speaker 1: on things. I have to agree. I know some of
Speaker 1: our more skeptical listeners will are pulling their hair out
Speaker 1: right now, but I totally agree with you. When we
Speaker 1: did our show in Toronto on the way back, you
Speaker 1: me and I flow out of Buffalo, and I was
Speaker 1: feeling a little down, but like at the point where
Speaker 1: I feel like you can talk yourself into staying healthy,
Speaker 1: positive mental attitude. I guess that's what you call it.
Speaker 1: But we were leaving right at about dusk, and the
Speaker 1: sun was just beaming through the windows and illuminating every
Speaker 1: single microbe visible microbe in the air. I could see
Speaker 1: them like just going into my nose in my mouth,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I couldn't stop, Like I couldn't. I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm not gonna get sick. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: get sick. And man, did I ever get sick. But
Speaker 1: I noticed that right when we took off, and no,
Speaker 1: you know what it was. Somebody shut one of their
Speaker 1: um their window covers. Oh the shade, shade exactly is
Speaker 1: the word that I was looking for. Somebody shut their
Speaker 1: shade and I couldn't see it anymore, and I immediately
Speaker 1: started to feel less symptomatic. Immediately, it was like turning
Speaker 1: off a light. And I still got sick, but I
Speaker 1: was just drowning. And basically what my brain was interpreting
Speaker 1: is like being assaulted by foreign invaders, which I am
Speaker 1: all the time, but I normally can't see them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I've done I do that all the time when
Speaker 1: I opened my uh the curtains in the bedroom and
Speaker 1: I'll see you in the morning. I'll see that stuff
Speaker 1: in the air and I just think, oh, man, that's
Speaker 1: what I'm walking around breathing in everything. Dog hair and
Speaker 1: cat hair and Emily hair. So your lungs are just
Speaker 1: chocked full of it. So one of the one of
Speaker 1: the problems this poses chuck for physicians is that we
Speaker 1: expect doctors, or we want doctors to be transparent, to
Speaker 1: not lie to us. Yeah, we've talked a lot about
Speaker 1: this lately. I feel like, yeah, we've talked a lot
Speaker 1: about diseases. Some of our um I pochondriac listeners have
Speaker 1: been like police talking about diseases because now I've got Morgellons,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have like some sort of toxic exposure. Um
Speaker 1: and then very soon leprosy spoiler. So uh, the problem
Speaker 1: is is if you tell somebody that's going into surgery, hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, um, you know you you might have
Speaker 1: trouble walking, you might feel nauseous for the next six months.
Speaker 1: You like, all this stuff that could be associated with
Speaker 1: which we demand from our doctors. It's been shown that
Speaker 1: if you are fearful or in despair going into surgery,
Speaker 1: that's associated with longer healing times and a higher risk
Speaker 1: of post operative infection. Right, So, if you have the
Speaker 1: no cebo effect where doctors are saying, okay, if I
Speaker 1: tell somebody, And it's been proven time after time that
Speaker 1: in drug trials, people who are still are given placebo
Speaker 1: will drop out of drug trials because they're experiencing these
Speaker 1: negative side effects even though they're given the sugar pill. So,
Speaker 1: if you're a doctor and you you know that you
Speaker 1: are telling somebody something that ultimately may end up harming them,
Speaker 1: and you've sworn an oath to do no harm, you've
Speaker 1: got a conundrum going on right now. And that's what
Speaker 1: the no cebo effect poses. It's the problem the no
Speaker 1: cebo effect poses for modern physicians, like how much should
Speaker 1: they tell you? If you're gonna tell somebody that they're
Speaker 1: gonna feel nauseous for six months even though they probably won't,
Speaker 1: should you tell them and give them a chance to
Speaker 1: to basically have the psychosymatic symptom, or tell them they're
Speaker 1: going to feel great. Well, that's another one. Somebody says,
Speaker 1: the solution to this is just frame it differently, Like,
Speaker 1: don't say there's a chance you're gonna have um nausea
Speaker 1: for six months. Say half of a percent of patients
Speaker 1: who go through the same procedure that you're about to
Speaker 1: go through have nausea for six months ninety nine point
Speaker 1: five percent. Don't write you're giving them the same information.
Speaker 1: It's just framework positively. Yeah, and uh that one doctor
Speaker 1: who wrote the article on collectivist area said, Um, what
Speaker 1: he recommends is not naming the illness said that can
Speaker 1: help out. Um, because as soon as you give something
Speaker 1: a name, then it just instantly you know you have
Speaker 1: 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 can see a news story that all the
Speaker 1: other news agencies are running that says, uh, there's been
Speaker 1: some weird chemical leak in the air in Atlanta. Uh,
Speaker 1: people are gonna start walking around and coughing and saying,
Speaker 1: I'm not feeling so good. I have a bitter taste
Speaker 1: in my mouth. There's microbes everywhere. Well, here's a case
Speaker 1: from 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 cough for nausea, it is
Speaker 1: tourette syndrome. Sixteen year old UM, young lady named Laurie Brownwell, uh,
Speaker 1: what year was this? A couple of years ago? Yeah,
Speaker 1: not too long ago, I think two. Um in Corinth,
Speaker 1: New York. Um was at her school's homecoming dance and
Speaker 1: lost consciousness. Um, this is after she had banged at
Speaker 1: a concert. Sorry, man, I thought you were gonna leave
Speaker 1: out like the best part. Yeah, she was headbanging at
Speaker 1: a concert. I wish into a concert that was so
Speaker 1: me too. I didn't find it anywhere. Apparently passed out
Speaker 1: there and had passing outfits. Uh, involuntary twitching and clapping,
Speaker 1: started twisting, her hair, fluttering, her fingers, hey, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: starting stuff like that, and the doctor said, you know what,
Speaker 1: You've got turette syndrome. So Tourette's syndrome is is We've
Speaker 1: had a podcast on It's a real thing and it's
Speaker 1: not psychosomatic. Um. But uh, since that time, fourteen other
Speaker 1: students along with her, thirteen girls and one boy started
Speaker 1: exhibiting at Leroy Junior High School. I'm sorry, Junior Senior
Speaker 1: High School started coming down with threats, right, which is
Speaker 1: not contagious and is not contagious at all. Um. Aaron
Speaker 1: Brockovitch got on the case, um, famous environmental activists, and
Speaker 1: she said, no, I think this has got to do
Speaker 1: with this train derailment from nineteen seventy that dumped cyanide
Speaker 1: all over this town. Um, and I didn't see where
Speaker 1: they found any uh legitimate effects. Right. Again, That's the
Speaker 1: confounding thing about mass psychogenic disorders, that it is still
Speaker 1: possible that there is some weird toxin in the environment
Speaker 1: that is causing this, Like maybe there was exposure to
Speaker 1: cyanide that in these people's brains and all gave them turette.
Speaker 1: And if you stand back and look at it, you're
Speaker 1: like to Tourette syndrome isn't contagious. That doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you can't all come down with Tourette syndrome from exposure
Speaker 1: to a toxic It's just still it's this X factor
Speaker 1: that's out there that you can't just necessarily rule out.
Speaker 1: Which Yeah, and I believe in that case too. The
Speaker 1: um those fourteen students didn't end up with Tourette syndrome.
Speaker 1: That was a good episode, man. I love Turette syndrome one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's an oldie, oldie, but a goodie. And it all
Speaker 1: came from him banging. That's how it started at a
Speaker 1: Nickelback show. Yeah, because Corinth is near Canada. Canada isn't
Speaker 1: let nickel Back out any longer? Really? Are they caged
Speaker 1: in there? Nice? Uh? There's another case of the toxic Lady.
Speaker 1: Did you hear this one? And Riverside, California woman named
Speaker 1: Gloria Ramirez. Um. Yeah, she was dubbed the Toxic Lady
Speaker 1: in n She had cervical cancer and was being tree
Speaker 1: did and all the medical staff started to get sick
Speaker 1: that was treating her. Um. This sounds gross, but they
Speaker 1: said her body exuded a garlicky fruity smell, and her
Speaker 1: blood had flecks of what looked like paper um, which
Speaker 1: sounds called Morglon's actually nice, you like that um. And
Speaker 1: they said that most of the people that got sick
Speaker 1: while treating her were women, more women than men, and
Speaker 1: they all took blood test and came back normal, and
Speaker 1: the health department said mass hysteria. So that's funny because
Speaker 1: 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 Oh it was, That's what I found. So
Speaker 1: they called it mass ysteria at the time, and then
Speaker 1: later 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 sav exactly. That's interacting badly
Speaker 1: with I pancreas. O. Well, uh, this list needs to
Speaker 1: be updated that that, dude, that is a fascinating 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 real,
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 aged 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 more lays it's when you don't feel good
Speaker 1: when you go to work exactly. But some studies have
Speaker 1: found like no, that is the better predictor of sick
Speaker 1: building syndrome is job stress or job dissatisfaction. Um, if
Speaker 1: you have a building full of people who don't like
Speaker 1: their jobs, you're gonna have a building full of people
Speaker 1: with sick building syndrome. But if you go on to
Speaker 1: say like a local government's website or whatever, and you
Speaker 1: look at sick building syndrome, it's a it's treated as
Speaker 1: a real thing. Yeah, well, it definitely affects your gastro
Speaker 1: intestinal like stress does well. Also, apparently it can set
Speaker 1: off bouts of asthma um, which is another reason why
Speaker 1: they think it might have something to do with like
Speaker 1: volatile organic compounds in the ventilation system or new carpeting,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff offcasting. Man, you you smell that
Speaker 1: stuff when you open up a new product. Right. There's
Speaker 1: also the dancing plague, which we mentioned briefly. Tell me
Speaker 1: about it. Uh Fraul Trophia July four, eighteen went out
Speaker 1: on the streets of Strasbourg, France, and started dancing even
Speaker 1: though there was no music, and dancing like a maniac
Speaker 1: for three straight days, and all these people started dancing
Speaker 1: with her, saying this is a good time. Um said.
Speaker 1: Within a month a hundred people were dancing with her
Speaker 1: and couldn't stop and hyperventilating, hallucinating, some drop dead of
Speaker 1: heart attack and stroke and exhaustion. And the authority said,
Speaker 1: let's just hire a band and let him dance, dance
Speaker 1: it out because they've got the hot blood, is what
Speaker 1: they called it. And so they did, and um, a
Speaker 1: lot of people died as a result. It said four
Speaker 1: dred people in the end were struck. Uh. I don't
Speaker 1: think they died, but we're dancers. And then it just stopped,
Speaker 1: and that's when they blame a lot of people blame
Speaker 1: on ergot poisoning, which we've mentioned before, poisoning, and those
Speaker 1: people are clearly tripping on something. They got the hot blood.
Speaker 1: But what it sounds like you just described is basically
Speaker 1: how Tom Hanks invented jogging in the seventies. Yogging. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he just started running and people started following. I I
Speaker 1: wish that part had been cut out of that movie. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought that it was a weird thing that should
Speaker 1: have been on the editing room floor. They really kind
Speaker 1: of derailed things for a while for me. I don't
Speaker 1: think that movie's age well though. Uh. Other people say
Speaker 1: though that it was Sydenham's Korea disorder linked to strep
Speaker 1: throughout and rheumatic fever that causes dance like twitches. Um.
Speaker 1: And then of course modern medical historians say it was
Speaker 1: mass psychosis. I would go with that one. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean back then it made more sense though, when during
Speaker 1: the Salem witch trials and before they knew anything about
Speaker 1: medicine and you could just say you got the hot
Speaker 1: blood or you're having the fits, like yeah, exactly. These
Speaker 1: modern cases the ones that really freaked me out because
Speaker 1: 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 will 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 sick 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, no, sir.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about collective hysteria, which
Speaker 1: is the name of this article. It typed those words
Speaker 1: in the search bar at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: and it will bring it up. And I said, search
Speaker 1: bars means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: this UM episode on Grief. We've got a lot of
Speaker 1: great 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 almost all of the six D plus shows.
Speaker 1: May be 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 one.
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. Last and getting through every day at
Speaker 1: the office at p S. My twin Jessica passed away
Speaker 1: from epilepsy actually a condition called sue dep Sudden unexplained
Speaker 1: death of epilepsy. My mother is trying to raise awareness
Speaker 1: because November is epilepsy Awareness month. So if you guys
Speaker 1: wouldn't mind mentioning this on the show, she would be
Speaker 1: so happy for that. Also, an epilepsy show would be
Speaker 1: cool too. Um. Not a lot is discussed about it,
Speaker 1: and that is Jason Flack and Jason wrote you back
Speaker 1: that is heartbreaking about your twin sister. Very sorry to
Speaker 1: hear that, um, and we will definitely do a show
Speaker 1: on epilepsy. And since this is November, though, people should
Speaker 1: go out and find out what they can during National
Speaker 1: Epilepsy month. We'll follow up with the show. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it'll be in November, but we'll get to
Speaker 1: that one for sure. And thanks for that piece of art.
Speaker 1: And if anyone is interested in a great comic book
Speaker 1: artist from Johnson City, Tennessee, do a lot worse than
Speaker 1: Jason Flack. Jason, thank you very much for sharing that
Speaker 1: with everybody. That means a lot to us. If you
Speaker 1: want to share with us and all of our listeners
Speaker 1: out there, you can tweet to us at s y
Speaker 1: s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook, dot
Speaker 1: com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us
Speaker 1: an email with attached artwork to stuff Podcast at how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com and has always joined us at
Speaker 1: at home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com.
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