Speaker 1: There's definitely some really exciting early indications that the stories
Speaker 1: we tell ourselves have a fundamental effect on our bodies.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Eric Fans, a biologist, rock climbing guide, environmental consultants, and
Speaker 1: environmental educator turned writer. His work focuses on the human
Speaker 1: element of science, the people who do it, those who
Speaker 1: benefit from it, and those who do not. Eric has
Speaker 1: written for The New York Times, Nature, Scientific, American Harper's
Speaker 1: National geographic and other publications. His first book is called
Speaker 1: Suggestible You. Before we get started, just a couple of
Speaker 1: general notes about the show. We have a Facebook group
Speaker 1: which has lots of great discussion going on, lots of
Speaker 1: support for people who are there. Go to Facebook and
Speaker 1: search for the one you feed discussion group that is free.
Speaker 1: Please if you like the show, share it, tell somebody
Speaker 1: about it, help someone else's life get better. And finally,
Speaker 1: its donations as part of our patron program that make
Speaker 1: this podcast possible. So go to one you feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash support and please give today. And here's the
Speaker 1: interview with Eric Vance. Hi, Eric, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hey Eric, thanks for having me. I'm excited to have
Speaker 1: you on. Your book is called Suggestible You. The curious
Speaker 1: science of your brain's ability to deceive, transform and heal.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that we talk on this
Speaker 1: show all the time about is how much of our
Speaker 1: lives are a story that we tell ourselves. And what
Speaker 1: I found fascinating about your book was how profound and
Speaker 1: how deep that can really go within this So I'm
Speaker 1: looking forward to exploring that. But let's start like we
Speaker 1: normally do with the parable There's a grandfather who's talking
Speaker 1: with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grants on stops when he thinks about it for
Speaker 1: a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and
Speaker 1: he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says,
Speaker 1: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 1: by asking you what that parable means to you in
Speaker 1: your life and in the work that you do. I
Speaker 1: love that parable. I hadn't thought about it in many years.
Speaker 1: I guess in my life what it means to me is,
Speaker 1: you know, you feed the ones you feed, but then
Speaker 1: they also tend to pull out table scraps and go
Speaker 1: through your garbage as well, and to be able to
Speaker 1: sort of you know, and sometimes they do that with
Speaker 1: or without your permission. And it's important to remember when
Speaker 1: I think about the parable, that's not just like feeding them,
Speaker 1: but you also have to keep them from sort of
Speaker 1: lurking around the corners and picking up table scraps. So
Speaker 1: that they can still rear up. Yeah. I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the things I like about the Parable is
Speaker 1: it almost sounds like it's this close battle, right, and
Speaker 1: that the only way you're gonna win is to give
Speaker 1: the one more food because it doesn't sound like the
Speaker 1: bad wolf is in any danger of start right, you know,
Speaker 1: And it's not about starving him. It's just kind of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta put my focus here on on this thing.
Speaker 1: And I think that's when I when I hear the Parable,
Speaker 1: I love that idea that like, it really is a battle.
Speaker 1: Just when you think that that other wolve's gone, you know,
Speaker 1: he pops up some plames you didn't expect him and
Speaker 1: he's been, you know, living on garbage, waiting for his
Speaker 1: moment exactly. Your book is really, as I said to
Speaker 1: the title is suggestible you curious science of your brain's
Speaker 1: ability to deceive, transform, and heal. And the book really
Speaker 1: focuses around the placebo effect a lot. It talks about
Speaker 1: no cebos, the opposite that talks about hypnosis, false memories,
Speaker 1: a variety of different things, but at a very high level,
Speaker 1: why don't you summarize kind of what the the underlying
Speaker 1: premises in the book. Basically, the book is about all
Speaker 1: the things your brain tells you that are so that
Speaker 1: just simply aren't so. So it's all the ways that
Speaker 1: your brains are twist reality in order to make what
Speaker 1: it expects into reality. And and that's sort of the
Speaker 1: fundamental thing under this book is that your brain really
Speaker 1: operates on expectations. And it's something that people in psychology
Speaker 1: you talk about, but the average listener may may not
Speaker 1: have heard about. Is is the role of expectations and predictions.
Speaker 1: And your brain goes to enormous lengths to make sure
Speaker 1: that the expectations that it has match reality. And a
Speaker 1: lot of what I talked about in the books sort
Speaker 1: of boiled down to expectations and belief, and it pops
Speaker 1: up in a lot of different ways in our life
Speaker 1: where we think something is true and it may not be,
Speaker 1: but our brain can step in and make it true.
Speaker 1: You quote Daniel Dennett saying the mind is fundamentally an
Speaker 1: anticipator an expectation generator. And we've talked with people on
Speaker 1: the show talk about the mind being a meaning making machine,
Speaker 1: and those are really very similar things, right. It's it's
Speaker 1: the mind is trying to it's got a lot of
Speaker 1: ways it does shortcuts, and it's applying those two things
Speaker 1: even when they're not necessarily true. Fundamentally, the brain is
Speaker 1: taking the past applying it to the president in order
Speaker 1: to predict the future. I mean, that's really fundamentally what
Speaker 1: you're talking about what the brain does. And it could
Speaker 1: be something as simple as when you take a step
Speaker 1: and you assume the ground low you is gonna be hard.
Speaker 1: I mean you do every day, you know, and I've
Speaker 1: experienced when it's not there. But and there's this moment,
Speaker 1: you know, when when these expectations are to get thrown out,
Speaker 1: like you know where you know or you're expecially to
Speaker 1: be soft and it's suddenly hard. Uh, and your whole
Speaker 1: body jolts right because you know you were parent for this.
Speaker 1: And it can be something as simple as that, or
Speaker 1: if I drop this you know this pen and will
Speaker 1: hit the ground, Like we have these expectations built in
Speaker 1: and and it could be something as complicated as you
Speaker 1: know that the hunting will be good on the planes
Speaker 1: this year, you know. Like those are other kinds of
Speaker 1: predictions that we that our brains make, and they're more complex,
Speaker 1: and they're based on a lot of different information using
Speaker 1: the past and pattern recognition, all these other things that
Speaker 1: brain does to create what is essentially a prediction. Once
Speaker 1: you understand that, a lot of these a lot of
Speaker 1: these sort of behaviors come into focus. But one of
Speaker 1: the things that comes into focus is that when you
Speaker 1: put these things together, they do form. They do form
Speaker 1: a story, you know, meaning like you said, you know,
Speaker 1: your your brain is trying to figure out how things
Speaker 1: work so that you know, when that saber tooth tire
Speaker 1: comes around the corner, it knows what to do, and
Speaker 1: it can and it can sort of operated at a
Speaker 1: higher level. And if you've never seen a saber tooth
Speaker 1: tiger before, and that's that meaning, that storytelling and that
Speaker 1: that expectation, they're all tied up in the same, very
Speaker 1: fundamental process of your brain. And that the fact that
Speaker 1: it's so fundamental is what makes it really interesting, because
Speaker 1: this is not some sort of side job that your
Speaker 1: brain does or some interesting quirk. This is really at
Speaker 1: the heart of what it does. Were we alive at
Speaker 1: the same time as saber tooth tigers, because that's the
Speaker 1: example everybody uses for when we're talking about our evolutionary upbringing.
Speaker 1: I'm like, is they say that because we were actually
Speaker 1: alive then, or is it just sort of a reference
Speaker 1: to the North American Mega fun I would have gone extinct,
Speaker 1: Uh gosh, what fifteen thousand years ago? And uh, and
Speaker 1: we were definitely around, So in North America we definitely
Speaker 1: would have run into saber tooth tigers. But us I
Speaker 1: would have probably been known such as were you know,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to put post together in
Speaker 1: in Norway? But but yeah, we generally we're here, all right.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I found just stunning
Speaker 1: about the book was the extent to which the placebo
Speaker 1: effect actually works, how how powerful it can be. And
Speaker 1: the other thing that I think, really when I read
Speaker 1: it it just sort of it's just sort of shocked me,
Speaker 1: was that, you know, when I tend to think of
Speaker 1: something like the placebo effect, I think, well, it's just
Speaker 1: all in your mind, which again it is. But what
Speaker 1: I found completely fascinating is that your brain is actually
Speaker 1: generating the chemicals it would be generating if that effect
Speaker 1: was really happening. So if if your experience in a
Speaker 1: reduction of pain, your brain is increasing your endorphins or
Speaker 1: europioids in a way, that mimics what pain blocking would
Speaker 1: look like. And to me that was stunning. I don't
Speaker 1: know why I hadn't thought of that, but it really
Speaker 1: is powerful. You know, Ever since I was a little kid,
Speaker 1: I've imagined my brain is being this guy controlling things.
Speaker 1: He's got a little telephone, he's talking all the other
Speaker 1: partsy body. It's just sort of the way I can
Speaker 1: sexualize it. But now that I've I've sort of done this,
Speaker 1: resource is easier to think of it more as a
Speaker 1: guy with the giant switchboard in front of him, and
Speaker 1: and your brain is a lot of things, but um,
Speaker 1: but one of the things that is doing is is
Speaker 1: it's playing with you know, a ton of different kinds
Speaker 1: of chemicals. You know, turn one up, turning one down.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of this happening with The brain
Speaker 1: is constantly self regulating and trying to get towards sort
Speaker 1: of some sort of homeostasis, and it's constantly twiddling these knobs.
Speaker 1: And these knobs are attached to real drugs. If you
Speaker 1: give yourself a shot of morphine and opioid to kill
Speaker 1: the pain that you're feeling from something, how different is
Speaker 1: that than if your brain releases that very very similar
Speaker 1: drug to a very specific spot in your brain in
Speaker 1: order to equally deal with pain. And and in fact,
Speaker 1: that might be what your brain is doing all the time,
Speaker 1: every day, all day. And that's something it's like a
Speaker 1: weird transition once you realize, yeah, it's all in your mind.
Speaker 1: But that's where everything is. There's a lot going on there.
Speaker 1: There's chemistry, uh, there's uh, and then there's actually a
Speaker 1: lot of really complicated genetics that are that are informing
Speaker 1: how your brain will perceive different types of pain. And
Speaker 1: this is not psychosis or psychology. This is real brain chemistry. Right,
Speaker 1: You're not imagining it. It's really happening in your brain.
Speaker 1: It's just being triggered by something internal to you versus
Speaker 1: something external to you. You know, in some cases people
Speaker 1: might be imagining it. But like you can't separate one
Speaker 1: from the other, you know, like how how would you
Speaker 1: ever pull the two apart? Attempts have been made, but
Speaker 1: you can measure the body's reaction to like a sapless
Speaker 1: ball effect, like a pain to sleep effect, And when
Speaker 1: people say they feel less pain, sure enough, their body
Speaker 1: is responding as if they feel less pain. Things that
Speaker 1: you can't fake, skin connectivity and uh, and so at
Speaker 1: that point, you know, you can't get any more real
Speaker 1: than that. I mean, if your body is responding, then
Speaker 1: it's happening. It's real. There were a lot of amazing
Speaker 1: things in the book for me. That particular idea that
Speaker 1: just your expectation could change the way you're brain chemistry
Speaker 1: is working to to mimic what a drug would be doing,
Speaker 1: you know, shows how powerful it is. And for this show,
Speaker 1: so much where we talk about is more you know,
Speaker 1: sort of mental day to day. What are the paradigms
Speaker 1: and the and the models our brain works in and
Speaker 1: and it was just a stark reminder to me of
Speaker 1: how much reality is really created by us. You're absolutely
Speaker 1: right that has been played a lot with Hollywood, But um,
Speaker 1: I can't tell you the number of times, you know,
Speaker 1: working on this book that my mind was just blown
Speaker 1: in this very same way to sort of you whack
Speaker 1: on a table that you're feeling something that's real. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the colors, um, the way it feels in
Speaker 1: your knuckles, um, everything else, all the other information is
Speaker 1: coming into you and you know that that's all that's
Speaker 1: all created by your brain. And in fact, a really
Speaker 1: clever scientist Irving Cursions, who's really pioneered Plassy but worked.
Speaker 1: He told me that there's a wave of information that's
Speaker 1: coming from your brain about what you know, expectations and
Speaker 1: all these beliefs and things, and it collides with a
Speaker 1: wave of information that's coming from your body, and uh,
Speaker 1: and that's you know, what's your body is feeling, you
Speaker 1: know what's going on around you, and where those two
Speaker 1: things collide, that's what reality is. Sometimes they don't match up,
Speaker 1: but the one that wins, where those two things quade,
Speaker 1: that's what we know of as as what is. And
Speaker 1: with the placebo effect, in some ways there's a disconnect there.
Speaker 1: What your body is telling is happening is different from
Speaker 1: what your brain is telling you. And when the brain wins,
Speaker 1: then you have these effects where you're you're your brain
Speaker 1: sort of papers over what what what it was feeling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought that what you just said, they're about the
Speaker 1: brain is sending the signal, the body sending the signal,
Speaker 1: and they meet in the middle and merge into something.
Speaker 1: Is one of the best descriptions of the mind body connection.
Speaker 1: I think i'd ever heard it in a way that
Speaker 1: really made a lot of sense to me because there's
Speaker 1: always this question of you know, the Smith's you know,
Speaker 1: does the mind rule the body or does the body
Speaker 1: rule the mind? You know, I don't know. People jump
Speaker 1: on one side of that, and I love that because
Speaker 1: it talks about how it's both. It's really in the
Speaker 1: middle of those two things that perception arises. Obviously, I'm
Speaker 1: not the first person to say that, you know, the
Speaker 1: mind of the body aren't actually separate. But like when
Speaker 1: when you start looking at some of these things, take
Speaker 1: take dopamine, doke, it's a big player in this or
Speaker 1: something called growing. These are chemicals that well, dopamine has
Speaker 1: like fifty different jobs in the body. It does all
Speaker 1: these different kinds of things. Um. Part of it is
Speaker 1: that you know, it's creating as rewards, and it's how
Speaker 1: we process rewards, which is why you get a boost
Speaker 1: of it when you win at the at the slots
Speaker 1: or you know, at poker. Um. But another thing is
Speaker 1: a movement, which is why it's involved in Parkinson's. And
Speaker 1: another thing is is is stomach, you know, and so
Speaker 1: it's you know, these brain comes you think of as
Speaker 1: doing a specific thing and then it turns out it's
Speaker 1: involved in stomach like digestion, and and then like, well,
Speaker 1: then there's no real break between the mind and the
Speaker 1: body because these you know, so many of these things
Speaker 1: are are really interconnected. And uh and you know, these
Speaker 1: chemicals do double duty and they work in the body,
Speaker 1: and they work in bizarre ways that aren't connecting to
Speaker 1: other at all, and and once you get used to that,
Speaker 1: all this becomes a lot more easy to wrap your
Speaker 1: head around. Yeah. I agree. I mean I think when
Speaker 1: people are like, well, the mind body connection, like it
Speaker 1: seems pretty obvious, right, They're wired together and to your point,
Speaker 1: the chemicals are flowing. This doesn't seem to be a
Speaker 1: topic that really should be a lot of debate. Um.
Speaker 1: But I just loved the way that guy phrased that
Speaker 1: as as a way to think about it. So you
Speaker 1: tell a story in the book about you getting your
Speaker 1: first I would say real experience of the placebo effect
Speaker 1: at the n I H Can you tell that story? Sure? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. I I was working on a magazine piece
Speaker 1: for Discover magazine on the placebo effect, and I've been
Speaker 1: fascinated by this. I should mention I was raising Christmas science,
Speaker 1: so I didn't go to a doctor till I was
Speaker 1: eighteen years old, and um, I don't practice Christmas science anymore,
Speaker 1: but I was always fascinated with the things that I
Speaker 1: saw when I was growing up. So when I got
Speaker 1: this opportunity to work in the story, I had sort
Speaker 1: of leapt at it. And one of the scientists I
Speaker 1: visited her name was Lawanna Coloqua. She's now at the
Speaker 1: University of Maryland's phenomenal researcher, and she's really pioneered a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of these questions. She agreed to
Speaker 1: electrocute me for half an hour or so. I think
Speaker 1: she used the word no susception, tolerance paradigm or something
Speaker 1: like that. I didn't really catch it until I showed
Speaker 1: up there, and she hooked me up to this machine
Speaker 1: that would give me really painful hucks. And every time
Speaker 1: I saw a green light, she give me a little
Speaker 1: sort of pinch, would just be a little shock that
Speaker 1: would just sort of sort of irritate me. Every time
Speaker 1: I saw a red light, she gave me a big
Speaker 1: one that would actually make my foot twitch, that's how
Speaker 1: powerful it was. Would sort of, you know, really get
Speaker 1: my attention. And then she go back and forth, boom boom, boom,
Speaker 1: green red green, red, to the point where every time
Speaker 1: I saw that red light, I was just like, you know,
Speaker 1: oh God, God, no, no, no. And and she she
Speaker 1: had a pause, very clever woman. She she had a
Speaker 1: pause sort of between the color and the shock. So
Speaker 1: you really had had a split second to really think
Speaker 1: about what was about to happen. And uh. On the
Speaker 1: last round, it was just about twenty five minutes, it
Speaker 1: felt like the lower one had been turned up just
Speaker 1: a little bit. It's sort of like a harder pinch um,
Speaker 1: and then the high one still sort of made my
Speaker 1: foot twitch. And when she came in afterwards, she said,
Speaker 1: you know, he did a great job, and and she
Speaker 1: had given me all these really bizarre instructions about this thing.
Speaker 1: I attached my finger, so I was it was hard
Speaker 1: to know what to focus on. And she done it
Speaker 1: on purpose, because she came in she said, look, on
Speaker 1: the last time around, I gave you the big one
Speaker 1: every time. And I'm not crazy, you know. I wasn't
Speaker 1: trying to please her, you know, or tell her what
Speaker 1: you wanted to hear. Like, I didn't feel the pain,
Speaker 1: my foot didn't twitch. It really hit home that this
Speaker 1: was not some sort of you know, thing that happened
Speaker 1: to other people like it could happen to you, you know,
Speaker 1: in an instant, and it's and and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's real. You could see your foot not twitching. I
Speaker 1: swear I did not feel that pain. And what was
Speaker 1: happening was my brain was stepping in. It had this
Speaker 1: expectation that was built over the previous rounds that grain
Speaker 1: meant lower pain, and when that didn't happen, my brain
Speaker 1: stepped in and self medicated itself so that it would
Speaker 1: match expectation, would match reality. And it's the same idea
Speaker 1: behind when you take a pill and you wanted to
Speaker 1: make you uh uh, you know you want to like
Speaker 1: make some pain, maybe make a headache away. You know,
Speaker 1: you have this expectation and if it doesn't happen while in,
Speaker 1: your brain just steps in makes it happen. Your brain
Speaker 1: doesn't want to be wrong. Hey, everybody, before you hit
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Speaker 1: In general, the science shows and you talk about in
Speaker 1: the book that some people have stronger placebo responses than others,
Speaker 1: and that it can even vary depending on what the
Speaker 1: thing is. So a pill really does it for you,
Speaker 1: whereas for Sally if she gets raky, she thinks that's
Speaker 1: healed her. Right, So the plus ebo effect can be
Speaker 1: different among different things, and that some people just have
Speaker 1: more of a tendency towards them than others. This is
Speaker 1: actually the holy grail of placebo. Research has been trying
Speaker 1: to determine if this is true. Now my personal beliefs
Speaker 1: has got to be true. Like it feels so right,
Speaker 1: But I should say that it's not as easy as
Speaker 1: so you make it sound and as I wish it
Speaker 1: would be. Uh. That's what really separates, you know, placebos
Speaker 1: from hypnosis. Hypnosis people tend to be hypnotize herbal. If
Speaker 1: they hypnotize able, they tend to stay that way. If
Speaker 1: they're not, they tend to stay that way. If you know,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't change throughout some of life much um,
Speaker 1: placebo changes from day to day, and it changes from
Speaker 1: one thing to the next. And yes, there are these
Speaker 1: sort of trends where you see, like a bigger pill
Speaker 1: tends to work be more effective than a smaller pill. Uh.
Speaker 1: Yellow pills for depression tend to work better than blue pills.
Speaker 1: UM injections uh tend to work better than those. And
Speaker 1: and and sham surgery, you know, like Parkinson's sham surgery
Speaker 1: works far better than a than a sham pill. UM.
Speaker 1: So those are sort of trends. But predicting who's going
Speaker 1: to respond or who's going to respond to which thing
Speaker 1: that's sort of been the goal or this holy grail
Speaker 1: for research. And and I profile some some researchers who
Speaker 1: are doing who have found a potential solution in genetics,
Speaker 1: and that research really to me shows me why these
Speaker 1: things are so complicated, because these chemicals are working against
Speaker 1: each other, they're working with each other, they're constantly changing.
Speaker 1: And it helps explain why these placebo responders that people
Speaker 1: have been looking for signs have been looking for them
Speaker 1: for you know, sixty years, um why they haven't been
Speaker 1: easy to find because there are so many complex dynamics
Speaker 1: at play. But it does seem like if we can
Speaker 1: understand those dynamics better than yes, we can figure out
Speaker 1: who these people are and who's going to respond to
Speaker 1: what placebos and so not there yet, but that's sort
Speaker 1: of this wonderful potential goal. And you can look at
Speaker 1: this one gene and and I'll just you know, and
Speaker 1: it's it's compt cemt. And if you've done three and me,
Speaker 1: and you can look up and see which one you are,
Speaker 1: and then there's one that really helps predict if you're
Speaker 1: going to be a placebo respond or not. But it's
Speaker 1: not definite. I wish we were as certain as you
Speaker 1: made me you made it sound. But but but I
Speaker 1: think someday we maybe when anybody is reading a book,
Speaker 1: you're sort of thinking through it in your own experience.
Speaker 1: So what it's been like for me, I was thinking
Speaker 1: of an experience where I've been on certain types of
Speaker 1: medicine for a long time, and if I don't take them,
Speaker 1: I tend to, you know, about twelve hours later start
Speaker 1: having really bad symptoms. And I was just thinking about, like,
Speaker 1: if I was responding strongly to the placebo, you would
Speaker 1: think that those symptoms wouldn't necessarily kick in, because I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't actually well maybe subconsciously I do, but I
Speaker 1: don't certainly consciously know if I forgot to take my
Speaker 1: medicine or not. It's like I just never thought of it,
Speaker 1: and so I was just thinking of it through that
Speaker 1: lens of it sounds like what you're saying is sometimes
Speaker 1: that might work. Placebo works for me, and other times
Speaker 1: it doesn't. All of us experienced placebo effects like to say, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it doesn't happen to me, Like and
Speaker 1: my favorite thing for people tell me it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not I'm not gullible. This you know,
Speaker 1: this stuff is really real, this thing I have, Yes,
Speaker 1: you are gullable. We're all gullible. Um. And so that's
Speaker 1: I guess the first thing. But but you're right, you do.
Speaker 1: When it comes to your own health, you do have
Speaker 1: to come to understand yourself a bit, like what what
Speaker 1: stories appeal to you? I mean, we've all had this experience.
Speaker 1: There's some people who can just who can just try
Speaker 1: some placebo thing or put you know, take a crystal
Speaker 1: rubber of their body and they just feel better. And
Speaker 1: there's some people that just don't. And I do believe
Speaker 1: in my heart that there are some people who are
Speaker 1: just placebo prone and we just haven't been able to
Speaker 1: figu out how to isolate them. But we all I
Speaker 1: feel like we know them. I feel like I've met them. Um.
Speaker 1: But uh, for the individual, it's about knowing sort of
Speaker 1: what resonates with you, I think, and thinking about yourself
Speaker 1: as you know, what, what kinds of stories, what kinds
Speaker 1: of things feel like they should be working, and knowing
Speaker 1: when that's appropriate, when it's not appropriate to play with
Speaker 1: yourself that way. Yeah, you mentioned a placebo response you have,
Speaker 1: which is the same one I have slightly different brand.
Speaker 1: But you talk about Airborne for not getting sick. You know,
Speaker 1: I believe in emergency, like you know, anybody's sick around me.
Speaker 1: I just start taking a ton of it, and I'm
Speaker 1: you know, I'm convinced it works. I'm not convinced that
Speaker 1: it's necessarily emergency doing it, but I'm convinced that whatever
Speaker 1: it is, whether it's me believing it or not, that
Speaker 1: seems to be pretty effective for me. I shouldn't say
Speaker 1: that because tomorrow I'll probably come down with the flu,
Speaker 1: but I I will say this much well first of
Speaker 1: all for me, and it's the fizziness, the fizziness of
Speaker 1: the airbord. It just gives me right away. Um, oh
Speaker 1: my god. Yeah. I you can think out, I can
Speaker 1: think for anything. I'm sure, right just a physics's got
Speaker 1: to be doing something, and that this is something scientists
Speaker 1: often refer to as an active placebo, because it's doing something,
Speaker 1: it's just not the thing that you think it is.
Speaker 1: It's an important thing to know about yourself. It's also
Speaker 1: important to know when these things aren't appropriate. And a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff I said, if you read my book,
Speaker 1: it's not like it will take away your ability to
Speaker 1: have a placebo effect. If you write my book, um,
Speaker 1: it might I'm not sure that I can. I may
Speaker 1: have hurt my own ability to have place of both X,
Speaker 1: but if you read it. Because a lot of these
Speaker 1: things are actually innate, they're they're they're unconscious. And that's
Speaker 1: one of the really exciting areas of placebo researches is
Speaker 1: trying to separate conscious from unconscious place ebos and the
Speaker 1: and these would be, you know, a conscious placebo would
Speaker 1: be when someone tells you this really remarkable story about
Speaker 1: this thing they're gonna do to you, and they do it,
Speaker 1: and you feel better because you heard this great story.
Speaker 1: And that's sort of a conscious process. But there's the
Speaker 1: unconscious ones that are really you know, from from experience
Speaker 1: that you sort of that has sort of been ingrained
Speaker 1: in you through classical conditioning or some other form of
Speaker 1: repetitive sort of experience that you actually like. You know,
Speaker 1: if you see a white coat, if you take a pill.
Speaker 1: For a lot of people, it doesn't matter what you're
Speaker 1: consciously thinking, it's going to trigger certain responses because your body,
Speaker 1: your body is going to do it. And and so
Speaker 1: you know that phyzy drink you know, it may not
Speaker 1: matter or a new case the emergency. It may not
Speaker 1: matter what you're thinking about it. It might just work
Speaker 1: anyway because your body has been conditioned. Let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about chronic pain. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: different parts in the book about chronic pain, and and
Speaker 1: I've had a couple of people in the show who
Speaker 1: suffer from chronic pain or chronic illness, and we talk
Speaker 1: about how they can increase their ability by working on
Speaker 1: it mentally. What were you finding as you did this
Speaker 1: book about chronic pain? Pain is probably the perfect place
Speaker 1: to really understand where placebo and belief meets health. And
Speaker 1: when you talk to people who study chronic pain, people
Speaker 1: who who especially people who treat chronic pain, none of
Speaker 1: the stuff I talked about in the book is is
Speaker 1: terribly new to them, Like they deal with this every
Speaker 1: day because belief and expectation play a huge role in
Speaker 1: chronic pain, and it makes it really hard to come
Speaker 1: up with new treatments. You think about drugs for for
Speaker 1: chronic pain, getting over the placebo effect is enormous. You're
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, levels of fifty sixty percent placebo
Speaker 1: response in large trials. I mean, how how do you
Speaker 1: get a drug over, I mean it's more. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: even morphine you know, has his limits certain certain a
Speaker 1: morphine like and so it makes it really hard to
Speaker 1: come up with drugs and also makes it very hard
Speaker 1: to start trials with drugs. How do you know if
Speaker 1: you're going down the right the right pathway, you know,
Speaker 1: with the early stages of a drug trial. And it
Speaker 1: also means that a lot of different things can help
Speaker 1: chronic pain patients. And one of the doctors I talked
Speaker 1: to you, I thought one of the best chronic pain
Speaker 1: doctors ever, talked to Sean Mackie at Stanford. You know,
Speaker 1: he says, you know, he first of all, he's desperate
Speaker 1: for anything, and he says he's only able to help
Speaker 1: of his patients. Uh. I think he said cure. But um,
Speaker 1: you know, he said, if you're a baseball player, you know,
Speaker 1: you're making millions. But as a doctor, that's not really good,
Speaker 1: you know. And it's just it's because it's so hard,
Speaker 1: and he things, you can get entrenched and a lot
Speaker 1: of people believe that your brain sort of gets he
Speaker 1: creates these habits of feeling pain and experiencing pain. Once
Speaker 1: it's in that habit, it's very hard to get out of.
Speaker 1: So he will, I mean, he will encourage people to
Speaker 1: go back to church, he'll courage people to do mindfulness,
Speaker 1: and all kinds of different techniques, playing with Transcrian magnetic stimulation,
Speaker 1: even though it doesn't really outperform p cebos anything, in
Speaker 1: order to get an edge on on this this really
Speaker 1: really multi headed beast that is chronic pain. And so
Speaker 1: many cases the source of the pain is obvious, but
Speaker 1: in other cases it's not. You have people who have
Speaker 1: fibromyalgia or neuralgia and it's not and people are suffering.
Speaker 1: People are you know, many of them have had their
Speaker 1: lives are on and I've spoken to a lot of them,
Speaker 1: and it's not clear how this pain can be treated
Speaker 1: because it's created by the brain. And the difference between
Speaker 1: like purely chronic pain that's purely created in the brain
Speaker 1: versus chronic pain from a back surgery you got twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, I mean, I don't I don't know that
Speaker 1: anyone really knows what the difference is there, and and
Speaker 1: so it makes it very difficult to treat and placebos
Speaker 1: for good or for ill um placebos and Charlatan's have
Speaker 1: worked their way into that field. For hundreds thousands of years,
Speaker 1: people have looked to all kinds of inert substances to
Speaker 1: try and treat chronic pain. It's on on the internet
Speaker 1: or late night TV every every day. You can see these, uh,
Speaker 1: these opportunities to treat chronic pain. And if it works,
Speaker 1: then it works, and and it's hard to argue that
Speaker 1: when you know, when you see the results, you can't
Speaker 1: argue that. So you talk about the no sebo response,
Speaker 1: which is basically the opposite, right, I imagine something's gonna hurt,
Speaker 1: so it really hurts. And it seems like that's a
Speaker 1: big piece of chronic pain. Also is the expectation in
Speaker 1: the way we're viewing and looking at it. No sea
Speaker 1: bows are tough to study, uh and and you can
Speaker 1: look at them through pain, and you can look at
Speaker 1: through some of the brain pathways and scientists, you know Luana,
Speaker 1: the person who shocked me, she has really pioneered a
Speaker 1: lot of this this work and no sea bows, but
Speaker 1: they're hard to study because you know, you can't you
Speaker 1: can't go to, say a Parkinson's patient and say here,
Speaker 1: take this pill. It will make your parkins is worse.
Speaker 1: You can't go to a depressed patient and say this
Speaker 1: is gonna make your depression worse. It's just, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just not not right with chronic pain. The relationship
Speaker 1: between no sea bows and chronic pain. How much of
Speaker 1: your pain is you know, is created by your expectation?
Speaker 1: That is a very difficult question. And I talked to
Speaker 1: a lot of pain doctors who struggle with this. You know,
Speaker 1: they have these these these patients. They tell these stories,
Speaker 1: like these big muscular sort of dock workers who come
Speaker 1: in with this, you know, no sign of pain, no
Speaker 1: physical you know, symptoms at all, and they're feeling is
Speaker 1: crippling pain. They can't they can't work. And then these
Speaker 1: old ladies come in, you know, who had a little
Speaker 1: crick in their back, you know, while garden usual. They
Speaker 1: come in and you know, their hips are completely disintegrated
Speaker 1: and they've got all these problems. Yet they don't feel
Speaker 1: any pain and these other people do. And what what's
Speaker 1: the difference is two people? Is one of the great
Speaker 1: mysteries of you know, certainly pain research, but um I
Speaker 1: think also of brain science. It's just it's just, uh,
Speaker 1: I think when we crack that it's gonna a whole
Speaker 1: new day. So you're talking the book about hypnosis, and
Speaker 1: you say that, you know, it seems that people are
Speaker 1: very inclined to be more easily or less easily hypnotized.
Speaker 1: And you made a comparison in the book between meditation
Speaker 1: and hypnosis. And I'll read from the book. So, studies
Speaker 1: suggest that having a busy mind can limit a person's
Speaker 1: ability to manage pain. Imagine pain management is a skill
Speaker 1: like running or weightlifting. According to Jensen, hypnosis is a
Speaker 1: little like taking an already strong sprinter to the gym
Speaker 1: and pushing her to a whole new level. Meditation is
Speaker 1: more like what happens when a couch potato who has
Speaker 1: never worked at a day in his life drastically changes
Speaker 1: his eating habits and starts running every day. So the
Speaker 1: question I had coming out of that, because that couch
Speaker 1: potato could eventually become a great sprinter, right if you
Speaker 1: think about it in the real world. So does that
Speaker 1: mean that meditation done over a period of time might
Speaker 1: increase your ability to be hypnotized? Does anybody looked at
Speaker 1: that at all? No? And and and that's a great question.
Speaker 1: I mean, uh, this first of all, um, you know,
Speaker 1: hypnosis is one of the most poorly studied fascinating topics
Speaker 1: in all of sciences. I mean, it just it drives
Speaker 1: me nuts that more people don't study it because the
Speaker 1: applications are incredible, and you know, when it works on
Speaker 1: his people segment of people who are hypnotize herbal it's
Speaker 1: as this you know this ability. You know, the same
Speaker 1: scientists told me about this guy who you got hypnotized.
Speaker 1: You know, these full body burns and they were like
Speaker 1: pulling off these bandages and scrubbing out these burns and
Speaker 1: he didn't feel any of it, um because and he
Speaker 1: wasn't asleep, he was awake, but he just wasn't feeling
Speaker 1: it because he had been hypnotized. That that's something we
Speaker 1: should understand and we know is not being studied enough.
Speaker 1: But what they were referring to is these sort of
Speaker 1: different types of brainwaves um that are that are let's
Speaker 1: just say they're associated with hypnosis versus meditation. We were
Speaker 1: often thinking of them sort of like this, this brainwaves
Speaker 1: happens right when you start meditating and then stops when
Speaker 1: when you don't the one for hypnosis. It's not that simple,
Speaker 1: but you know, there are different brainways that seemed to
Speaker 1: be associated with these different things and and and that's
Speaker 1: what they're looking at, and that's how they sort of
Speaker 1: came up with that analogy. And yes, um, in both
Speaker 1: cases these are certainly in meditation, there's there's the opportunities
Speaker 1: for building skills, for building these abilities. It probably is
Speaker 1: not the exact same mechanism as hypnosis, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like they're interchangeable, but there is the skill
Speaker 1: building thing. Now with hypnosis, there's not really that same
Speaker 1: skill building ability. There is a certain limit if you're
Speaker 1: not hypnotizable. You know, it's not clear that you can
Speaker 1: make yourself more so though, Uh though, I I think
Speaker 1: if we studied it more, we'd find out that there
Speaker 1: are ways can become more hypnotizable. I just I think
Speaker 1: that just hasn't been explored as much as it could
Speaker 1: have been. Um, but it's it's certainly not like me.
Speaker 1: I think. I think that's the difference between those two things.
Speaker 1: And when you when you make that, I guess what
Speaker 1: he was trying to get out was with these types
Speaker 1: of brain waves. Um, there is, uh, there's an indication
Speaker 1: that that one thing is you know, you're sort of
Speaker 1: flexing these muscles or you're building these muscles. So this
Speaker 1: is not really the topic of your book at all,
Speaker 1: but your reference in the book, so I want to
Speaker 1: talk about it. So you talk about memory, Well, actually
Speaker 1: it is a topic as you talk about false memories,
Speaker 1: and I find that's a fascinating area. And I don't
Speaker 1: think we're gonna have time to get in there to that,
Speaker 1: but you do reference a book where somebody talks about
Speaker 1: the seven sins of memory, and you list what they are,
Speaker 1: and you said that your favorite one is absent mindedness.
Speaker 1: And so I'm curious because A I have a terrible memory,
Speaker 1: and B I am very absent minded. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to hear more about that. Okay, So I think what
Speaker 1: you're referring to is Daniel Shacktor's book, uh, and it's
Speaker 1: one of the sort of the bibles of memory research.
Speaker 1: And he's just one of the greatest researchers in this area.
Speaker 1: And all of them get to is this notion that
Speaker 1: memory is not always as reliable as you think it is.
Speaker 1: Um and once you experience, uh, you know, what you
Speaker 1: think of as being memory, rest of this image of
Speaker 1: this this uh, this video, it's like a picture you
Speaker 1: pull out. Yeah, you just and yeah, and you can
Speaker 1: like instant recalling the movies in fact that you know
Speaker 1: people do so like the two hypnosis, Um, they'll like
Speaker 1: go in and see a place that used to be
Speaker 1: and look for details they don't seen the first time.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there was this wall, there's the clock was
Speaker 1: wall that doesn't exist. You should never mix hypnosis and
Speaker 1: memories that there there. They don't go together well because
Speaker 1: their memories are really fallible and they're easy to twist
Speaker 1: and uh. And that's sort of what what is getting
Speaker 1: out with that book is all the different ways that
Speaker 1: your memory can fail you. I don't know failure the
Speaker 1: right word, but that we are fallible and uh, absent
Speaker 1: minded necessary fits in the one that's God knows, it's
Speaker 1: it's the bane of my existence. And false memories is
Speaker 1: an any one where you can create things and you
Speaker 1: can become very convinced that these things happen when they
Speaker 1: didn't and there is an element of suggestibility. This is
Speaker 1: why I sort of put this in the book with
Speaker 1: because I'm a I'm a science writer, not a scientist.
Speaker 1: I can go a little further away from you know,
Speaker 1: established science, and I put this in there and be
Speaker 1: provocative because this is something It is an element of suggestibility,
Speaker 1: and scientists will talk about this after the interview a
Speaker 1: lot about you know what, if there was some connection there,
Speaker 1: And the way I've connected it in my mind is
Speaker 1: Placebo's are suggestion for the future. If you take this,
Speaker 1: you will feel better. You know this, this will make
Speaker 1: you feel this way. Hypnosis is very much a sort
Speaker 1: of suggestion for the present. You know, you're walking through
Speaker 1: a field and you know you can feel the pain
Speaker 1: sort of drifting off of you like some are like
Speaker 1: autumn leaves. You know, this imagery that hypnotists us is
Speaker 1: always in the present. And if that's true, then then
Speaker 1: false memories feel like there there a suggestion for the past.
Speaker 1: There's this they're they're sort of suggesting that something that
Speaker 1: already happened happened differently than it than it did, or
Speaker 1: didn't happen at all. Um And that's and and it's
Speaker 1: it's hard not to get drawn in and fascinated by
Speaker 1: that when you're looking at these these these issues sort
Speaker 1: of and you know in total and and you can't
Speaker 1: help but wonder if there's not some connection there between.
Speaker 1: Our brains are fallible, and we have these stories we
Speaker 1: tell ourselves and some of those stories are stories about
Speaker 1: our lives and what's happened to us, and it feels
Speaker 1: very much the same. Though you know that direct connection
Speaker 1: hasn't been found yet. There's been a lot lately coming
Speaker 1: out about a lot of psychological studies and the inability
Speaker 1: to replicate them. Is this a very robust area of study?
Speaker 1: And most things that you're talking about are you know,
Speaker 1: do we have a pretty high level of confidence? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, this is something that I really take very seriously.
Speaker 1: As I said, I'm not a scientist. I'm a science writer,
Speaker 1: you know, and I take a lot of people, a
Speaker 1: lot of differ perspective, a lot of research, and I
Speaker 1: sort of combined it in this book. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of information and there hopefully a lot of it's fun
Speaker 1: and easier to read. Um. But I didn't I didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of time for studies that I didn't
Speaker 1: think were robust. And if you look at some of
Speaker 1: the stuff I talked about, you know, the internal pharmacies, uh,
Speaker 1: and how your brain releases opioids in order to treat
Speaker 1: your pain. Well, this goes back to the seventies ninety eight,
Speaker 1: I think was when people first really linked placebos to opioids,
Speaker 1: which the time we're basically you know, the newly discovered
Speaker 1: in orphans that that that had been discovered only a
Speaker 1: few years before, and you know, and and and it
Speaker 1: was decades of scientists really in obscurity, hacking away at
Speaker 1: these ideas, you know, piece at a time until we
Speaker 1: could start imaging them. And when science started imaging them
Speaker 1: in like two thousand, you really started seeing things fit
Speaker 1: in a way that made sense with all the science
Speaker 1: that had come before. So when you when you see
Speaker 1: this continuity and these ideas sort of holding true, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is all pretty sound science. And and
Speaker 1: the big question is where we go from here, you know,
Speaker 1: like what the science is coming next? And and you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of science I talked to you, La Wanna
Speaker 1: Um another guy UM by the name of Toro Weger.
Speaker 1: I mean, these are really solid scientists. Hore Weger one
Speaker 1: of the guys who first imaged the placebo effect. He
Speaker 1: understands the statistics behind imaging better than almost any other scientists.
Speaker 1: I've talked to you. Brain sciences, I've talked to you,
Speaker 1: so I feel very confident about all of the sciences
Speaker 1: in this book. Um, I'm curious to see what comes
Speaker 1: next and if and if you know, uh, if that
Speaker 1: solid science continues, excellent. So we're gonna wrap up here
Speaker 1: in a minute. But I want to talk about one
Speaker 1: other study. And I can't remember whether we've talked about
Speaker 1: it on this show or not, but it just blows
Speaker 1: my mind when I hear it. And it's the study
Speaker 1: about the maids and exercise. Can you can you share
Speaker 1: that story or that that study. It's not a story,
Speaker 1: it's a study. It's funny to bring this up right
Speaker 1: after I talked about the solid science. This is actually
Speaker 1: one of those studies I really wish had been continued longer.
Speaker 1: And this is an area so this is UM. This
Speaker 1: is a study by a researcher now at Stanford, uh
Speaker 1: Aliot Crumb, really bright young woman who's been fascinated with
Speaker 1: some of these same questions that I have. And she
Speaker 1: did the study years ago. I think it's part of
Speaker 1: her graduate work. UH looking at UM so the stories
Speaker 1: that that that we're told to UM people who were
Speaker 1: worked um in in hotels and UH and these people
Speaker 1: when when they she asked them about how much exercise
Speaker 1: they got, they say they've got very very little. And
Speaker 1: they describe their sort of lack of exercise, and then
Speaker 1: with half of them, she she Um gave them a
Speaker 1: presentation where they talked about how much exercise they're getting
Speaker 1: while they're working every day, like how much their work
Speaker 1: actually helps them be fit. And then she tracked for
Speaker 1: a while the way that their bodies changed and what
Speaker 1: she she noticed some some physiological differences in the way
Speaker 1: that sort of the heart health, and a couple of
Speaker 1: other things with how these women responded. Just just the
Speaker 1: information that actually, every day you're you're working out, you're
Speaker 1: actually getting exercise just by working, and that realization had
Speaker 1: seemed to have an effect on their body. Now, what
Speaker 1: she wasn't able to do is to track them then
Speaker 1: for the next ten years or whatever and really look
Speaker 1: at the long term effects of that knowledge and the
Speaker 1: knowledge that you know, it's it's like the same thing
Speaker 1: that uh fitbit does. You know, when you put these
Speaker 1: things in your wrists and suddenly you see how much
Speaker 1: you're walking every day, you feel like you're exercising more.
Speaker 1: Very likely it's a huge effect in your body. This
Speaker 1: is an area where we do need more science. We
Speaker 1: need ten more people like Elliot Crumb working on this
Speaker 1: because it's just, you know, she's it's just so fascinating
Speaker 1: what she's been able to dig up. She did another
Speaker 1: study where just telling people uh the calorie count um
Speaker 1: in a shake um made a difference to actually physiological
Speaker 1: difference to their bodies. And one shake was sort of
Speaker 1: a a very heavy I think it's a six hundred
Speaker 1: calorie heavy, sort of indulged in shaking. The other one
Speaker 1: was a hundred fifty calorie sort of diet shape. Well,
Speaker 1: both of them were three hundred calories. Neither of them
Speaker 1: they were the same shake, but they're in different packaging.
Speaker 1: And she actually saw a change in grelling, which is
Speaker 1: a way that your your your stomach tells your brain
Speaker 1: that it's full and also as part of the digester process,
Speaker 1: is part of your metallism um. And that actually changed
Speaker 1: in the people who were told that they were uh,
Speaker 1: they had a heavier shake, that ramped up, it became
Speaker 1: much more active. So again, you know, I'd love to
Speaker 1: track these people for you know, years and put a
Speaker 1: bunch of money into sort of finding out how this
Speaker 1: affects a little long term because we don't know that.
Speaker 1: But they're definitely some really exciting early indications that the
Speaker 1: stories we tell ourselves have a fundamental effect on our bodies.
Speaker 1: So the study you were just discussing, you were told
Speaker 1: either you had you were getting a very high calorie
Speaker 1: shake or a low calorie shake. Um, they were both
Speaker 1: exactly the same. And the and the people who believe
Speaker 1: they were getting a high colliery shake felt more full
Speaker 1: and not just felt it, but you could you could
Speaker 1: see the chemical change in them of the signals being full.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they felt more full the chemical
Speaker 1: that's sort of elusive chemical called graal and we can
Speaker 1: you can read about un that's fascinating chemical. Um Uh,
Speaker 1: those levels changed. Um, I don't think there was anything
Speaker 1: to how response to how they felt. But basically their
Speaker 1: their body was reacting as if it was having a
Speaker 1: very large meal, whereas um, the other people's bodies were
Speaker 1: reacting as if they weren't having a large meal and
Speaker 1: tracking that over time. Obviously, there's all kinds of health
Speaker 1: applications involved there. Um. However, you know she was lying
Speaker 1: to them, and that's the the other underlying problem with
Speaker 1: this is you know there's deception in this study like
Speaker 1: that circles all the way back to the beginning where
Speaker 1: I said, kind of what blows me away about this
Speaker 1: is if you told me that they they felt more full, I'd, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: well the brain, you know, it's you know, it's just
Speaker 1: your perception. But it just fascinates me. Also that biochemically
Speaker 1: being things change. It's just it gives me a different
Speaker 1: appreciation for how uh profound these things are. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna wrap up. Thanks so much, Eric. I enjoyed the book.
Speaker 1: If for listeners, if you like science writing, there were
Speaker 1: way more fascinating things in the book than we got to.
Speaker 1: So if you like good science writing, you like the
Speaker 1: sort of stuff you like reading about studies, Eric's book
Speaker 1: is a great one. I'd recommend it um. If you
Speaker 1: do decide you want to get it, just go to
Speaker 1: our website to our show notes and you can buy
Speaker 1: it via Amazon there and we get a few cents
Speaker 1: which helps out a little bit. But thank you so
Speaker 1: much Eric for coming on. Eric, Thank you very much
Speaker 1: for me. This was a lot of fun. Okay, take
Speaker 1: care all right, Yeah anytime. By If what you just
Speaker 1: heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation
Speaker 1: to the One you Feed podcast. Head over to one
Speaker 1: you Feed dot net slash support,