Suggestible You

Suggestible You helps you understand and utilize the power of your mind-body connection by explaining the effect that your thoughts have on your body, including pain, illness, and memory and how to take advantage of it.

When we take a drug for pain, we sometimes feel relief almost immediately. But in truth, most medications take about 15 or more minutes to kick in. This is like the placebo effect, the phenomenon when you experience benefits from a drug or treatment that doesn’t actually have any. In other words, your brain creates a benefit based on expectation.

It’s a well-documented effect that many people believe has a lot of untapped potential. The author says it’s likely the reason for successes in homeopathic medicine. It also could be the key to helping baffling cases chronic pain.

How can this be? Your brain actually already has the chemical arsenal it needs to treat pain, in the same way opioids do-by releasing endorphins.

And it doesn’t stop there. Our brains produce endocannabinoids, which are found in Marijuana and help with pain, as well as dopamine and serotonin, which have to do with mood.

All of these chemicals are particularly sensitive to the placebo effect. So your brain has all the resources it needs to help itself with ailments such as pain, anxiety, nausea, depression, or addiction.

However, studies show some people are more suggestible than others. So, if you’re one of the lucky ones, you will experience more benefits from the placebo effect.

Suggestibility affects many of the choices we make every day. Companies know this, and use it to make their products taste better to you. And no, I don’t mean that they just make them seem to taste better, they know that suggestion can make them actually taste better. Packaging and presentation create an expectation, and your mind will happily want to meet that expectation by making something taste better. Don’t believe it? In a study investigating this power of expectation, a researcher told participants that she was comparing two milkshakes, one diet shake and another full-calorie one. She packaged the low-calorie shake with a no-frills and sensible label and gave the full-fat one a luxurious label. Unbeknownst to the participants, both actually contained the same amount of calories. Not only did they report the full-fat version tasted better, but when the researcher measured the participant’s hormone levels, she found those who drank the diet milkshake produced more ghrelin-the hormone tells us we’re hungry. Just thinking that they weren’t going to consume as many calories is enough to make them feel hungry. Expectation also plays a role in addiction where people get caught in an unfortunate loop. A drug gives pleasurable sensations,…