What's Behind Voodoo [View All]

This is a somewhat long article from New Scientist about how belief affects our health. It discusses numerous examples of people who thought they were going to die and subsequently did. In some cases they found that the doctors had made a mistake and they were in fact not in danger of dying.

It explains how voodoo works. Hint: cultural background has a lot to do with it.

Here is an excerpt:

Voodoo nouveau

You might think this sort of thing is increasingly rare, and limited to remote tribes. But according to Clifton Meador, a doctor at Vanderbilt School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee, who has documented cases like Vanders, the curse has taken on a new form.

Take Sam Shoeman, who was diagnosed with end-stage liver cancer in the 1970s and given just months to live. Shoeman duly died in the allotted time frame - yet the autopsy revealed that his doctors had got it wrong. The tumour was tiny and had not spread. "He didn't die from cancer, but from believing he was dying of cancer," says Meador. "If everyone treats you as if you are dying, you buy into it. Everything in your whole being becomes about dying."
He didn't die from cancer but from believing he was dying of cancer

Cases such as Shoeman's may be extreme examples of a far more widespread phenomenon. Many patients who suffer harmful side effects, for instance, may do so only because they have been told to expect them. What's more, people who believe they have a high risk of certain diseases are more likely to get them than people with the same risk factors who believe they have a low risk. It seems modern witch doctors wear white coats and carry stethoscopes.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227081.100-the-science-of-voodoo-when-mind-attacks-body.html?full=true

I know the mind can have an amazing effect on one's health and perceptions. In the summertime, I suffer terribly from insect bites. Sometimes I get so paranoid that I've been bitten that I will scratch the area and it will even get a raised bump, like a mosquito bite. But then I will forget about it and it will just go away and I know it was just my paranoia of bug bites. There was no bite there at all, but for some reason I imagined one.

In another example, early in my career I decided not to do the commuting and high-pressure job thing. Instead I opted for work that was satisfying to me, although much lower paying, and that allowed me to go out to my gardens and hang out with my kitty cats during the day.

I've always told myself this would pay dividends as I got older and that I would not have high blood pressure or cancer or any of the other diseases of aging. So far so good. I come from a healthy family, though, so maybe it's just good genes. I'd like to think my personal choices have played a role in my good health, though. And it sure didn't hurt when that research came out a few years ago that said that having a cat cut one's chances of cancer and heart disease by something like 35%.


Cher