the.com/nocebo
The placebo's evil twin: expect harm, and your body kindly obliges.
means A harmless treatment or prediction that makes you feel worse simply because you expected it to.
from Coined in the 20th century as the dark mirror of 'placebo' — Latin for 'I shall please.' Nocebo is built the same way, from Latin nocere, 'to harm,' so it literally means 'I shall harm.' Medical researchers needed a word for the flip side of the placebo effect: when warnings, nasty side-effect lists, or sheer dread cause real symptoms with no pharmacological cause at all.
- origin
- Latin for i shall harm
- cause
- triggered by warnings, not actual toxins
- real world
- drug side effects spike when patients read the leaflet
- irony
- fear of pain can itself produce pain