If you’ve had each of your COVID vaccinations, you will have suffered some side-effects – perhaps headaches, fatigue, fever or a sore arm. These effects are mainly brought on by your immune system’s response to the vaccine. But most scientists agree that there may be one other cause: the human mind.
The ability of the mind to generate the symptoms of illness is referred to as the “nocebo” effect. The nocebo effect is the unpopular twin brother of the placebo effect. Whereas the placebo effect alleviates pain and the symptoms of illness, the nocebo effect does the alternative: it generates pain and symptoms.
A 2018 study found that nearly half of participants in placebo trials experience side-effects, although they’re taking inert substances. There was a similar finding in the primary major trial of the Pfizer COVID vaccine in 2020. In the placebo group – who weren’t given the vaccine – between 1 / 4 and a 3rd of individuals reported fatigue, the same number reported headaches, and around 10% reported muscle pain.
Indeed, Martin Michaelis and Mark Wass, bioscientists on the University of Kent, recently suggested that “for some vaccinated people the knowledge that they’ve been vaccinated could also be sufficient to drive side-effects”.
Your brain on placebos
Unlike its unpopular brother, the placebo effect is so well-known that it needs little introduction. But in some ways, the placebo effect has grow to be so familiar that it’s easy to forget how strange it truly is. It’s bizarre that pain relief and healing can happen without actual treatment. And that powerful positive physiological effects can occur with none real physiological intervention.
Research has shown that an enormous array of various conditions profit from placebos. This includes pimples, Crohn’s disease, epilepsy, ulcers, multiple sclerosis, rheumatism, Parkinsons’s disease and inflammation. A recent study also found that placebos had a highly significant effect on erectile dysfunction.
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Comparisons of placebos to antidepressants suggest that the placebo effect can play a crucial role within the treatment of depression. A 2008 study found no significant difference between leading antidepressants and placebos. In a 2018 studyantidepressants fared barely higher, but their effect was still only found to be “mostly modest” compared with placebos.
All of this isn’t simply a matter of suggestion or delusion: real and measurable physiological changes occur. Studies have found that, when taken as painkillers, placebos decrease neurological activity related to pain and make use of lots of the same neurotransmitters and neural pathways as opioids. Similarly, researchers have found that, when taken by individuals with Parkinson’s disease, placebos can stimulate the discharge of dopamine, which reduces the symptoms of the condition.
Mind control and consciousness
Researchers looking into placebos have found that some aspects, resembling expectancy of treatment, different personality types and the patient-physician relationshipcan have some bearing on the results.
We also know that placebos can activate reward pathways within the brain – and increase levels of opioid and dopamine activity. That said, the underlying causes of the placebo effect are still mysterious.
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Perhaps though, nocebo and placebo effects only seem mysterious because we’re them from the improper perspective. And by this, I mean perhaps if we consider an alternate view of consciousness, the placebo and nocebo effect could begin to make more sense.
The brain and the mind
In modern western culture, the mind will likely be seen as a byproduct of the brain – a form of shadow solid by neurological processes. Mental phenomena resembling thoughts, memories and feelings are considered produced by brain activity.
If we’ve got psychological problems, they’re considered attributable to neurological imbalances that might be corrected by medication. But if this assumption is correct, how is it possible for mental processes to influence the body in addition to the brain in such a strong way?
Indeed, the difficulties of explaining consciousness purely by way of brain processes have grown so acute that some philosophers and scientists have adopted an alternate view: that consciousness shouldn’t be a direct product of the brain, but a fundamental universal quality – like mass or gravity.
This is something I take a look at in my recent book, Spiritual Science and it’s a view
that has been adopted by some contemporary philosophers – including David Chalmers and Thomas Nagel. Chalmers suggests that consciousness “doesn’t appear to be derivable from physical laws” and believes it might be “considered a fundamental feature, irreducible to anything more basic.” Nagel also suggests that the “mind shouldn’t be just an afterthought or an accident or add on, but a basic aspect of nature.”
Other scientists and philosophers – resembling Christof Koch and Phillip Goff – have adopted similar theories, which suggest that the mind or consciousness is a basic quality of fabric particles.
These approaches are not yet widely acceptedand would want to collect more evidence to support them. And there are some difficult issues that must be addressed: for instance, if consciousness is a fundamental quality, how does it find yourself in individual conscious beings resembling ourselves? Or, if consciousness exists in particles of matter, how does the consciousness of those particles mix to provide larger conscious entities resembling human beings?
More mainstream scientists still hope that a neurological explanation of consciousness can be found, that can help to throw some light on “rogue” phenomena just like the nocebo and placebo effects. But taking the philosophical idea of consciousness as fundamental might suggest that the mind is in a roundabout way more powerful than the brain and the body, and so could influence the latter in a profound way – and it would help explain someday why placebo pills can bring about real physiological and neurological changes in many individuals.