Suggestible You

The Curious Science of Your Brain’s Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal

By: Erik Vance

Narrated by: Richard Powers

This riveting narrative explores the world of placebos, hypnosis, false memories, and neurology to reveal the groundbreaking science of our suggestible minds.

Could the secrets to personal health lie within our own brains? Journalist Erik Vance explores the surprising ways our expectations and beliefs influence our bodily responses to pain, disease, and everyday events.

Drawing on centuries of research and interviews with leading experts in the field, Vance takes us on a fascinating adventure from Harvard's research labs to a witch doctor's office in Catemaco, Mexico, to an alternative medicine school near Beijing (often called "China's Hogwarts"). Vance's firsthand dispatches will change the way you think - and feel.

Continuing the success of National Geographic's brain books and rounding out our pop science category, this book shows how expectations, beliefs, and self-deception can actively change our bodies and minds. Vance builds a case for our "internal pharmacy" - the very real chemical reactions our brains produce when we think we are experiencing pain or healing, actual or perceived.

Supporting this idea is centuries of placebo research in a range of forms, from sugar pills to shock waves; studies of alternative medicine techniques heralded and condemned in different parts of the world (think crystals and chakras); and, most recently, major advances in brain mapping technology.

Thanks to this technology, we're learning how we might leverage our suggestibility (or lack thereof) for personalized medicine, and Vance brings us to the front lines of such study.

©2016 Erik Vance (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Interesting parts & some idea gems but didn't "wow" me.

Good listen, decent narration, a few gens of ideas but, overall, nothing incredibly impressive about the content or performance.

ok - helpful perspective

ok but not great. somehow it missed the mark for me. kind of seemed like a case where the book title was in search of a book. some interesting stuff for sure but I found myself trying to get through it rather than wanting more.

Understanding why the mind is a great servant

So here is the thing: much of the wellness community relies on placebo effects.

If you understand placebo, and nocebo, and your significant resources re healing then you can make better wellness choices.

No miracle cures here, but significant awareness of the power of mind to remedy (or not) the body is discussed.

Super interesting and worth your time.

Educational!

Very informative and thought provoking! I loved this book! It shows us how powerful our thoughts and mind can be!

Good ....

Found this book fascinating but was annoyed at the authors blind refusal to see any non placebo benefit in traditional medicine, there are thousands of double blind placebo controlled studies on all sorts of thing that have shown positive results. He is certainly not as open minded and he keeps saying he is, to the extent he discounts half of modern medicine as well. He goes a little too far from the center and dumps everything into the placebo basket. The science and the people he interviewed where very interesting.