Suggestible You

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

By: Erik Vance

Narrated by: Richard Powers

Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

So many words So littil informtion

It was a stugle to finish this book, the same strories told 100 differant ways.
Save yourself alot of time and look up the plocibo effect in wiki.

A beautiful book to listen to

Enjoy the ride in your mind and suggestability. It opens a new possibility to handle with your problems

I Learned A Lot (Unless That Is A False Memory)

Once I got over the fear that this was a book about one particular religion, I enjoyed it. Excellent information and interesting stories, regular humor. It will change your mind about your mind.

SURPRISINGLY GOOD

Would you consider the audio edition of Suggestible You to be better than the print version?

Just finished reading this surprisingly informative book on the utility, appropriateness, and mechanisms of "alternative" medical treatments, such as phytotherapy, urinotherapy, homeopathy, shamans, prayer, hypnosis, and the like.

Almost quit after the first few pages thinking that's be the usual "miracle cures" or its opposite "it's all BS" book.

However, unexpectedly, the author provided a nice summary of about 100 years of research on the topic.

I had NO IDEA how complicated, under-understood, and potentially promising this line of R&D is.

Take, for instance, the placebo effect. I thought I knew what it is. I mean, any scholar knows what it is, right? Well, this book devotes 7 chapters to the topic and in the end leaves you with "Wow!!! I had no idea this issue is so multi-faceted". If goes far beyond the known facts that more expensive and more bitter placebo work better than cheaper and sweeter placebo. It discusses the latest research that shows how placebo can induce real chemical changes in the body, how it relates to Pavlov's conditioning, when it could actually be a useful remedy, what conditions are most susceptible to the placebo effect, evolution of testing against the placebo in pharma, interesting cases involving placebo, and more. I had NO IDEA.

Just three days ago I thought all urinotherapies and shamans were complete and utter BS. Today I know that properly applied complete and utter BS can actually be very useful, and for some conditions more useful and less harmful than pharma (which often is same BS, but with more adverse side effects).

Fun fact: Depression is among the conditions most susceptible to the placebo effect. Prozac, probably the most popular antidepressant, is almost pure BS. When originally introduced, its effect was almost indistinguishable from placebo. That is, those who took it felt better, but those suffering from depression feel much better after getting sugar pills and the Prozac did not much more than sugar pills. Then, it's popularity massively increased its placebo effect. So today its fa more potent than a few decades ago when it was introduced because today people know Prozac, trust is, and expect it to be effective, and as any good placebo, it is. Now, if it was tested against placebo today in a sample of people who never heard about Prozac, it would not pass the phase 1 medical trials. However, if tested against the placebo in a sample who know Prozac brand, it actually works much better than placebo. Not only that is cool, but also presents an ethical dilemma: if Prozac's ingredients are nothing more but a placebo, but but thank to its place in culture, it's a much better placebo than lesser known pills, should it be banned or not? Or should it be made even more expensive to further increase it's positive placebo properties?

Anyway, highly recommend. It won't give you any definitive answers, but help you better understand the intricacies of the issue and provide a road map for thinking about it.

great book covering the science of suggestibility

I really enjoyed this book cuz it covered topic which I had a fair bit of knowledge about but went much deeper on most of them