A revelatory investigation into the nocebo effect - placebo’s evil twin - urging us to rethink our assumptions about the mind-body connection.
If you haven’t heard of the nocebo effect, you aren’t alone. For too long it has been a niche area of scientific research, yet evidence suggests that it affects us all. Through the nocebo effect, our thoughts, conscious or otherwise, can create symptoms ranging from pain and dizziness to paralysis, and even blindness. The phenomenon explains why during the Covid-19 pandemic, lots of people had Covid symptoms but no Covid; why a quarter of those having chemotherapy feel nauseous on the way to the hospital; and how when doctors warn of side effects, they make them more likely to occur.
In this original and eye-opening study, former neuroscientist and long-time science writer Helen Pilcher reveals the nocebo’s stranglehold on our collective health. Across subjects as various as Alzheimer’s and diabetes, Havana Syndrome and hex deaths, social media ‘illfluencers’ and the viral pandemic of ticking they inspired, this book convincingly proves that the mind and body aren’t just connected. They are in fact the same thing.
For Helen, this is more than an investigation into the power of expectations on health. It’s personal. After being diagnosed with cancer in 2020, she wondered whether learning about her prognosis would affect its outcome. This book is her attempt to figure it out, and along the way, explain how we can rein in one of the most overlooked and underestimated factors shaping public health – so we can all be a lot less ill and a lot more well.
If you haven’t heard of the nocebo effect, you aren’t alone. For too long it has been a niche area of scientific research, yet evidence suggests that it affects us all. Through the nocebo effect, our thoughts, conscious or otherwise, can create symptoms ranging from pain and dizziness to paralysis, and even blindness. The phenomenon explains why during the Covid-19 pandemic, lots of people had Covid symptoms but no Covid; why a quarter of those having chemotherapy feel nauseous on the way to the hospital; and how when doctors warn of side effects, they make them more likely to occur.
In this original and eye-opening study, former neuroscientist and long-time science writer Helen Pilcher reveals the nocebo’s stranglehold on our collective health. Across subjects as various as Alzheimer’s and diabetes, Havana Syndrome and hex deaths, social media ‘illfluencers’ and the viral pandemic of ticking they inspired, this book convincingly proves that the mind and body aren’t just connected. They are in fact the same thing.
For Helen, this is more than an investigation into the power of expectations on health. It’s personal. After being diagnosed with cancer in 2020, she wondered whether learning about her prognosis would affect its outcome. This book is her attempt to figure it out, and along the way, explain how we can rein in one of the most overlooked and underestimated factors shaping public health – so we can all be a lot less ill and a lot more well.
TBMCSE will be published in the UK by Atlantic Books on 7 May 2026, and in the USA by Abrams Books a few months later.
Pre-order from all the usual places, or better still, buy it from your local bookshop. Or better still, buy a signed copy from mine!
Best read with tea. Milk. No sugar.
Pre-order from all the usual places, or better still, buy it from your local bookshop. Or better still, buy a signed copy from mine!
Best read with tea. Milk. No sugar.