For staying healthy during flu season education may be more important than vaccination

You've probably heard of the placebo effect, where the suggestion that a particular medicine can cure will cause a cure even if the medicine is only sugar water. Legitimate scientific studies must employ specific techniques to rule out the placebo effects when testing new drugs.

The nocebo effect also exists, though it is not as widely known or accounted for. According to an article in New Scientist magazine:

The "nocebo effect" is the lesser-known opposite number of the placebo effect, and describes any case where putting someone in a negative frame of mind has an adverse effect on their health or well-being.

Could the mass media reports about the dangers of swine flu and other diseases  have a nocebo effect on public health? Here are some reasons why this might be the case:

1. Predictions of death-causing epidemics lead to fear
2. Fear is a stressor on the body
3. Stress depresses the immune system
4. A depressed immune system cannot fight invading organisms effectively

Vaccines have not been subjected to rigorous double-blind studies to rule out the placebo effect. In other words, large populations on the verge of epidemics have not been randomly selected to either receive a vaccine or a placebo to see who develps the disease. Therefore it is still unknown whether the fear-relieving act of getting vaccinated is responsible for resistance to the disease, rather than the vaccine itself. Given the risk of vaccine toxicity, might it be prudent to relieve fear of disease in other ways?

It is up to the individual to become educated about health and start taking personal responsibility for wellness. The human body is a wonderfully adaptive organism capable of resisting the most virulent organisms. If this were not so, no humans would have survived the numerous plagues and epidemics that have ravaged through populations in the past.

People today are uniquely blessed to have access to leading edge information on building health through the internet as well as a growing number of holistic health professionals who make it their business to know about building health rather than suppressing symptoms of illness. Learning more about how to stay well will help protect you from fear of illness and the nocebo effect.

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