Story Publication logo December 9, 2016

Suggestible You

Author:
Marcus Sapere practices Reiki massage on a client in his office in Alameda, California. Reiki is based on the idea that sickness is caused by the changes in energy and that a therapist can manipulate that energy with his hands and mind. Image by Erika Larsen.
English

Inside our heads is an ancient power. A tool of miracle-workers, charlatans, witch doctors...

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Suggestible You, by Erik Vance. Image courtesy of National Geographic.
Suggestible You, by Erik Vance. Image courtesy of National Geographic.

Erik Vance's new book, "Suggestible You," 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? Vance examines 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.

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