Erik Vance

have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Eric Fans, a biologist, rock climbing guide, environmental consultants, and

environmental educator turned writer. His work focuses on the human element of science, the people who do it, those who benefit from it, and those who do not. Eric has written for The New York Times, Nature, Scientific, American Harper's National geographic and other publications. His first book is called Suggestible You. Before we get started, just a couple of general notes about the show. We have a Facebook group which has lots of great discussion going on, lots of

support for people who are there. Go to Facebook and search for the one you feed discussion group that is free. Please if you like the show, share it, tell somebody about it, help someone else's life get better. And finally, its donations as part of our patron program that make this podcast possible. So go to one you feed dot net slash support and please give today. And here's the interview with Eric Vance. Hi, Eric, welcome to the show. Hey Eric, thanks for having me. I'm excited to have

you on. Your book is called Suggestible You. The curious science of your brain's ability to deceive, transform and heal. And one of the things that we talk on this show all the time about is how much of our lives are a story that we tell ourselves. And what I found fascinating about your book was how profound and how deep that can really go within this So I'm looking forward to exploring that. But let's start like we normally do with the parable There's a grandfather who's talking

with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grants on stops when he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says,

the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I love that parable. I hadn't thought about it in many years. I guess in my life what it means to me is, you know, you feed the ones you feed, but then they also tend to pull out table scraps and go through your garbage as well, and to be able to sort of you know, and sometimes they do that with

or without your permission. And it's important to remember when I think about the parable, that's not just like feeding them, but you also have to keep them from sort of lurking around the corners and picking up table scraps. So

that they can still rear up. Yeah. I think that's one of the things I like about the Parable is it almost sounds like it's this close battle, right, and that the only way you're gonna win is to give the one more food because it doesn't sound like the bad wolf is in any danger of start right, you know, And it's not about starving him. It's just kind of like, Okay, I gotta put my focus here on on this thing.

And I think that's when I when I hear the Parable, I love that idea that like, it really is a battle. Just when you think that that other wolve's gone, you know, he pops up some plames you didn't expect him and he's been, you know, living on garbage, waiting for his moment exactly. Your book is really, as I said to the title is suggestible you curious science of your brain's ability to deceive, transform, and heal. And the book really

focuses around the placebo effect a lot. It talks about no cebos, the opposite that talks about hypnosis, false memories, a variety of different things, but at a very high level, why don't you summarize kind of what the the underlying premises in the book. Basically, the book is about all the things your brain tells you that are so that just simply aren't so. So it's all the ways that your brains are twist reality in order to make what

it expects into reality. And and that's sort of the fundamental thing under this book is that your brain really operates on expectations. And it's something that people in psychology you talk about, but the average listener may may not have heard about. Is is the role of expectations and predictions. And your brain goes to enormous lengths to make sure

that the expectations that it has match reality. And a lot of what I talked about in the books sort of boiled down to expectations and belief, and it pops up in a lot of different ways in our life where we think something is true and it may not be, but our brain can step in and make it true. You quote Daniel Dennett saying the mind is fundamentally an anticipator an expectation generator. And we've talked with people on the show talk about the mind being a meaning making machine,

and those are really very similar things, right. It's it's the mind is trying to it's got a lot of ways it does shortcuts, and it's applying those two things even when they're not necessarily true. Fundamentally, the brain is taking the past applying it to the president in order to predict the future. I mean, that's really fundamentally what you're talking about what the brain does. And it could be something as simple as when you take a step and you assume the ground low you is gonna be hard.

I mean you do every day, you know, and I've experienced when it's not there. But and there's this moment, you know, when when these expectations are to get thrown out, like you know where you know or you're expecially to be soft and it's suddenly hard. Uh, and your whole body jolts right because you know you were parent for this.

And it can be something as simple as that, or if I drop this you know this pen and will hit the ground, Like we have these expectations built in and and it could be something as complicated as you know that the hunting will be good on the planes this year, you know. Like those are other kinds of predictions that we that our brains make, and they're more complex, and they're based on a lot of different information using the past and pattern recognition, all these other things that

brain does to create what is essentially a prediction. Once you understand that, a lot of these a lot of these sort of behaviors come into focus. But one of the things that comes into focus is that when you

put these things together, they do form. They do form a story, you know, meaning like you said, you know, your your brain is trying to figure out how things work so that you know, when that saber tooth tire comes around the corner, it knows what to do, and it can and it can sort of operated at a higher level. And if you've never seen a saber tooth tiger before, and that's that meaning, that storytelling and that that expectation, they're all tied up in the same, very

fundamental process of your brain. And that the fact that it's so fundamental is what makes it really interesting, because this is not some sort of side job that your brain does or some interesting quirk. This is really at the heart of what it does. Were we alive at the same time as saber tooth tigers, because that's the example everybody uses for when we're talking about our evolutionary upbringing.

I'm like, is they say that because we were actually alive then, or is it just sort of a reference to the North American Mega fun I would have gone extinct, Uh gosh, what fifteen thousand years ago? And uh, and we were definitely around, So in North America we definitely would have run into saber tooth tigers. But us I would have probably been known such as were you know, trying to figure out how to put post together in in Norway? But but yeah, we generally we're here, all right.

So one of the things that I found just stunning about the book was the extent to which the placebo effect actually works, how how powerful it can be. And the other thing that I think, really when I read it it just sort of it's just sort of shocked me, was that, you know, when I tend to think of something like the placebo effect, I think, well, it's just

all in your mind, which again it is. But what I found completely fascinating is that your brain is actually generating the chemicals it would be generating if that effect was really happening. So if if your experience in a reduction of pain, your brain is increasing your endorphins or europioids in a way, that mimics what pain blocking would look like. And to me that was stunning. I don't know why I hadn't thought of that, but it really

is powerful. You know, Ever since I was a little kid, I've imagined my brain is being this guy controlling things. He's got a little telephone, he's talking all the other partsy body. It's just sort of the way I can

sexualize it. But now that I've I've sort of done this, resource is easier to think of it more as a guy with the giant switchboard in front of him, and and your brain is a lot of things, but um, but one of the things that is doing is is it's playing with you know, a ton of different kinds of chemicals. You know, turn one up, turning one down.

And there's a lot of this happening with The brain is constantly self regulating and trying to get towards sort of some sort of homeostasis, and it's constantly twiddling these knobs. And these knobs are attached to real drugs. If you give yourself a shot of morphine and opioid to kill the pain that you're feeling from something, how different is that than if your brain releases that very very similar drug to a very specific spot in your brain in

order to equally deal with pain. And and in fact, that might be what your brain is doing all the time, every day, all day. And that's something it's like a weird transition once you realize, yeah, it's all in your mind. But that's where everything is. There's a lot going on there. There's chemistry, uh, there's uh, and then there's actually a lot of really complicated genetics that are that are informing how your brain will perceive different types of pain. And

this is not psychosis or psychology. This is real brain chemistry. Right, You're not imagining it. It's really happening in your brain. It's just being triggered by something internal to you versus something external to you. You know, in some cases people might be imagining it. But like you can't separate one from the other, you know, like how how would you

ever pull the two apart? Attempts have been made, but you can measure the body's reaction to like a sapless ball effect, like a pain to sleep effect, And when people say they feel less pain, sure enough, their body is responding as if they feel less pain. Things that you can't fake, skin connectivity and uh, and so at that point, you know, you can't get any more real than that. I mean, if your body is responding, then it's happening. It's real. There were a lot of amazing

things in the book for me. That particular idea that just your expectation could change the way you're brain chemistry is working to to mimic what a drug would be doing, you know, shows how powerful it is. And for this show, so much where we talk about is more you know, sort of mental day to day. What are the paradigms and the and the models our brain works in and and it was just a stark reminder to me of

how much reality is really created by us. You're absolutely right that has been played a lot with Hollywood, But um, I can't tell you the number of times, you know, working on this book that my mind was just blown in this very same way to sort of you whack on a table that you're feeling something that's real. But uh, you know, the colors, um, the way it feels in your knuckles, um, everything else, all the other information is coming into you and you know that that's all that's

all created by your brain. And in fact, a really clever scientist Irving Cursions, who's really pioneered Plassy but worked. He told me that there's a wave of information that's coming from your brain about what you know, expectations and all these beliefs and things, and it collides with a wave of information that's coming from your body, and uh, and that's you know, what's your body is feeling, you know what's going on around you, and where those two

things collide, that's what reality is. Sometimes they don't match up, but the one that wins, where those two things quade, that's what we know of as as what is. And with the placebo effect, in some ways there's a disconnect there. What your body is telling is happening is different from what your brain is telling you. And when the brain wins, then you have these effects where you're you're your brain

sort of papers over what what what it was feeling. Yeah, I thought that what you just said, they're about the brain is sending the signal, the body sending the signal, and they meet in the middle and merge into something. Is one of the best descriptions of the mind body connection. I think i'd ever heard it in a way that really made a lot of sense to me because there's always this question of you know, the Smith's you know, does the mind rule the body or does the body

rule the mind? You know, I don't know. People jump on one side of that, and I love that because it talks about how it's both. It's really in the middle of those two things that perception arises. Obviously, I'm not the first person to say that, you know, the mind of the body aren't actually separate. But like when when you start looking at some of these things, take take dopamine, doke, it's a big player in this or something called growing. These are chemicals that well, dopamine has

like fifty different jobs in the body. It does all these different kinds of things. Um. Part of it is that you know, it's creating as rewards, and it's how we process rewards, which is why you get a boost of it when you win at the at the slots or you know, at poker. Um. But another thing is

a movement, which is why it's involved in Parkinson's. And another thing is is is stomach, you know, and so it's you know, these brain comes you think of as doing a specific thing and then it turns out it's involved in stomach like digestion, and and then like, well, then there's no real break between the mind and the body because these you know, so many of these things

are are really interconnected. And uh and you know, these chemicals do double duty and they work in the body, and they work in bizarre ways that aren't connecting to other at all, and and once you get used to that, all this becomes a lot more easy to wrap your head around. Yeah. I agree. I mean I think when people are like, well, the mind body connection, like it seems pretty obvious, right, They're wired together and to your point, the chemicals are flowing. This doesn't seem to be a

topic that really should be a lot of debate. Um. But I just loved the way that guy phrased that as as a way to think about it. So you tell a story in the book about you getting your first I would say real experience of the placebo effect at the n I H Can you tell that story? Sure? Yeah, you know. I I was working on a magazine piece for Discover magazine on the placebo effect, and I've been

fascinated by this. I should mention I was raising Christmas science, so I didn't go to a doctor till I was eighteen years old, and um, I don't practice Christmas science anymore, but I was always fascinated with the things that I saw when I was growing up. So when I got this opportunity to work in the story, I had sort of leapt at it. And one of the scientists I visited her name was Lawanna Coloqua. She's now at the University of Maryland's phenomenal researcher, and she's really pioneered a

lot of a lot of these questions. She agreed to electrocute me for half an hour or so. I think she used the word no susception, tolerance paradigm or something like that. I didn't really catch it until I showed up there, and she hooked me up to this machine that would give me really painful hucks. And every time I saw a green light, she give me a little sort of pinch, would just be a little shock that

would just sort of sort of irritate me. Every time I saw a red light, she gave me a big one that would actually make my foot twitch, that's how powerful it was. Would sort of, you know, really get my attention. And then she go back and forth, boom boom, boom, green red green, red, to the point where every time I saw that red light, I was just like, you know, oh God, God, no, no, no. And and she she had a pause, very clever woman. She she had a

pause sort of between the color and the shock. So you really had had a split second to really think about what was about to happen. And uh. On the last round, it was just about twenty five minutes, it felt like the lower one had been turned up just a little bit. It's sort of like a harder pinch um, and then the high one still sort of made my

foot twitch. And when she came in afterwards, she said, you know, he did a great job, and and she had given me all these really bizarre instructions about this thing. I attached my finger, so I was it was hard to know what to focus on. And she done it on purpose, because she came in she said, look, on the last time around, I gave you the big one every time. And I'm not crazy, you know. I wasn't trying to please her, you know, or tell her what you wanted to hear. Like, I didn't feel the pain,

my foot didn't twitch. It really hit home that this was not some sort of you know, thing that happened to other people like it could happen to you, you know, in an instant, and it's and and it's you know, it's real. You could see your foot not twitching. I swear I did not feel that pain. And what was

happening was my brain was stepping in. It had this expectation that was built over the previous rounds that grain meant lower pain, and when that didn't happen, my brain stepped in and self medicated itself so that it would match expectation, would match reality. And it's the same idea behind when you take a pill and you wanted to make you uh uh, you know you want to like make some pain, maybe make a headache away. You know, you have this expectation and if it doesn't happen while in,

your brain just steps in makes it happen. Your brain doesn't want to be wrong. Hey, everybody, before you hit that fast forward button on your podcast app quick Thing, I'm going to run a quick contest between this Tuesday and next Tuesday. So from when this episode launches until when the next one launches, anybody who donates at any level, I will ship you five books of guests who have been on the show, So a little special gift in

addition to the gifts that are out there. If you go, I'll just choose randomly at any level and you'll get five books sent to you. But you've got to do it this week. And doing it this week is good because donating to the one you feed is something that makes you feel better. It's scientifically been proven. Chris isn't here to verify my facts, but I know it's good

for you. So when you feed dot net slash support, do it this week any level and get entered into a contest to win five books from authors who have appeared on the One you Feed. So do it now before you forget. And here's the rest of the episode. In general, the science shows and you talk about in the book that some people have stronger placebo responses than others, and that it can even vary depending on what the

thing is. So a pill really does it for you, whereas for Sally if she gets raky, she thinks that's healed her. Right, So the plus ebo effect can be different among different things, and that some people just have more of a tendency towards them than others. This is actually the holy grail of placebo. Research has been trying to determine if this is true. Now my personal beliefs

has got to be true. Like it feels so right, But I should say that it's not as easy as so you make it sound and as I wish it would be. Uh. That's what really separates, you know, placebos from hypnosis. Hypnosis people tend to be hypnotize herbal. If they hypnotize able, they tend to stay that way. If they're not, they tend to stay that way. If you know, and it doesn't change throughout some of life much um, placebo changes from day to day, and it changes from

one thing to the next. And yes, there are these sort of trends where you see, like a bigger pill tends to work be more effective than a smaller pill. Uh. Yellow pills for depression tend to work better than blue pills. UM injections uh tend to work better than those. And and and sham surgery, you know, like Parkinson's sham surgery works far better than a than a sham pill. UM.

So those are sort of trends. But predicting who's going to respond or who's going to respond to which thing that's sort of been the goal or this holy grail for research. And and I profile some some researchers who are doing who have found a potential solution in genetics, and that research really to me shows me why these things are so complicated, because these chemicals are working against each other, they're working with each other, they're constantly changing.

And it helps explain why these placebo responders that people have been looking for signs have been looking for them for you know, sixty years, um why they haven't been easy to find because there are so many complex dynamics at play. But it does seem like if we can understand those dynamics better than yes, we can figure out who these people are and who's going to respond to what placebos and so not there yet, but that's sort

of this wonderful potential goal. And you can look at this one gene and and I'll just you know, and it's it's compt cemt. And if you've done three and me, and you can look up and see which one you are, and then there's one that really helps predict if you're going to be a placebo respond or not. But it's not definite. I wish we were as certain as you

made me you made it sound. But but but I think someday we maybe when anybody is reading a book, you're sort of thinking through it in your own experience. So what it's been like for me, I was thinking of an experience where I've been on certain types of medicine for a long time, and if I don't take them, I tend to, you know, about twelve hours later start

having really bad symptoms. And I was just thinking about, like, if I was responding strongly to the placebo, you would think that those symptoms wouldn't necessarily kick in, because I don't. I don't actually well maybe subconsciously I do, but I don't certainly consciously know if I forgot to take my medicine or not. It's like I just never thought of it, and so I was just thinking of it through that lens of it sounds like what you're saying is sometimes

that might work. Placebo works for me, and other times it doesn't. All of us experienced placebo effects like to say, oh, I don't know, it doesn't happen to me, Like and my favorite thing for people tell me it's like, oh, you know, I'm not I'm not gullible. This you know, this stuff is really real, this thing I have, Yes, you are gullable. We're all gullible. Um. And so that's I guess the first thing. But but you're right, you do.

When it comes to your own health, you do have to come to understand yourself a bit, like what what stories appeal to you? I mean, we've all had this experience. There's some people who can just who can just try some placebo thing or put you know, take a crystal rubber of their body and they just feel better. And there's some people that just don't. And I do believe in my heart that there are some people who are just placebo prone and we just haven't been able to

figu out how to isolate them. But we all I feel like we know them. I feel like I've met them. Um. But uh, for the individual, it's about knowing sort of what resonates with you, I think, and thinking about yourself as you know, what, what kinds of stories, what kinds of things feel like they should be working, and knowing when that's appropriate, when it's not appropriate to play with

yourself that way. Yeah, you mentioned a placebo response you have, which is the same one I have slightly different brand. But you talk about Airborne for not getting sick. You know, I believe in emergency, like you know, anybody's sick around me. I just start taking a ton of it, and I'm you know, I'm convinced it works. I'm not convinced that it's necessarily emergency doing it, but I'm convinced that whatever it is, whether it's me believing it or not, that

seems to be pretty effective for me. I shouldn't say that because tomorrow I'll probably come down with the flu, but I I will say this much well first of all for me, and it's the fizziness, the fizziness of the airbord. It just gives me right away. Um, oh my god. Yeah. I you can think out, I can

think for anything. I'm sure, right just a physics's got to be doing something, and that this is something scientists often refer to as an active placebo, because it's doing something, it's just not the thing that you think it is. It's an important thing to know about yourself. It's also important to know when these things aren't appropriate. And a lot of this stuff I said, if you read my book, it's not like it will take away your ability to have a placebo effect. If you write my book, um,

it might I'm not sure that I can. I may have hurt my own ability to have place of both X, but if you read it. Because a lot of these

things are actually innate, they're they're they're unconscious. And that's one of the really exciting areas of placebo researches is trying to separate conscious from unconscious place ebos and the and these would be, you know, a conscious placebo would be when someone tells you this really remarkable story about this thing they're gonna do to you, and they do it, and you feel better because you heard this great story.

And that's sort of a conscious process. But there's the unconscious ones that are really you know, from from experience that you sort of that has sort of been ingrained in you through classical conditioning or some other form of repetitive sort of experience that you actually like. You know, if you see a white coat, if you take a pill. For a lot of people, it doesn't matter what you're consciously thinking, it's going to trigger certain responses because your body,

your body is going to do it. And and so you know that phyzy drink you know, it may not matter or a new case the emergency. It may not matter what you're thinking about it. It might just work anyway because your body has been conditioned. Let's talk a

little bit about chronic pain. There was a lot of different parts in the book about chronic pain, and and I've had a couple of people in the show who suffer from chronic pain or chronic illness, and we talk about how they can increase their ability by working on it mentally. What were you finding as you did this book about chronic pain? Pain is probably the perfect place

to really understand where placebo and belief meets health. And when you talk to people who study chronic pain, people who who especially people who treat chronic pain, none of the stuff I talked about in the book is is terribly new to them, Like they deal with this every day because belief and expectation play a huge role in chronic pain, and it makes it really hard to come up with new treatments. You think about drugs for for

chronic pain, getting over the placebo effect is enormous. You're talking about, you know, levels of fifty sixty percent placebo response in large trials. I mean, how how do you get a drug over, I mean it's more. Yeah, and even morphine you know, has his limits certain certain a morphine like and so it makes it really hard to come up with drugs and also makes it very hard to start trials with drugs. How do you know if you're going down the right the right pathway, you know,

with the early stages of a drug trial. And it also means that a lot of different things can help chronic pain patients. And one of the doctors I talked to you, I thought one of the best chronic pain doctors ever, talked to Sean Mackie at Stanford. You know, he says, you know, he first of all, he's desperate for anything, and he says he's only able to help of his patients. Uh. I think he said cure. But um, you know, he said, if you're a baseball player, you know,

you're making millions. But as a doctor, that's not really good, you know. And it's just it's because it's so hard, and he things, you can get entrenched and a lot of people believe that your brain sort of gets he creates these habits of feeling pain and experiencing pain. Once it's in that habit, it's very hard to get out of.

So he will, I mean, he will encourage people to go back to church, he'll courage people to do mindfulness, and all kinds of different techniques, playing with Transcrian magnetic stimulation, even though it doesn't really outperform p cebos anything, in order to get an edge on on this this really really multi headed beast that is chronic pain. And so many cases the source of the pain is obvious, but

in other cases it's not. You have people who have fibromyalgia or neuralgia and it's not and people are suffering. People are you know, many of them have had their lives are on and I've spoken to a lot of them, and it's not clear how this pain can be treated

because it's created by the brain. And the difference between like purely chronic pain that's purely created in the brain versus chronic pain from a back surgery you got twenty years ago, I mean, I don't I don't know that anyone really knows what the difference is there, and and so it makes it very difficult to treat and placebos for good or for ill um placebos and Charlatan's have

worked their way into that field. For hundreds thousands of years, people have looked to all kinds of inert substances to try and treat chronic pain. It's on on the internet or late night TV every every day. You can see these, uh, these opportunities to treat chronic pain. And if it works, then it works, and and it's hard to argue that when you know, when you see the results, you can't

argue that. So you talk about the no sebo response, which is basically the opposite, right, I imagine something's gonna hurt, so it really hurts. And it seems like that's a big piece of chronic pain. Also is the expectation in

the way we're viewing and looking at it. No sea bows are tough to study, uh and and you can look at them through pain, and you can look at through some of the brain pathways and scientists, you know Luana, the person who shocked me, she has really pioneered a lot of this this work and no sea bows, but they're hard to study because you know, you can't you can't go to, say a Parkinson's patient and say here, take this pill. It will make your parkins is worse.

You can't go to a depressed patient and say this is gonna make your depression worse. It's just, you know, it's just not not right with chronic pain. The relationship between no sea bows and chronic pain. How much of your pain is you know, is created by your expectation? That is a very difficult question. And I talked to a lot of pain doctors who struggle with this. You know,

they have these these these patients. They tell these stories, like these big muscular sort of dock workers who come in with this, you know, no sign of pain, no physical you know, symptoms at all, and they're feeling is crippling pain. They can't they can't work. And then these old ladies come in, you know, who had a little crick in their back, you know, while garden usual. They come in and you know, their hips are completely disintegrated and they've got all these problems. Yet they don't feel

any pain and these other people do. And what what's the difference is two people? Is one of the great mysteries of you know, certainly pain research, but um I think also of brain science. It's just it's just, uh, I think when we crack that it's gonna a whole new day. So you're talking the book about hypnosis, and you say that, you know, it seems that people are very inclined to be more easily or less easily hypnotized. And you made a comparison in the book between meditation

and hypnosis. And I'll read from the book. So, studies suggest that having a busy mind can limit a person's ability to manage pain. Imagine pain management is a skill like running or weightlifting. According to Jensen, hypnosis is a little like taking an already strong sprinter to the gym and pushing her to a whole new level. Meditation is more like what happens when a couch potato who has never worked at a day in his life drastically changes

his eating habits and starts running every day. So the question I had coming out of that, because that couch potato could eventually become a great sprinter, right if you think about it in the real world. So does that mean that meditation done over a period of time might increase your ability to be hypnotized? Does anybody looked at that at all? No? And and and that's a great question. I mean, uh, this first of all, um, you know, hypnosis is one of the most poorly studied fascinating topics

in all of sciences. I mean, it just it drives me nuts that more people don't study it because the applications are incredible, and you know, when it works on his people segment of people who are hypnotize herbal it's as this you know this ability. You know, the same scientists told me about this guy who you got hypnotized.

You know, these full body burns and they were like pulling off these bandages and scrubbing out these burns and he didn't feel any of it, um because and he wasn't asleep, he was awake, but he just wasn't feeling it because he had been hypnotized. That that's something we should understand and we know is not being studied enough. But what they were referring to is these sort of different types of brainwaves um that are that are let's

just say they're associated with hypnosis versus meditation. We were often thinking of them sort of like this, this brainwaves happens right when you start meditating and then stops when when you don't the one for hypnosis. It's not that simple, but you know, there are different brainways that seemed to be associated with these different things and and and that's what they're looking at, and that's how they sort of

came up with that analogy. And yes, um, in both cases these are certainly in meditation, there's there's the opportunities for building skills, for building these abilities. It probably is not the exact same mechanism as hypnosis, so you know, it's not like they're interchangeable, but there is the skill building thing. Now with hypnosis, there's not really that same skill building ability. There is a certain limit if you're

not hypnotizable. You know, it's not clear that you can make yourself more so though, Uh though, I I think if we studied it more, we'd find out that there are ways can become more hypnotizable. I just I think that just hasn't been explored as much as it could have been. Um, but it's it's certainly not like me. I think. I think that's the difference between those two things. And when you when you make that, I guess what he was trying to get out was with these types

of brain waves. Um, there is, uh, there's an indication that that one thing is you know, you're sort of flexing these muscles or you're building these muscles. So this is not really the topic of your book at all, but your reference in the book, so I want to talk about it. So you talk about memory, Well, actually it is a topic as you talk about false memories,

and I find that's a fascinating area. And I don't think we're gonna have time to get in there to that, but you do reference a book where somebody talks about the seven sins of memory, and you list what they are, and you said that your favorite one is absent mindedness. And so I'm curious because A I have a terrible memory, and B I am very absent minded. I just wanted

to hear more about that. Okay, So I think what you're referring to is Daniel Shacktor's book, uh, and it's one of the sort of the bibles of memory research. And he's just one of the greatest researchers in this area. And all of them get to is this notion that memory is not always as reliable as you think it is. Um and once you experience, uh, you know, what you think of as being memory, rest of this image of this this uh, this video, it's like a picture you

pull out. Yeah, you just and yeah, and you can like instant recalling the movies in fact that you know people do so like the two hypnosis, Um, they'll like go in and see a place that used to be and look for details they don't seen the first time. Oh yeah, there was this wall, there's the clock was wall that doesn't exist. You should never mix hypnosis and memories that there there. They don't go together well because their memories are really fallible and they're easy to twist

and uh. And that's sort of what what is getting out with that book is all the different ways that your memory can fail you. I don't know failure the right word, but that we are fallible and uh, absent minded necessary fits in the one that's God knows, it's it's the bane of my existence. And false memories is an any one where you can create things and you can become very convinced that these things happen when they

didn't and there is an element of suggestibility. This is why I sort of put this in the book with because I'm a I'm a science writer, not a scientist. I can go a little further away from you know, established science, and I put this in there and be provocative because this is something It is an element of suggestibility, and scientists will talk about this after the interview a lot about you know what, if there was some connection there, And the way I've connected it in my mind is

Placebo's are suggestion for the future. If you take this, you will feel better. You know this, this will make you feel this way. Hypnosis is very much a sort of suggestion for the present. You know, you're walking through a field and you know you can feel the pain sort of drifting off of you like some are like autumn leaves. You know, this imagery that hypnotists us is always in the present. And if that's true, then then false memories feel like there there a suggestion for the past.

There's this they're they're sort of suggesting that something that already happened happened differently than it than it did, or didn't happen at all. Um And that's and and it's it's hard not to get drawn in and fascinated by that when you're looking at these these these issues sort of and you know in total and and you can't help but wonder if there's not some connection there between.

Our brains are fallible, and we have these stories we tell ourselves and some of those stories are stories about our lives and what's happened to us, and it feels very much the same. Though you know that direct connection hasn't been found yet. There's been a lot lately coming out about a lot of psychological studies and the inability to replicate them. Is this a very robust area of study? And most things that you're talking about are you know,

do we have a pretty high level of confidence? Yeah, you know, this is something that I really take very seriously. As I said, I'm not a scientist. I'm a science writer, you know, and I take a lot of people, a lot of differ perspective, a lot of research, and I sort of combined it in this book. There's a lot of information and there hopefully a lot of it's fun and easier to read. Um. But I didn't I didn't have a lot of time for studies that I didn't

think were robust. And if you look at some of the stuff I talked about, you know, the internal pharmacies, uh, and how your brain releases opioids in order to treat

your pain. Well, this goes back to the seventies ninety eight, I think was when people first really linked placebos to opioids, which the time we're basically you know, the newly discovered in orphans that that that had been discovered only a few years before, and you know, and and and it was decades of scientists really in obscurity, hacking away at these ideas, you know, piece at a time until we

could start imaging them. And when science started imaging them in like two thousand, you really started seeing things fit in a way that made sense with all the science that had come before. So when you when you see this continuity and these ideas sort of holding true, Yeah, this is this is all pretty sound science. And and the big question is where we go from here, you know,

like what the science is coming next? And and you know, a lot of science I talked to you, La Wanna Um another guy UM by the name of Toro Weger. I mean, these are really solid scientists. Hore Weger one of the guys who first imaged the placebo effect. He understands the statistics behind imaging better than almost any other scientists. I've talked to you. Brain sciences, I've talked to you, so I feel very confident about all of the sciences

in this book. Um, I'm curious to see what comes next and if and if you know, uh, if that solid science continues, excellent. So we're gonna wrap up here in a minute. But I want to talk about one other study. And I can't remember whether we've talked about it on this show or not, but it just blows my mind when I hear it. And it's the study about the maids and exercise. Can you can you share that story or that that study. It's not a story, it's a study. It's funny to bring this up right

after I talked about the solid science. This is actually one of those studies I really wish had been continued longer. And this is an area so this is UM. This is a study by a researcher now at Stanford, uh Aliot Crumb, really bright young woman who's been fascinated with some of these same questions that I have. And she did the study years ago. I think it's part of

her graduate work. UH looking at UM so the stories that that that we're told to UM people who were worked um in in hotels and UH and these people when when they she asked them about how much exercise they got, they say they've got very very little. And they describe their sort of lack of exercise, and then with half of them, she she Um gave them a presentation where they talked about how much exercise they're getting while they're working every day, like how much their work

actually helps them be fit. And then she tracked for a while the way that their bodies changed and what she she noticed some some physiological differences in the way that sort of the heart health, and a couple of other things with how these women responded. Just just the information that actually, every day you're you're working out, you're actually getting exercise just by working, and that realization had

seemed to have an effect on their body. Now, what she wasn't able to do is to track them then for the next ten years or whatever and really look at the long term effects of that knowledge and the knowledge that you know, it's it's like the same thing that uh fitbit does. You know, when you put these things in your wrists and suddenly you see how much you're walking every day, you feel like you're exercising more. Very likely it's a huge effect in your body. This

is an area where we do need more science. We need ten more people like Elliot Crumb working on this because it's just, you know, she's it's just so fascinating what she's been able to dig up. She did another study where just telling people uh the calorie count um in a shake um made a difference to actually physiological difference to their bodies. And one shake was sort of a a very heavy I think it's a six hundred calorie heavy, sort of indulged in shaking. The other one

was a hundred fifty calorie sort of diet shape. Well, both of them were three hundred calories. Neither of them they were the same shake, but they're in different packaging. And she actually saw a change in grelling, which is a way that your your your stomach tells your brain that it's full and also as part of the digester process, is part of your metallism um. And that actually changed in the people who were told that they were uh, they had a heavier shake, that ramped up, it became

much more active. So again, you know, I'd love to track these people for you know, years and put a bunch of money into sort of finding out how this affects a little long term because we don't know that. But they're definitely some really exciting early indications that the stories we tell ourselves have a fundamental effect on our bodies. So the study you were just discussing, you were told either you had you were getting a very high calorie shake or a low calorie shake. Um, they were both

exactly the same. And the and the people who believe they were getting a high colliery shake felt more full and not just felt it, but you could you could see the chemical change in them of the signals being full. I don't know if they felt more full the chemical that's sort of elusive chemical called graal and we can you can read about un that's fascinating chemical. Um Uh, those levels changed. Um, I don't think there was anything

to how response to how they felt. But basically their their body was reacting as if it was having a very large meal, whereas um, the other people's bodies were reacting as if they weren't having a large meal and tracking that over time. Obviously, there's all kinds of health

applications involved there. Um. However, you know she was lying to them, and that's the the other underlying problem with this is you know there's deception in this study like that circles all the way back to the beginning where I said, kind of what blows me away about this is if you told me that they they felt more full, I'd, oh, yeah, well the brain, you know, it's you know, it's just your perception. But it just fascinates me. Also that biochemically

being things change. It's just it gives me a different appreciation for how uh profound these things are. So we're gonna wrap up. Thanks so much, Eric. I enjoyed the book. If for listeners, if you like science writing, there were way more fascinating things in the book than we got to. So if you like good science writing, you like the sort of stuff you like reading about studies, Eric's book

is a great one. I'd recommend it um. If you do decide you want to get it, just go to our website to our show notes and you can buy it via Amazon there and we get a few cents which helps out a little bit. But thank you so much Eric for coming on. Eric, Thank you very much for me. This was a lot of fun. Okay, take care all right, Yeah anytime. By If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation

to the One you Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed dot net slash support,