Christopher Ryan: The Power of Placebo

We also know how to measure placebo. Right. And we don't know how the fuck that works. We know that hypnosis, people can have open heart surgery under hypnosis or have limbs amputated or all sorts of amazing things with no anesthesia whatsoever. Has that really been done? Oh yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah. Have you ever been hypnotized? Yeah. But I don't have high hypnotic ability. That differs. It's another thing that differs among people. And Stanley actually has a really interesting theory along those lines, which is that in prehistoric populations, hypnotic ability would be adaptive because a lot of the healing rituals were keying into placebo response. So if we have a certain ritual, if you're susceptible to, you know, you believe in that, like voodoo, there's a, you know, voodoo death. People die when their spell is cast or occurs because they believe it. If you don't believe it, it doesn't happen. So it happens the opposite direction as well with healing. So his idea is that that would have been a very adaptive characteristic in prehistoric societies, whereas in contemporary societies, it's maladaptive because you're more susceptible to advertising or you're easier to manipulate. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I, yeah, I've, when I was in grad school, I had some professors who worked with hypnosis and I studied it a bit along the same, around the same time I was looking at multiple person how would he disorder, because I was real interested in this question of how the brain and the body interact, how much of, you know, there's all this research showing that people with the same condition in hospitals, exactly the same age, same prognosis and all that, they heal significantly faster if their hospital window looks out on trees as opposed to looks out at another building, something like that. Just looking at something like nature, keys the body into some sort of energy that helps it to heal. Completely makes sense. I've met people with multiple personalities. Well, Roseanne, Roseanne's got, doesn't she make sure that's true. I know another one that's a weird one is the football player Herschel Walker. I think he had trauma induced multiple personality disorders. Wow. Does she? There's articles that says like, Bill, Bill Marr reminds us she does and then Roseanne says she doesn't. So yeah, I think. And then she does one says seven having seven personalities is tough. Her saying it. So yeah. Well, here's the thing about Roseanne. I mean, I'm saying this for the 10th time, I guess she was hit by a car when she was 15 and she was put in a mental Institute for nine months afterwards. She had severe brain damage and she lost her ability to do mathematics and like really scrambled her brain. And that is probably the birth of the Roseanne that we know the comedian. And that's also the case with Sam Kinison. Sam Kinison was also like a pretty normal kid. And then he was hit by a car and, you know, pretty severe brain damage as well. And brain damage for especially, apparently, it especially has an impact on your ability to be rational and impulsive behavior. Like people with brain damage a lot of times get very impulsive. It's a bit very so widely. Yeah. You know, it's what happens to you dependent upon like what kind of trauma, where the trauma is, what part of your brain. But yeah, when they said it about Herschel Walker, I was always confused. I wonder if it was from football, like football trauma or was it personal trauma, like, you know, abuse? Yeah. People with, like are diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, if I remember correctly, almost always were severely abused as kids. You know, and in fact, the rationale is that they develop the alternate personalities as a way of escaping a reality that's intolerable. Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, people do weird things with horrible memories. You know, they bury them to the point where they don't even really have access to them anymore. Yeah. Sexual abuse and some traumatic events when you're young. Yeah. But the fucking human brain, then the way it adapts and molds to things is so bizarre. Yeah. There's an anecdote that is in this book, Civilized to Death. Notice that segue. Ooh, good segue to the book. Pull that bitch over here. Yeah. It's, by the way, the art is done by a guy who listens to my podcast. Oh. Really. It looks like the art by a guy who would go to your podcast. A cheeseburger, a chimp wearing a cheeseburger with a nice suit on. Yeah. He's got an iPhone. Oh yeah, the story. So there's a species of grasshopper in North Africa that, you know, they hang out, they're grasshoppers, they're dispersed, they eat grass, they're chill, right? Rains come, the grasslands expand, grasshopper population increases, then the rain stop, the grasslands contract to the point where the density of the grasshoppers triggers a dormant gene. So there's an epigenetic event in these grasshoppers and they start to transform, and not over generations, individuals. Front legs get shorter, back legs get longer, thorax changes, shape of the head changes, coloring changes, and behavior changes from being these chilled out, solitary, relaxed grasshoppers, they start attacking each other, they become cannibalistic, and they swarm. Locust. Locust, exactly. They become locust. So this species of grasshopper and locust is the same species. Yeah. It's the same DNA. It's just responding to different conditions. So, you know, we're talking about the brain and, you know, who you are and what identity is and all that. And this, I was reminded of this when you said, you know, people are so different, and the H2O thing. We're not only different as individuals in the same context, we change completely given the context we're in. So the focus of this book is that hunter-gatherers were essentially a different sort of animal. They were essentially, you know, the parallel is with the grasshoppers, and now we're swarming. Now we're a different kind of animal, even though our DNA's the same. Well, that completely makes sense. I mean, people that live in small towns are so different than people that live in cities. Yeah. It's so rare that you find someone who has a small town sensibility in Manhattan. Yeah, they get chewed up. Yeah. Yeah, right. Literally. Yeah, literally. Yeah, it's, that's, the locust thing is amazing. Have you ever read the accounts of the settlers in the, you know, the pioneer days, making their way across the country and dealing with the swarms of locusts and really not having any idea what to do with them and how to handle it? Eat them. Yeah, you can. The Native Americans ate them, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's probably a real good move, right? That's one of the things that people think is probably an excellent solution to some of the issues that people have with meat, because a lot of people don't have any problem killing bugs. But they wouldn't want to kill a lamb. Right. You know, but you can have cricket proteins. Really? We call it micro agriculture. Yeah, yeah. Cricket protein is apparently like very healthy. I've eaten crickets. Yeah, I have too. In Thailand? I've had them in Mexico. Oh, yeah. Mexico, they had them fried and we were staying at a resort in, where was it? Punta Mita? Yeah, I think it was down there. Porta Vallarta. Yeah. And they had a bowl in the resort, like when we walked into the hotel room. Like, okay. Like mints. Yeah, they had like sliced mangoes and then they had fucking crickets. And I was like, all right, I'll try that. I hosted Fear Factor. There's a restaurant here in LA that I was at just a couple of weeks ago that has all sorts of crickets and grasshoppers. Really? Yeah. What's it called? It's a Mexican place. They specialize in mole. Ah. I don't remember what it's called. A good Mexican place? It's really good. Isn't it weird that like, there's a lot of great Mexican food in LA, but it's like, like your basic burrito joints and taco. It's not like gourmet Mexican food. There's very few gourmet Mexican places. This place is... Is that it right there? Yeah, that's it. That's right. Itadakimasu. Couldn't remember the name. Itadakimasu. Jamie. Itadakimasu. Guela Guezza. Guela Guezza. Itadakimasu. Is that how you say it? Have you been there? No, I just, I know the word. It's like a, I don't know if it means party, but it's a celebration down in the Oaxaca. Yeah. Damn. Oaxaca. Serving up insects. Yeah, check it out. It's a good place. I really, the mole is fantastic. Where is that at? What part of LA? On Olympic. Olympic. Oh, okay. Deep in the heart of Texas. Yeah. Bam. Beautiful. Yeah. Mole. I love mole. And let's face it, shrimp lobster, that's just bugs. Those are just big sea bugs. Well, we found that out on Fear Factor, because people that are allergic to shellfish are also allergic to roaches. Ah. Yeah, we found that out the hard way. A little lawsuit. No, no. The dude was allergic to shellfish, and he had to eat roaches for this thing. And they wound up having to give him an adrenaline shot. Oh, yeah. He was a... Epic pen. Yeah. He was seasoned up a little bit. That's not good. Your windpipe starts constricting. Yeah. I'm not allergic to anything as far as I know. Congratulations. I'm very happy. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. That's a bummer, man. Allergies are a bummer, especially for peanuts. I've heard peanut allergies are so bad that people will ask you to not eat peanuts on a plane with someone who has a peanut allergy. Like some people's peanut allergy is so severe. Yeah. Even like the dust of you chewing peanuts on a plane next to them can get them sick. And it's interesting to think about the state of consciousness and how that affects allergies, because apparently, and again, I'm always cautious about saying shit on the show, because there's so many people listening. So caveat, it's been a long time since I read the research, but if I remember correctly, under hypnosis, a lot of people with allergies no longer... In fact, I remember the research. Yeah. There was a... It was a setup where the person could see... So like you and I are talking across the table and there's a mirror behind me. And in the mirror, in your peripheral vision, you see roses, and you're allergic to roses. You'll have a reaction. Even though they're plastic roses. So it sort of enters the consciousness and triggers the response subconsciously. Yeah. If I think that's how it was. And then with people under hypnosis, like Andrew Weil wrote about this cat allergies. He was tripping. He was on MDMA, I think, and he was playing with a cat and had no reaction to it. Wow. Yeah. Look at this. Self-hypnosis squelches allergies. Picturing ski slopes... I need a Jamie in my life. You do. Damn. Picturing ski slopes reduces hay fever symptoms by a third. Look at that. Picturing ski slopes. How weird. What a weird... Oh, I'm skiing. Well, because you're picturing a place where there's no pollen. Right. Right? Right. You could probably picture the surface of Mars too. Yeah. Well, if you've ever got a needle, you get a shot and the doctor's about to give you the shot, and you start tensing up, you feel the anticipation. Yeah. Your heart starts quickening and you get really weirded out by it. But then you get the shot and you're like, oh, that wasn't shit. Why was I freaking out like that? But it's the psychosomatic aspect of it. I think that's what life is, basically, in a nutshell. A lot of a wow-ish. Yeah. In a nutshell. It's an analogy. Like, we're always worried about things. We spend so much time worrying about things, most of which never occur. Yeah. You know? And even the ones that do occur, it's like, wow, whatever. Like, death. You know, what is... I'm not worried about death. Dying, maybe, if it takes too long. But if it takes like an hour or a day to die, that's a tiny fraction of your life. Who gives a shit?