The title of this article may sound familiar. It's the placebo effect. The placebo effect is a phenomenon in which a patient's symptoms actually improve due to positive expectations, despite receiving a fake medicine (such as a sugar pill) or treatment. I remember having frequent stomachaches as a child. Each time, my mother would rub my stomach dozens of times with the promise of a mommy hand. I came to rely on her hands when I had a stomach ache. Now I know exactly why. 

  I'm a cold person by nature, so I get an upset stomach when I eat cold food. A typical example is eating that delicious pork and getting sick. Even if you eat eel, a high-protein food, your stomach will be churning. This happens repeatedly, so your acquaintances gently challenge you to change your behavior. He told me to change my thinking by applying the placebo effect. So I prayed and tried it a little bit over the past year. The result: I got stuck.

  A long time ago, I read in a book that there was a case where morphine was needed for an operation on a man whose leg had been amputated during the war, but since it was already exhausted, glucose fluids were given as morphine and the patient was stabilized. According to the literature, this is due to the release of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and endorphins in the brain, which actually reduces pain and improves physical condition. This placebo effect doesn't work for me, so I still smell pork and eat beef.

  Why doesn't this work for me? This is where I came across the term nocebo effect. It's the opposite of placebo, and the academic theorem states that “The phenomenon in which a person experiences side effects from a harmless substance or treatment due to negative expectations.” It can be a drug that is effective, but the negative expectations overwhelm the side effects and prevent you from taking it.

  For example, when I go to a healing or gift meeting and get prayed for, I don't feel anything. People around me are falling backwards and forwards. That's why I am one of the people in the Bible who understands the inner life of Thomas. In other words, it was very difficult and hard for him to believe and follow Jesus. I think it's because the no-see-um effect was strongly dominant.

  The decisive secret that allowed me to become a person of faith and a pastor is faith. I changed my mind, which dominated my psychology, to faith by listening to the gospel and putting my will into it. Once I started with faith, my heart and mind changed, my environment changed, and my physical reactions changed. You don't find change in a negative nocebo effect. Faith is the foundation of the positive placebo effect.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)