Dr. Baraki,
As I’ve learned from much of the information you’ve put out on the topic of pain I have started to become curious about its application into other areas. I realize this could be foolish and have no correlation with other things aside from pain but the whole topic of “nocebo” really intrigues me. Basically, my question is do you believe that one’s expectation and mindset can affect how their body perceives the symptoms of common illness? For example, I have two friends who live very different lives. Friend A has a health-nut mother and has been raised on exclusively organic, non-gmo, insert buzzword here, stuff his entire life. I notice that he gets sick an awful lot. Part of me thinks that this could be due to the fact that he is aware of all the “toxins” and other “unhealthy” things he interacts with on a day to day basis. Eating suboptimal food, not taking an apocalyptic-sized regimen of natural vitamins from his mom, and not having a healthy dose of essential oils in his diffuser when he goes to bed. Friend B, on the other hand, lives in the exact opposite. Eats very low-quality food, does not exercise, drinks and outrageous amount of alcohol, and just lives a pretty high-stress life. Now the one thing he has going for him is that he legitimately believes that he is a person that just can’t or doesn’t get sick, and for the most part he doesn’t. If he has an infection that requires antibiotics he will wait it out for a very very long time, thinking that it will just go away. Now although this is a very isolated example in which could be explained by a few confounding factors I feel like there have to be some similarities between this and the response to pain. Total curiosity question, thanks for your insight!