Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781426217890)

National Geographic's riveting narrative 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? Journalist Erik Vance explores 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.

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.

Author: Erik Vance
ISBN-10: 1426217897
ISBN-13: 9781426217890
Publisher: National Geographic Society
Language: English
Published: 11/08/2016
Pages: 288
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.10w x 1.10d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 08/22/2016
Kirkus Reviews 09/15/2016
Booklist 11/15/2016 pg. 6