Today's Word-A-Day (Wordsmith.Org : The magic of words. word, language, quote, quotation, anagram, dictionary, words, languages, quotes, quotations, anagrams, dictionaries) was NOCEBO, a substance that is perceived to be harmful, when in reality it is really harmless.

This really doesn't have a lot to do with low carb, but the article linked to this had some thought-provoking things to say about it.

The Nocebo Effect: Placebo's Evil Twin (washingtonpost.com)

Here's a quote from the article:

"Ten years ago, researchers stumbled onto a striking finding: Women who believed that they were prone to heart disease were nearly four times as likely to die as women with similar risk factors who didn't hold such fatalistic views.

The higher risk of death, in other words, had nothing to with the usual heart disease culprits -- age, blood pressure, cholesterol, weight. Instead, it tracked closely with belief. Think sick, be sick.

While the placebo effect refers to health benefits produced by a treatment that should have no effect, patients experiencing the nocebo effect experience the opposite. They presume the worst, health-wise, and that's just what they get."

Could some of us be sabotaging our eating plans, thinking that we are prone to gain weight, so losing weight is going to be so difficult, using the nocebo effect on ourselves? I wonder if the nocebo effect can also translate to perceived notions about certain foods? We are sure that we ate too much cheese for our own good, it's going to stall us, and sure enough, the next day we have gained a pound! Was it the cheese that caused us to gain, was it our convincing ourself that we would gain that did it (the nocebo effect), or was it something entirely different?

I found this entire article to be extremely interesting. Just the fact that drug side effects are costing health care 76 billion dollars a year had me gasping.

I hope you enjoy the article as much as I did. Besides, we all learned a new word today!

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Nita