Placebo effects on nausea and motion sickness are resistant to experimentally-induced stress.

Nausea often occurs in stressful situations, such as chemotherapy or surgery. Clinically relevant placebo effects in nausea have been demonstrated, but it remains unclear whether stress has an impact on these effects. The aim of this experimental study was to investigate the interplay between acute stress and placebo effects in nausea.

The suffering ape hypothesis.

The "fearful ape hypothesis" could be regarded as one aspect of a more general "suffering ape hypothesis": Humans are more likely to experience negative emotions (e.g., fear, sadness), aversive symptoms (e.

Therapeutic encounters and the elicitation of community care.

Singh's analysis of shamanism is regarded as a contribution to the evolutionary study of healing encounters and evolutionary medicine. Shamans must create convincing healing spectacles, while sick individuals must convincingly express symptoms and suffering to motivate community care. Both have a shared interest in convincing onlookers.

How empathic is your healthcare practitioner? A systematic review and meta-analysis of patient surveys.

Background: A growing body of evidence suggests that healthcare practitioners who enhance how they express empathy can improve patient health, and reduce medico-legal risk. However we do not know how consistently healthcare practitioners express adequate empathy. In this study, we addressed this gap by investigating patient rankings of practitioner empathy.

The Signaling Theory of Symptoms : An Evolutionary Explanation of the Placebo Effect.

Placebo research shows that the subjective quality of care and social support, as well as the patients' expectations of treatment, influence therapeutic outcomes. However, this phenomenon, known as the placebo effect, does not usually cure the disease, but rather can provide symptomatic relief: It may soothe symptoms such as pain, swelling, or nausea that constitute part of an immune response. The function of this mechanism remains unclear.

Enhancing drug compliance and the placebo effect by raising subjective expectations.

Increasing the patient's subjectively felt effectiveness of a treatment might be a key to enhanced drug compliance and placebo effects, and may in this way enhance the effectiveness of medical treatment at a low cost. Simple methods to achieve this aim are suggested, derived from consumer psychology, psychology of judgement and user-centered design. A drug's design should meet three criteria: an intuitive design which makes the purpose of the drug easily discernible, confirmatory side effects which give feedback that matches the drug's purpose, and mental models which enable the patient to develop an understanding of the drug's mechanism of action.