Jo Marchant is no stranger to science or to so-called quackery. While researching her book, Cure: A Journey Into the Science of Mind Over Body, she came to understand the mind not as a miracle cure but as a driver of crucial biological changes that influence everything from pain to the immune system.
Dramatic effects occur when a patient’s mental state is attended to, says Marchant:
Playing a virtual-reality game eases pain in burn patients by as much as 50 percent (PDF) more than drugs alone, while research on placebos—fake treatments—tells us that psychological factors such as expectation and social interaction ease symptoms via biological changes very similar to those caused by drugs.
