Reblogged: Better Than They Feel?

[Gus Van Horn blog]

Writing at The New Scientist, Alan Levinovitz introduces readers to the idea of the nocebo effect, noting along the way that it surfaced among the results of an Italian study of gluten intolerance:

[L]ast February[,]

Slate

's

Darshak Sanghavi reported

on an

Italian study

that confirmed the existence of gluten intolerance ("non-coeliac wheat sensitivity") as a third, "distinct clinical condition". In the study, one-third of patients who self-identified as gluten-intolerant did in fact experience symptom relief after adopting a gluten-free diet. Case closed, right? Pass the gluten-free pasta.

Not so fast. An important implication of the study is that two-thirds of people who think they are gluten intolerant really aren't. In light of this, the even-handed Sanghavi suggested that "patients convinced they have gluten intolerance might do well to also accept that their self-diagnosis may be wrong".

The article is a mixed bag, but does a good job of showing with a couple of examples how common cognitive errors can lead otherwise intelligent people into becoming convinced that something benign is actually harmful. (His other example is "Chinese restaurant syndrome", which I'd heard of and which sounded semiplausible to me, although I've never personally known anyone who claimed to suffer from it.)

-- CAV

Link to Original