Suggestible You: A Remarkable Journey Into the Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal by Erik Vance

I recently listened to Suggestible You: A Remarkable Journey Into the Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal by Erik Vance and narrated by Paul Michael Garcia. 

Listening time for Suggestible You: A Remarkable Journey Into the Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal by Erik Vance is 9 hours, 39 minutes.

Suggestible You: A Remarkable Journey Into the Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal by Erik Vance is a work of nonfiction. I really enjoyed this book a lot. It discusses the placebo effect, nocebo effect, hypnosis, meditation, and false memories in great detail as well as addiction, depression, sexual dysfunction, TCM, acupuncture, and so much more.

I'm finding it difficult to articulate the fascinating information that I learned on just how the body and mind works when it comes to placebos, nocebos, and both traditional and alternative medicines. It's all more complicated than I once suspected and Erik Vance describes it all in fascinating detail. The last chapter even has a hypnosis session to listen to, which was cool, I thought.

I think Paul Michael Garcia was a mediocre narrator. I wish another narrator had been selected instead for this book.

Below is the publisher's summary for Suggestible You: A Remarkable Journey Into the Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal by Erik Vance from Audible:

This 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.

Continuing the success of National Geographic's brain books and rounding out our pop science category, this book shows how 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.

I can see myself giving copies of this book to others!! Suffice it to say, I really enjoyed Suggestible You. 

I am giving Suggestible You: A Remarkable Journey Into the Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal by Erik Vance a rating of 5 stars out of 5 stars!!

Until my next post, happy reading!