The Science Behind the Supernatural
The Science Behind the Supernatural is a compilation of research I began working on during the height of Covid in 2020. With life and death scenarios playing out all around the world at the time, it felt important to pour my energy into something that mattered. Something that could bring light to the darkness, something that could bring hope and healing.
I had been reading books on spirituality, life after death, and the mind/body connection for several years prior. The things I read blew my mind, empowered me, and changed the way I lived my life. But when I would share these things with friends or family, it was often difficult for them to grasp and didn’t seem to light the same spark. I felt strongly that “getting this information out there” could change the world, but I knew that this world of woo would need to be centered in something people could sink their teeth into: science.
So I set about compiling scientific research on the topics that fascinated me most, the topics I was sure would change people’s lives for the better if they knew about them. Things I was sure people would be willing to look into, open their minds to and apply if there was enough scientific evidence to back them up. I put together a website where I continued to compile information, with the intention of sharing it all once “complete”…
Four years later, the information is still incomplete and has been sitting unread and unpublished in the dark, not doing anyone any good! Realizing I could continue to work on the content forever and it would never be “complete,” I’ve decided to just start sharing the information by topic here. I believe it fits well enough here with my current website, as the work I do now is very much centered in the supernatural.
The research presented here is by no means complete, and I hope to find the time to continue to add to it and revise accordingly. Please know that while I am by no means a scientist or academic researcher, I have done my best to make sure that each scientific study sited comes from a reputable source and is not funded by certain organizations that have personal interests in mind.
I hope this information not only opens your mind and gives you hope, but also gets you excited about the untapped potential of magic within and around you! Dive in …
“Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words
Your words become your actions, your actions become your habits
Your habits become your values, your values become your destiny”
Part 1: The Placebo Effect
The placebo effect is a fascinating phenomenon and one of the strongest proofs we have that thoughts do affect our physical reality. By taking a neutral substance, such as a sugar pill, and observing the physical and psychological effects it has on the body and mind, we are able to see scientific evidence behind the power of belief. Studies in this area are showing us that people have the ability to heal from a disease or physical ailment through thought alone, simply based on belief.
The Encyclopedia Britannica defines the placebo effect as, “A psychological or psychophysiological improvement attributed to therapy with an inert substance or a simulated (sham) procedure.” In most of the articles you’ll find online about the placebo effect, you’ll see that it is generally championed for its benefits concerning psychosomatic conditions such as depression and downplayed in its ability to affect physical healing.
However, as I went deeper into research on the subject, I found plenty of scientific studies backing up both. I’ll present to you here a handful of studies from each area, as well as the equally powerful “nocebo” effect and a few other studies demonstrating the power of mind over matter.
The Placebo Effect on Psychological Conditions:
One of the most promising and well-studied areas of placebo benefit is in patients with depression. Study after study shows that placebo pills are just as effective, and sometimes more effective, than anti-depressants themselves. Since there are so many studies in this area to choose from, let’s start by looking at one of the first major meta-analyses on the subject. (A meta-analysis looks at many different studies on a single topic to uncover a general conclusion.)
In 1998, clinical psychologists Dr. Guy Saperstein and Dr. Irving Kirsh sifted through years of research to compile the first meta-analysis on antidepressants titled, ‘Listening to Prozac but hearing placebo: A meta-analysis of antidepressant medications.’ Their findings, published online in the journal of the American Psychological Foundation, concluded that, “The placebo component of the response to medication is considerably greater than the pharmacological effect.”
The study, however, was met with controversy and criticism – partly because meta-analyses were considered flawed and inadequate at the time. The general thought was that you couldn’t effectively scientifically analyze such a large amount of data into a streamlined conclusion. (Today, met-analyses are regularly used and considered to be one of the best ways to distill a large amount of scientific information into cohesive patterns and statistics.)
Challengers were so disturbed by the findings that they accused Saperstein and Kirsh of using biased data from an unrepresentative subset of clinical trials. In response to the accusation, Saperstein and Kirsh replicated their study in 2002, using a completely different set of clinical trials.
In order to obtain access to new trial information, the pair reached out to the FDA under the Freedom of Information Act and requested data sets from pharmaceutical companies. (Under current law, pharmaceutical companies are required to submit information from all clinical trials sponsored by the FDA. Many of these trials remain unpublished and are never shown to the public.)
Saperstein and Kirsh’s 2002 meta-analysis was unique in that it analyzed both published and unpublished studies and was able to reveal information to the public that had previously been hidden. The unpublished studies from the FDA revealed that “Only 43% of the trials showed a statistically significant benefit of drug over placebo. The remaining 57% were failed or negative trials.”
This new 2002 study confirmed their 1998 findings about the placebo effect, showing that “Approximately 80% of the response to medication was duplicated in placebo control groups,” and noting, “Improvement at the highest doses of medication was not different from improvement at the lowest doses.”
A full summary of Saperstein and Kirsh’s work can be found here in the US National Library of Medicine titled, “Antidepressants and the Placebo Effect.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/#:~:text=But%20analyses%20of%20the%20published,effect%20at%20all%20on%20serotonin.
1998 study:
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1999-02983-012
2002 study:
https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2002-14079-003
Placebo Surgery:
There’s no disputing that a spinal fracture is a very real and painful experience, and many would assume there’s no way of “tricking yourself” into feeling better regarding something so physical. However, a 2009 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine proves otherwise – showing that even in the case of spinal fractures, the placebo effect can still provide relief.
Titled, ‘A randomized trial of Vertebroplasty for Osteoporotic Spinal Fractures,’ the study involved 131 patients who were randomly divided into two groups: 68 patients who would receive the actual surgery and 63 others who would receive only a simulation of. The participants were not told which group they were assigned to and the placebo surgery was carefully set up to mimic every aspect of the real surgery, aside from actually applying the cement to the fractured vertebrae.
After 1 month, the follow up with both groups found that there was no significant difference in pain levels between the group who had received the actual surgery and those who had the fake procedure, concluding that, “Patients with osteoporotic vertebral fractures who were randomly assigned to undergo either a full vertebroplasty or a control intervention consisting of a simulated vertebroplasty without infusion of PMMA did not differ significantly at 1 month after the procedure on measures of back-pain intensity, functional disability, and quality of life.”
They did find that as they tracked the two groups into the second and third month, some of the patients started to feel pain again. However, it must be taken into account that part of the deal for participants in the study was that they would be informed at 1 month in which group they were a part of, and if they were in the placebo group they could elect to have the real surgery.
Because of these circumstances, it’s hard to tell if their pain returned as a result of being told they were in the placebo group, or if it would have returned on its own regardless. The scientists involved in the study question the accuracy of the long-term pain results because of this factor, and conclude that further testing and tracking needs to be done in this area to monitor long-term pain relief.
Regardless of the long-term effects, there’s no denying the short-term effects are profound in themselves – identical pain relief from the real and fake surgery!
Full study available for view here: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0900563#t=articleMethods
Placebo and Knee Surgery:
One of the most widely-studied areas of placebo effect in surgery is specifically with knee surgery. If you look around online, you’ll find many different scientific papers on the subject, with the most promising findings in the area of arthroscopic knee surgery.
The first placebo-controlled study involving arthroscopy for osteoarthritis was done in 2002 by Dr. Bruce Moseley. Moseley’s initial objective was to determine which part of the arthroscopic knee surgery was producing relief in his patient’s pain levels. The thought of including a placebo surgery control group wasn’t even on his radar (at that time placebo or “sham” surgery control groups were rarely included in studies) and it wasn’t until a fellow colleague, Dr. Nelda Wray, challenged his method that he decided to include one.
Initially resistant to her suggestion, Moseley didn’t believe that a fake surgery could produce any real results. However, Dr. Wray convinced him that without the placebo group included, there was no way to indefinitely prove that the pain relief was the result of the procedure rather than the patient’s belief. So, with this new control group secured, Dr. Moseley set out to better understand what exactly made arthroscopic knee surgery effective.
To do this, Moseley took 165 patients with arthritis of the knee and divided them into three groups – one that would receive arthroscopic debridement (removing damaged cartilage or bone), one that would receive arthroscopic lavage (rinsing out damaged cartilage or bone), and one that would receive the placebo surgery.
It should be noted that the placebo surgery was carefully conducted to mimic the real surgery as closely as possible. Patients received actual incisions where the arthroscope would normally go and received a simulated debridement that involved everything except actually inserting the instrument. Patients were then tracked over a 24-month period in which both pain and functionality were monitored.
This data was collected at 2 and 6 weeks after surgery, and then at the 3, 6, 12, 18 and 24-month markers. After assessing all the data, Moseley was shocked to find that, “At no point did either of the intervention groups report less pain or better function than the placebo group.”
Those in the placebo group were reporting the same level of pain relief and similar if not better functionality as those that had received the surgeries, doing things like playing basketball and climbing stairs with no problem. Those in the debridement group actually reported less functionality at the 2 week, 1 year, and 2-year mark than the placebo group.
While Moseley had initially set out to determine which part of the arthroscopic surgery was most effective, he now had to concede that, “My skill as a surgeon had no benefit on these patients. The entire benefit of surgery for osteoarthritis of the knee was the placebo effect.”
Check out the full study here: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa013259
Placebo Effect Without a Placebo Pill:
Just as an inert substance or sham surgery can produce a chemical or biological change in the body, so can an actual medicine’s effectiveness be diminished by the power of belief. Let’s look at what happens when there’s no placebo pill involved but still a placebo effect at hand. A 2017 study involving the popular anti-anxiety medicine Lexapro is a perfect illustration of our mind’s ability to amplify or diminish the effectiveness of medication through thought alone.
The study, titled, “Verbal suggestions influence the clinical and neural effects of escitalopram in social anxiety disorder: A randomized trial,” involved dividing participants with social anxiety disorder into two groups – overt and covert. Both groups were then given 20mg of Lexapro for 9 weeks, the only difference being that the overt group was told that was what they had received, and the covert group was told that they were given an “active placebo pill” which was unlikely to produce any clinical effects but may cause some of the same side effects as Lexapro. Patients were then monitored through various means over the duration of the study, including with fMRI scans and clinical and self-monitoring evaluations. Blood serum was even checked to confirm that all patients had the same amount of Lexapro in their systems.
At the end of the study, data showed response to treatment in 50% of the overt group, versus just 14% of the covert group. In addition, overall quality of life improvement was reported at double the rate in the overt group versus the covert group. Neurological data from the fMRI scans also showed changes in brain function between the two groups. Those in the overt group who responded positively to the medication tended to have more activity in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), an area associated with cognition and attention. Those in the covert group had higher levels of activity in their amygdala, an area associated with the flight or fight response.
Remember, each group was given the same dose of medicine but produced vastly different results based on their beliefs alone – proving the mind is that powerful!
Full study here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-3964(17)30385-7/fulltext
Nocebo Effect:
The term “nocebo effect” is used to describe a negative placebo effect. For instance, if two groups of patients receive placebo pills and one is told that it will heal them and the other is told it will hurt them, those who experience the negative reaction are an example of this nocebo effect. Much like the Lexapro study cited above, this is an example of one pill (though in this case, a placebo pill) producing two different outcomes based on the patient’s projected outcome.
One startling example of this occurred during a case study for antidepressants in which one of the patients in the placebo group attempted to commit suicide by taking all 29 of his prescribed pills at once, not realizing that they were placebo pills. Because of his strong belief in their adverse effect, he began to go into hypotension to such an extent that intravenous fluids were required to stabilize his blood pressure. When he was told that he was actually in the placebo group and in no real danger, his symptoms quickly subsided and his body regulated itself.
Full study here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17484949/
If you want to go more in depth on the nocebo effect and its implications, a 2012 meta-analysis titled, “Nocebo Phenomena in Medicine” is a great overview of the many different studies in this area: