MRI's NOCEBO EFFECT
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You have all heard of the placebo effect, such as when a person is given a sugar pill but believes it is a high blood pressure pill and their blood pressure goes down.
Now you need to know about placebo's cousin, the nocebo effect.
This occurs when a doctor shows a person their MRI scan and says the MRI looks really bad that there is a lot of arthritis. The doctor then expresses surprise that the person can even walk, the MRI is that bad!
Well you know what happens next-the persons pain gets worse! The nocebo effect is when a doctor tells a person that their MRI is terrible and it is crushing a nerve and the person should be feeling terrible-and soon they are.
The problem is is that the MRI may show something that isn't true, sometime this falsehood can lead the person to have more pain and even worse medical procedures like surgeries that are unwarranted.
My job and the job of other Prolotherapists is to recognize the nocebo effect and tell folks that their nerves are fine. They have no nerve problem as evidenced by their history and exam and that their referral pain is from a ligament.
Often I'll have a client in my office talking to me, moving around fine, yes they are in pain, but when I tell a joke, the laugh. They definitely aren't in agony and sometimes they have no pain. So let's think about it. If your nerve is pinched like the MRI says wouldn't it be pinched all the time? If this was true do you think you would have a little pain or a lot? Would it be there all the time or some of the time? You see if you have pain that comes and goes and often times is a 2-3 on a scale of 0 to 10 then the odds of you or that person having a pinch nerve are very, very little. Most likely they have ligament injury and guess what? Ligament injuries in the spine do not show up on MRI! So if you have a ligament injury causing your pain then most likely your MRI will give you a false positive.
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