If the Nocebo effect is real why didn't I wake up covered in burn marks after I dreamed I was burned? Nocebo is opposite to the placebo effect. Believers in the Nocebo Effect say if a persons brain is convinced its burned, it'll cause burn marks to actually appear. Last night, I had a dream where I was burned alive. I woke up with a racing heartbeat, and I was convinced the dream was real until I woke up.
Because it was just a dream? No they don't. You are making that up. The placebo and nocebo effects are differences in outcomes for treatments of a range of maladies when people believe that they are taking effective medicine (or ineffective medicine.) The differences are usually minor. It is not "making burns appear."
The nocebo effect occurs when a person's own negative expectations produce a negative effect on the person's health. It is sort of the opposite of the placebo effect, which is where a person's positive expectations seem to produce an actual health benefit. Both effects are "in the mind". The mind controls the body, however. While the mind cannot produce actual burns, it can certainly produce the feeling of being burned, and there might be other physiological side-effects in some cases (e.g. see racing heartbeat, above).
