Prospective study of nocebo effects related to symptoms of idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields, 2020, Brascher

Oh please - 6% of people severely affected by thinking EMF affected their health? Sure, 6% of people might think EMF can affect health, but I very much doubt that the strain on those 6% of people is severe.

This is the core idea - one that is used to explain ME/CFS by some.

So, despite it being hypothesised that gender was important in determining who feels symptoms when there is no real reason for them, this study didn't find that.

 

Interoceptive accuracy

So, they expected that accuracy when estimating one's own heart beats was a sign of interoceptive accuracy, which they expected to be a good thing i.e. to prevent a nocebo effect. I'm not sure about that - there are a range of reasons why someone might be able to sense their heart beat. I would have thought being stressed might make your heart pound. Anyway.

In session 1, they found that people who estimated their heart rate accurately were no more or less likely to over-estimate the strength of a tactile stimulus. So their expectation was not borne out.

In session 2 a week later, they found that people who had estimated their heart rate accurately were less likely to over-estimate the strength of the weak and moderate intensity stimuli. But they were more likely to over-estimate the strength of the higher intensity stimuli. That is sounding all very random to me.

Nevertheless, the authors claim that interoceptive accuracy predicts the nocebo effect. If they found anything at all (which I strongly doubt), it was the opposite of what they expected - interoperative accuracy predicted a higher impact of prior beliefs on conscious perception.

No actual data for all this is presented of course.

 

I have to stop looking at the study for now.

But, of note is that showing groups a film about the dangers of EMF vs a neutral film about trade in mobile phones had no impact on the nocebo response.