Placebo Response: Culturally Specific?

Watched this on YouTube this morning:



Thought it was very interesting that the efficacy of the placebo response varied between Germany and Brazil, with Germans reacting more positively. It made me wonder about the difference in back pain statistics between the developed world, and the Third World and how the incidence of back pain is much higher in the US, Europe and Japan than, say, the Australian outback or sub-Saharan Africa. Could it be that the same stress and anxieties that drive the back pain epidemic in the developed world could also be at work somehow in the placebo effect?

Interesting too how the professor notes that 80% of pain conditions along with hypertension and stomach ulcers respond favorable to placebos. Sure sounds like the same side of the street as TMS.

Here's one of Prof. Robert Jutte's books on the history of the senses in Western civilization from antiquity to cyberspace:

http://www.amazon.com/History-Sense...43M_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385149726&sr=1-1

Intrigued!