Nocebo/Placebo. What's going on?

Most know about the placebo effect. It is where your mind works with your body to heal, because it believes it can/will despite the 'medication' being imaginary.
But have you heard of its evil twin, the Nocebo effect? This is where you are convinced you are ill when there's no medical evidence showing you have anything wrong with you.
There are many examples of the Nocebo effect. Here is one. Most don't read the small print on the folded sheet of paper inside a packet of drugs.
However, when a patient is read out, in a serious voice by a doctor, the side effects of a drug, they are far more likely to suffer those side effects.
If humans just had a bias towards wanting to get better, then the Placebo effect could be that. But the Nocebo effect questions the whole mind/body relationship.

Why is it that the biological machinery humans are born with can so easily be affected by the rather woolly concept of expectation?
Studies on Nocebo seem to suggest that several things turbo-charge it. Belief in the person telling you something. A track record of something appearing to work.
Thirdly, and interestingly, others around you acting as if whatever is suggested will, inevitably, happen to you.

So where is the philosophy in this? Well, much has been made of the separation of mind and body in understanding humans.
The brain is seen as the clever thinking thing that accepts signals from the body and the world, through sense organs like sight and touch, sound, smell etc.
The brain is then where, supposedly, this sensory data is evaluated independently as to the quality, truth, meaning etc. of the information it receives.
Meanwhile, the body is seen as mechanistic, reacting to the influence of food, exercise, injury etc.
Yes, the brain appears to make the body move, and yes, no placebo or Nocebo will break or fix a broken leg. That is why we have surgeons mending broken body parts and doctors prescribing pills, right...?
Nocebo/Placebo still begs the question, how and why does the body react to the abstract ideas we have within our heads? Be it imagined side effects, pain thresholds, the veracity of drugs and in extreme examples, directing the body to die because of a mistaken cancer diagnisis?

Perhaps the idea that the brain is detached from the body, that the mind is somehow separate, is mistaken. That thoughts and the material body are not two distinctly different things.
Philosophical attempts to explain how the mind works to create emergent thought, that is planning, self-recognition, ideological conceptualisation etc. outside of the body's biology have centred on several possibilities. That the mind is God-inspired, hence the soul. That there is a ‘ghost in the machine’ and the rather illusive concept of 'a will'. None seem very satisfactory. Perhaps the whole mind/body split should be dispensed with, because the body is fickle in how the mind influences it, and the mind is fickle as it is easily fooled into sending incorrect signals. Maybe modern medicine is stuck with a philosophical model of humanity that does not serve our health needs?
Could it be that how humans think and feel is less mind/body, but an interplay between body, belief, being, expectation and context?
Part one. What is behind belief alone in determining if something is broken or not in our bodies, and why/how is this trick achieved?
Part two. What other models of seeing humans may be viable, if we were to dispense with the traditional mind/body concept?

PiPs is part of a national movement to encourage people to think about some of the 'big ideas' in life. No expertise necessary, only the desire to do what Wittgenstein described as 'untangling the knots in the way we think about things'.
It is a collective activity, not a debating club.
Everyone attending, and there is often a wide range of people present, is encouraged to listen to and engage with the topic. We hope it is fun and provides plenty of food for thought.
The organisers are trying to find ways to collect money from attendees towards the costs of running the sessions, mostly the costs of using this Meetup site. One of the organisers has something on their phone that can take payments. Suggested amount? Just a few quid now and again for regulars. For anyone turning up for the first time, it's free.