People can experience both good and bad side effects from prescription medicine. However, German researchers have found when test subjects were given what they were told was an ‘expensive’ cream, the side effects were more extreme. Their actual brain scans showed far more activity in their experience of anxiety and they described greater pain than when they were tested with the same cream but were told it was an affordable generic. The major problem with this “Nocebo” effect is that it can cause patients to want to stop taking the medication before it has had a chance to work.