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The Placebo Effect

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Take two placebos and call me in the morningWhen you read about medical studies on new medicines, or evaluating the effectivemness of alternative therapies, you hear about this “placebo” thingy a lot. I’m sure you know what it is. It is a fake medicine or therapy, designed to look like the real deal. The human guinea-pig is even told “Hey, this is suppossed to be the bee’s knees,” in order to get the effect to kick in.

The curious thing is not why placebos are used. It’s that they can be suprisingly effective in the short term — even as much or more than the new medicine being tested!

What’s All That About?

The mind is an incredibly annoying thing at times. Henry Ford said, “Whether you bel;ieve you can do a thing or not, you’re right.” Placebos have such a startlingly high initial effect because , in the words of Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld, MD:

Any health measure or intervention dispensed to a randomly selected group of individulas who are assured that it will “work” may result in improvement as often as half the time.

In other words, just by trying a new medicine or therapy, you may get some measureable pain relief because your hope and attitude help reduce the pain. Weird, isn’t it? And yet, quite welcome to anyone who suffers from pain.

Not A Cure All

There are limits to the power of placebos. There (sadly) hasn’t been a proven placebo yet that could spontaneously put cancer into remission or regrow a lost limb. But placebos can give releif to aches and pains, digestive problems, chest pains, skin conditions, headaches and migraines.

And, as pointed out in a previous post, there is a very good reason why we experience pain. It means the body is telling us “Stop! There’s something wrong! If you don’t stop, things’ll get worse! I can promise you that!”

For example, the afore mentioned Dr. Rosenfeld talks about a placebo study for angina in his best selling Dr. Rosenfeld’s Guide To Alternative Medicine. One patient lost all pain on the placebo alone. However, his ECG tests still showed a big problem. The patient, not feeling any pain, began resuming a normal activity level. Unfortunately, this could wind up killing him with a sudden heart attack, so he was taken off the placebo and told what was going on.

So, although a placebo lives up to it’s name, (Latin for “I shall please”), it’s more for a one-night stand rather than a committed relationship. For some of us, though, we’re thankful to get whatever we can get!

Hope this helps.


6 Responses to “The Placebo Effect”

  1. Dealing With Headaches » Blog Archive » Oxcarbazepine No Good For Migraines Says:

    [...] of the human guinea pigs had at least three to nine migraine attacks a month. Half took a placebo while half took the oxcarbazepine. The results? There was no difference whatsoever between those [...]

  2. The Placebo Effect In Stress Management - Found in Says:

    [...] going to help.  But even if you still remain skeptical, more often than not, something called the placebo effect kicks in to help make you calm down.  Although placebo effects are technically only applied to [...]

  3. Dealing With Headaches » Blog Archive » Magnesium & Migraines Says:

    [...] and frequency as before? Any kind of new therapy can trigger the placebo effect int he body. The placebo effect is an amazing thing — but the problem is that you have to keep switching your placebos once or [...]

  4. Dealing With Headaches » Blog Archive » Half Of American Doctors Give Out Placebos Says:

    [...] the National Institues of Health found that half of their doctors surveyed admitted to giving out placebos to their patients, telling them that they were getting medicine. The study was only done in America [...]

  5. Dealing With Headaches » Blog Archive » Placebos Old and New Says:

    [...] power of belief. Some of the magic of the shamans and medicinie men of anicnet times was in getting the placebo effect to work in the [...]

  6. Dealing With Headaches » Blog Archive » Clinical Trial Call or New Acute Migraine Drug Says:

    [...] study, so nobody knows what drug you get. The choices could be the mystery new drug, sumatriptan, a placebo pill or a placebo injection. I do not know if this new migraine drug will be in a pill form or an [...]

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