Can placebos actually work purely on with a mental effect?
Yes. If you give two sets of people sugar pills and tell one set they are sugar pills, and the other that they’re eg painkillers, the latter group will report (on average) a reduction in pain related issues while taking them.
This is why alternative treatments that don’t medicinally do anything, like homeopathy, can appear to be effective - people believe they work and so they do, but if they just believed a cheap sugar pill they would help them, it would do for much cheaper. Even better get real meds that you believe in, and you get actual medicinal effect with a placebo boost.
Good Pharmaceutical trials are generally “blind” for this reason, ie there will be a control group getting a placebo to compare the effect of the medicine to that, rather than to nothing as comparing to nothing would make most things appear effective. Even better is “double blind” where the researcher doesn’t know until after either, so that their interactions or behaviour don’t give anything away, and that they don’t bias their analysis.
Weird question. Do you know what would happen if you gave two groups a painkiller, told one group that it should help and told the other that it shouldn’t work (or that it was a placebo)? I’m curious if the drug would still work as well if the patient was told it isn’t supposed to.
I’d google it, but I have no idea what keywords to use lol.
Yep, look up the nocebo effect. It’s exactly that.
It’s not so common being an issue like the example describes irl for medication as generally people who don’t think something will work simply don’t take it, so it becomes more a compliance issue, but certainly is a concern for eg physical treatments - patients are more likely to report pain during a procedure if they go into it expecting it to be painful. Also mentioning side effects of medication makes patients more likely to experience them.
That’s super interesting, thank you!
A lot of aches and pains are just made up by your brain. Modalities such as massages, foam rollers, etc… does nothing to you when it comes to actually healing your body or helping your recovery, but many people swear by it regardless.
Slight ache in your lower back? Depending how you mentally approach it, that pain may dissappear or get worse.
It’s why doctors have to careful about the nocebo effect, you might end creating a negative side effect for for your patient by just mentioning the potential side effects.
Placebos prove that our bodies could heal us, but choose not to.
Lazy millennial blood cells.
Yeah if your blood cells would stop eating so much avocado toast maybe they could afford a house!
Make coffee at home and buy aspirin.
Reminds me of cats: if they could call you, they wouldn’t.
Nobody wants to work anymore!
Well ACKTSCHUALLLY:
The placebo effect includes the positive response of getting rid of an illness that without any pills or effect would have been solved by the body anyways.
Yes there are occasions where without the mind thinking it will help you will suffer longer from a disease but most of the time a positive mind is just enough. So a clown might be more effective than a placebo pill.
It’s rather the body heals us and we give the pills the credit for it.
You’d think that, but there have been studies where the subjects have been explicitly told they were receiving placebos, and still had positive effects.
In fact, there is a woman who was told essentially “this is a study to see if placebos can help with IBS, here is your placebo, it should do nothing.” And they helped her to the point that she begged to continue receiving the placebo pills because they helped her.
So it’s not just a feeling, or a mindset. There’s something to placebo we still don’t understand.
*no active ingredient, placebo does have an effect
You are technically correct
The best kind of correct!
But it’s not the healing kind, just makes you feel like it is. Which sometimes is enough…? Ok, it is potentially the healing kind, then.
this is the exact reason I sell my insulin on the black market and just think happy thoughts and inject saline when I eat.
It blows my mind that the whole antihistamine market is just a bunch of decongestants. WHERE DO MY ITCHES GO!?
It blows my mind that the whole anti-inflammatory market is just a bunch of pain relievers. WHERE DOES MY PAIN GO!?
Many medications have multiple effects, some more significant than others.
remember, it works best when a man in a doctor’s coat gives it to you!
