How do placebos work?
Placebos have gained a lot of popularity in recent years. Is it a magic pill or just a sham? How do placebos work? Especially if they are made of inert substances? Let's find out.
For some people, a visit to the doctor’s office can be a dreaded experience. But for most of us as that trip is only necessary when we are not feeling well. You kill time in the waiting room feeling anxious, reading magazines, scrolling through your phone or in the worst-case scenario, googling your health symptoms and causes. You enter the doctor's room only to be met with endless questions and required to be poked or jabbed. Once the doctor has seen you through, you expect something in return for your endurance. Prescription for medicines.
Without looking at the medicines because obviously, who can read the doctors scribble, you buy the medicines and start taking them. You trust in the doctor and believe he knows best, or at least better than you. Trust and expectation play a huge role in feeling better and the belief in getting better through a certain treatment, without even knowing how it works and what it contains, can make you heal.
What if you find out later the pills doctor prescribed you were just blank pills, with no drug, but you felt better after taking them, right? You expected to feel better as soon as you started moving towards the doctor's office and after going through the checkup and letting the doctor know your tales of health issues. When he handed you a treatment, you knew it could cure you and so it did.
Well, that is the crux of the placebo effect.
How the Placebo Operates
The placebo effect occurs when a person takes a medication or treatment with no therapeutic value for his condition, and gains benefit from it because of his perception or belief in the treatment. Such a kind of treatment is called a Placebo. There are a number of different types of placebo but they all function on perceptions and beliefs. A placebo could be taken in a form of sugar pill or drug, injection or even sham surgery. It could also be a form of medical therapy or alternative medicine also.
Placebos have been studied on various health concerns. One of the most innovative studies was conducted by the University of Michigan in 2004 on pain relief. It demonstrated the placebo effect in relation to endorphins ( brain's natural pain relievers). In the study, participants were given harmless yet painful injections in the jaw. The brains were scanned by PET scanner and pain levels were kept constant for all participants. They were then given a placebo in the form of pain relievers and all of them experienced a fall in their pain levels. A physical change in brain activity was observed. Brain’s opioid receptors were activated after taking the placebo which resulted in relief from pain.
Statistically, placebos have proven to work in about 30 percent of patients. Doctors have used it for years too. Many experts believe that placebos work by evoking a psychological response in the patient and a false sense of well-being. They question the deceptive nature of placebos and how they are unethical and a complete sham. However, there are medical researchers that have indicated that placebos actually bring about physical responses too. New studies have proven the benefits of placebo treatments and it would be a shame to disregard such an advancement in the modern world where the human mind is used to heal the body.
Although we've long known that placebos can be effective treatments, we've only recently started to learn how and why. We encourage you to investigate your own placebo response the next time you feel the sign of...