Self Healing

Placebo Effect

What is a placebo effect?

A placebo (pluh-see-bow) is a substance or other kind of treatment that looks just like a regular treatment or medicine, but it is not. It is actually an inactive “look-alike” treatment or substance. This means that it is not a medicine. The person who is getting a placebo does not know he or she is getting one. Sometimes the placebo is in the form of a “sugar pill,” but a placebo can also be an injection, a liquid, a procedure, or any other type of therapy that doesn’t directly affect the illness being treated.

Even though placebos do not act on the disease, they seem to have an effect in about 1 out of 3 patients. A change in a person’s symptoms as a result of getting a placebo is called a placebo effect. Usually the term placebo effect speaks to the helpful effects of a placebo in relieving symptoms. This effect usually lasts only a short time, and is thought have something to do with the body’s own chemical ability to briefly relieve pain or certain other symptoms.

But sometimes the effect goes the other way, and causes unpleasant or worse symptoms. These may include headaches, nervousness, nausea, or constipation, to name a few. The unpleasant effects that happen after getting a placebo or an inactive treatment are sometimes called the nocebo effect.

Together, these 2 types of outcomes are sometimes called expectation effects. This means that the person taking the placebo may experience something along the lines of what he or she expects to happen. If a person expects to feel better, that may happen. If the person believes that he or she is getting a strong medicine, the placebo may be thought to cause the side effects. The placebo does not cause any of these effects directly. Instead, the person’s belief in or experience of the placebo helps cause the change in symptoms.

Along with the placebo or nocebo effect, incidental events (unrelated effects that may have happened without the placebo) may also be linked to the placebo because of their timing. For example, a headache or rash that happens soon after taking a placebo may be caused by something else entirely, but the person may think the placebo caused it. The same can be said for good outcomes: if a person happened to start feeling better after taking a placebo, that improvement may be thought to be caused by the placebo.

Some patients can have a placebo effect without getting a pill, shot, or procedure. Some may just feel better from visiting the doctor or doing something else they believe in. That type of placebo effect seems most related to the degree of confidence and faith the patient has in the doctor or activity.

How are placebos used?

Placebos are often used in clinical trials to test new drugs or treatments. Clinical trials are research studies testing new drugs or other treatments in people. Before a new treatment is used on people, it is studied in the lab. If lab studies suggest the treatment will work, the next step is to test it on animals. If that also gives promising results, it may then be tested in clinical trials to see if it has value for patients. The main questions the researchers want to answer are:

* Does this treatment work?
* Does it work better than what we’re now using?
* What side effects does it cause?
* Do the benefits outweigh the risks?
* Which patients are most likely to find this treatment helpful?

If standard treatments for the disease are already available, the new treatment is usually compared to one of these treatments. This tells researchers if the new treatment is as good as or better than the one that is currently available. If you would like to know more about clinical trials, see our document Clinical Trials: What You Need to Know.

If there is no approved treatment for an illness or condition, some people in the study may be given a placebo, while others get the new treatment being tested. The main reason to have a placebo group is to be sure that any effects that happen are actually caused by the treatment and not some other factor. The placebo looks, tastes, or feels just like the actual treatment, so that the patient’s expectations alone are not responsible for the outcome. In a “double-blind controlled study,” neither the people taking part in the study nor their doctors know who is getting which treatment. This study design helps avoid biases in measuring outcomes that can be caused by the researchers’ expectations about the treatment.

People in a study that involves a placebo should always know that there is a chance they could be getting a placebo. It is not OK to give someone a treatment in a clinical trial and not mention that it could be a placebo. Our document Informed Consent gives you more information on this topic.

Those who get placebos in medical studies serve an important role. Their responses help provide a good way to measure the effect of the treatment being tested. The placebo group provides an important baseline to compare the treatment group against. It helps researchers see what would have happened without the treatment, though the placebo group may still have some short-term effects based on what the patient expects. For instance, illnesses that sometimes go away on their own might be thought to get better because of the medicine, unless there is a placebo group and those people also get better. On the other side, bad effects that were going to happen anyway, or that occur from some unrelated cause, may be blamed on the treatment unless they also happen to people in the placebo group.

How does the placebo effect work?

In the past, some researchers have questioned whether there is convincing proof that the placebo effect is a real effect. But there are studies showing that the placebo effect is real. For example, scientists have recorded brain activity in response to placebo.

Many think the placebo effect occurs because the patient believes in the substance, the treatment, or the doctor. The patient’s mind somehow causes other physical changes in the body over the short term. The patient expects to feel better, and so he or she does feel better. But even if a person feels better after taking a placebo, it doesn’t mean the person’s illness or symptoms were not real.

Since many scientific tests have shown the placebo effect, it is one way we know for sure that the mind and body are connected. Some scientific evidence suggests that the placebo effect may be partly due to the release of endorphins in the brain. Endorphins are the body’s natural pain killers. But there is probably more to it than this.

What is commonly called the placebo effect even plays a role in mainstream medicine. Many people feel better after they get medical treatments that they expect to work. But the opposite can also happen, and this seems to support the idea of the expectation effect even more. For example, in one study, people with Alzheimer’s disease were less affected by pain medicines, and required higher doses–possibly because they had forgotten they were getting the drugs, or that the pain medicines had worked for them before.

This suggests that past experiences also play into the placebo effect. In one study that looked at the placebo effect in pain relief, one group got a real pain medicine and the other did not. In the following days, both groups were given a placebo that looked like the real pain medicine. Those who had gotten the real pain medicine were able to tolerate more pain than those who had not gotten pain medicines before. In the same study, people who were given a drug that raised a certain hormone level beforehand actually had a similar (but smaller) hormone response when they were given a placebo later. Those who had not gotten the real drug beforehand had no change in their hormone levels when they got the placebo, even though they were told that they would. This helped to separate out the power of the researcher telling them they would have an effect from the learned experience of having the effect in the past. This type of learned response after personal experience is called the conditioning effect. It seems to be part of what we call the placebo effect.

The nocebo effect, in which a person has more symptoms or side effects after a placebo, is still being studied as well. Researchers believe it may be partly explained by a substance in the body that sends messages through the nerves. When a person is anxious, the substance is activated, and the person feels more pain than a person who isn’t anxious. It also affects the brain: brain-imaging studies have shown that pain is more intense when a person expects more pain than when there is a neutral expectation. This is linked to changes in certain brain regions on the imaging studies.

Although we may not know exactly how it works, the idea that the mind can affect the body has been around for years and is well-proven in certain situations. Many ancient cultures depended on mind-body connections to treat illness. Shamans or medicine men would not have viewed their efforts as placebos. But their healing powers may have worked in the same way, partly through the patient’s strong belief that the shaman’s treatments would restore health. Or it could be that the sick person was going to get better anyway, but the recovery was thought to be because of the treatment–which may have really done nothing for the illness.

Because placebos often have an effect, even if it does not last long, some people think that the placebo produced a “cure.” But placebos do not cure. And in studies where doctors are looking at whether a tumor shrinks, placebos would be expected to have very little, if any, effect on cancer growth.

Still, placebos clearly can help relieve certain symptoms such as pain, anxiety, and trouble sleeping in some people. In earlier times, placebos were sometimes given by doctors out of frustration or desperation, because nothing else was available or seemed to work.

Sometimes if the placebo looks more “real,” the person may think it is an active medicine or treatment and believe in its power even more. For example, a larger pill may look more powerful than a small pill. In some people, an injection may have a stronger placebo effect than a pill.

Some believe that placebos seem to work because many illnesses improve over time even without treatment. People may also take better care of themselves by exercising, eating healthier, or resting if they are taking a placebo. Just as natural endorphins may relieve pain once they are released, some research shows the brain may respond to an imagined scene much as it would to something it actually sees. A placebo may help the brain remember a time before the symptoms and bring about a chemical change. This is a theory called remembered wellness.

Some scientists believe that the effects of many alternative therapies may simply be a placebo effect. If the patient believes in the treatment and wants it to work, it can seem to do so, at least for a while. If this effect worked on an illness that usually would not get better on its own, and it lasted, it would be considered a real cure, not a placebo.

There is still much to find out about the placebo effect and all the ways it may work. Researchers continue to study it in order to learn more about it, and whether it may be used to help people feel better.

Source: http://www.cancer.org/docroot/ETO/content/ETO_5_3x_Placebo_Effect.asp

Additional Information from the American Cancer Society-

Complementary therapy

Complementary therapy is used along with standard or mainstream medical treatment. Some complementary therapies may help relieve certain symptoms of cancer, relieve side effects of cancer treatment, or improve a patient’s sense of well-being. Examples might include meditation to reduce stress, peppermint or ginger tea for nausea, and guided imagery to help relieve stress and pain during medical procedures. Some of the methods, such as massage therapy, relaxation, and meditation that are now called complementary have actually been referred to as supportive care in the past.

The American Cancer Society urges patients who are thinking about using any complementary or non-mainstream therapies to discuss this with their health care team.

Source: http://www.cancer.org/docroot/ETO/content/ETO_5_1_Introduction.asp

The American Cancer Society realizes that there are many definitions for the terms “alternative” and “complementary” methods and makes the following distinction between these categories. Alternative methods are defined as unproved or disproved methods, rather than evidence-based or proven methods to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancer. “Complementary” methods are defined as supportive methods used to complement evidence-based treatment. Complementary therapies do not replace mainstream cancer treatment and are not promoted to cure disease. Rather, they are used to help control symptoms of cancer and side effects of conventional treatments, and improve well being and quality of life. This distinction separates methods based on how they are promoted and used.

Source: http://www.cancer.org/docroot/ETO/content/ETO_5_3x_American_Cancer_Society_Operational_Statement_on_CAM.asp

Comment: PowerOfMindControl.com does not claim to provide a cure for any disease or physical or mental illness. However, we provide education and tools to promote the scientifically proven benefits of meditation, visualization and mental stimulation and enhancement through safe and effective brain entrainment neurofeedback, with and without guided meditation.

Meditation is not confined any specific religion or faith, although it plays a role in all of them. Meditation relates to certain laws of nature in which focused intent and actions with the power of the human mind produce predictable results. The science relating to these laws of nature is Quantum Physics and Quantum Mechanics. Recent scientific discoveries in these fields of science prove the existence of a source of energy that exists in all things and can be directly influenced by observation and or thought energy. It may also hold the key to instant healing and other physical/spiritual phenomenon.

Although I make every effort to provide real scientific evidence to explain the sometimes unexplainable,
it is not my intent to devalue or discredit anyone’s spiritual faith. I believe we are all powerful spiritual beings that only utilize a fraction of the gifts we have been given. However, my purpose here is not to promote my faith, or put a religious spin on the very real power we all possess.

My goal is to simply share the joy, the health, the mental empowerment and the personal and financial rewards I have experienced since I began meditating with brainwave entrainment assisting my expansion of brainwave states and whole mind thinking, while uncovering how and why it works so well.

Article content is from the American Cancer Society, comment by Brian Fowler.