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Placebos Work -- Even Without Deception
An anonymous reader writes "For most of us, the 'placebo effect' is synonymous with the power of positive thinking; it works because you believe you're taking a real drug. But a new study rattles this assumption. Researchers at Harvard Medical School's Osher Research Center and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have found that placebos work even when administered without the seemingly requisite deception. The study was published on December 22 in PLoS ONE."
The lack of misinformation doesn't negate the plethora of ignorance - their probably thinking "they're just saying this is a placebo to test if it's really working".
The article suggests at the end that patients who responded to the placebos despite knowing that they were taking placebos might be benefiting from a "medical ritual", but I suspect it simpler than that. I suspect that the patients were just receiving some sort of psychosomatic benefit from having an actual human being pay attention to them for a little while. I can't prove it, but I suspect that a lot of modern chronic illnesses are psychosomatic and are a consequence of loneliness.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
I have allergies each spring. After I tried several different medications, I finally found one which advertises as "non-drowsy" - essentially a low dose of loratadine. I started taking it and yeah, it both worked and didn't make me feel sleepy all day long.
A couple of months later, I talked to a friend who is a doctor, and he told me (not knowing that I take that medication) that clinical studies for the medication showed that it worked for about 50% of people who took the drug, as well as for around 50% of people who were on placebo (I can't remember if it was 50, but the percentage was about the same). I read some more upon it, and the conclusion most knowledgeable people made was that the dosage of loratadine in the drug is too low, and that it works only as a placebo.
Knowing what I know, I still take that medication and it still helps me. Perhaps the low dosage really works for me, but more likely, I keep being fooled by a placebo I know about...
But he has a point. Several psychiatric drugs have been shown to be no better or worse than placebo. We didn't hear about it because these negative trials were suppressed by the drug companies. They only published the positive ones - do enough studies and one will work!
Even the open placebo used in this study appeared as good as the leading therapy for IBS (although they weren't compared head-to-head).
"Actually with the placebo effect people don't just feel better but get the same results they would have had they had the real medicine."
Actually no. 'Real' medicine is considered real only if it works _considerably_ better than the placebo sugar pill the other half in the double blind tests are getting.
Yeah, I was thinking along the same lines. It’d be interesting to have a third group who were given the placebo pills and instructed to not take them, but instead to open up their medicine cabinet twice a day, look at their bottle of placebo pills, and think about all the people who had taken them and got imaginary benefits from them. I.e. don’t take the placebo pills – they don’t work – but think about it, since it appears to be the thought that counts. Literally.
Distributed Denial of APK: It takes 15 seconds to reply to him anonymously, but wastes tons of his time if we all do it.
No. You’re wrong. Just stop.
For example:
The same placebo can cause two exactly opposite effects on heart rhythm and blood pressure – both measurable, real things – depending on what sort of drug the person thought the placebo was.
Distributed Denial of APK: It takes 15 seconds to reply to him anonymously, but wastes tons of his time if we all do it.
EVERY test I have read about(100s) regard placebo effects show no real effect. Whether that placebo was administered by pill, fake surgery, acupuncturist, chiropractor, or prayer
You've missed some really important and classic placebo studies then. Google "placebo opiate production" and see what you'll find. There is ample evidence that placebos are capable of increasing endogenous endorophin production, which is why they are particularly effective against pain and inflamation.
This effect of placebos has been known for decades, so it kind of harms your credibility that you aren't aware of it.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.