+ All directories

The placebo effect

   Share:
--
     * Women's health 60-plus

   The placebo effect

   When a person uses any type of health treatment and sees an improvement
   in their symptoms, they may be experiencing the placebo effect. That’s
   why it’s important to be aware of the placebo effect when judging the
   effectiveness of a treatment, or when using one ourselves.

   The placebo effect is about the power of the mind to influence the
   body.

--
   conventional or complementary and alternative.

   It can affect all of us, whether we know about the placebo effect or
   not.

   It’s important to be aware of the placebo effect when choosing
   complementary and alternative treatments. That is because if we choose
   a complementary or alternative treatment that does not work – and
   causes only a placebo effect – we may miss out on more effective
   treatments.

What is the placebo effect?

   For hundreds of years, doctors have known that when a patient with a
--
   that they believe contain medicine can experience improvement in a wide
   range of health conditions. This kind of fake or empty medicine is
   often called a placebo, and the improvement that results is called the
   placebo effect.

   The placebo effect is an example of how our expectations and beliefs
   can cause real change in our physical bodies. It’s a phenomenon that we
   don’t completely understand. But we can see it working in all kinds of
   ways, and all kinds of circumstances.

The placebo effect at work

   Take one well-known example based on a physical feeling we are all
--
   skin, and smelled like a medicine. But the students were not told that,
   in fact, trivaricaine contained only water, iodine, and thyme oil, none
   of which are painkilling medicines. It was a fake – or placebo –
   painkiller. Read an abstract of the study: Mechanisms of Placebo Pain
   Reduction.

--
   In this example, expectation and belief produced real results. The
   students expected the 'medicine' to kill pain: and, sure enough, they
   experienced less pain. This is the placebo effect.

   Placebo medicine has even been shown to cause stomach ulcers to heal
   faster than they otherwise would.

   These amazing results show that the placebo effect is real, and
   powerful. They mean that fake or placebo treatments can cause real
   improvements in health conditions: improvements we can see with our own
   eyes.

   Experiencing the placebo effect is not the same as being 'tricked', or
   being foolish. The effect can happen to everyone, however intelligent,
   and whether they know about the placebo effect or not.

CAM and the placebo effect

   Evidence about a treatment is gathered by conducting fair tests. In
   these tests, scientists find out whether a treatment causes an
   improvement beyond the improvement caused by the placebo effect alone.

   Evidence plays an important role in mainstream medicine. This means
--
   When patients experience improvement after using a healthcare treatment
   that has not been proven to work, they may be experiencing only the
   placebo effect.

   Of course, improvement in a health condition due to the placebo effect
   is still improvement, and that is always welcome.

   But it is important to remember that for many health conditions, there
   are treatments that work better than placebo treatments. If you choose
   a treatment that provides only a placebo effect, you will miss out on
   the benefit that a better treatment would provide.

--

   The only way to know whether a health treatment works better than a
   placebo treatment is by checking the evidence.

   You can learn more about evidence, how it is gathered, and why it is
--
Comments

   The 1 comments about ‘The placebo effect’ posted are personal views.
   Any information they give has not been checked and may not be accurate.

--

   You rightly say 'of course, improvement in a health condition due to
   the placebo effect is still improvement, and that is always welcome';
   however sadly certain scientists who should know better wrongly equate
   'placebo' with 'invalid' and 'contrary to evidence based medicine' and
   then go on to bad-mouth complementary therapies including homeopathy
   which they say should be banned. The greatest strength of the NHS is
--
   England, and (b) in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of physical
   and mental illness’.
   The time has come to find a better word than 'Placebo' which generates
   more heat than light. It wraps up a lot of heterogeneous concepts into
   a single word which is then meaningless in a scientific sense. This
   point has been taken up in the July 2012 in-depth (294 page) doctoral
   dissertation 'Evidence-based medicine, "placebos" and the homeopathy
   controversy' by Dr Andrew James Turner of the University of Nottingham
   at
--
   which shows (page 185) that lumping a disparate range of elements
   together only adds to the confusion; if one wishes to say something
   informative about medical treatments, ‘placebo’ and ‘placebo effect’
   are not terms which are analytically useful. Better to talk about
   'components of treatment' one or more of which can contribute towards
--
   Headlines

The placebo effect

   Viewing video content in NHS Choices
--
   free Adobe Flash Player from Adobe Systems Incorporated.

   Ben Goldacre explains what the placebo effect is and describes its role
   in medical research and in the pharmaceutical industry.