Placebo Effect: The True Effectiveness Of Medicine

What is a Placebo Effect? When is the placebo effect used, why is the placebo effect used? Who dose the placebo effect work on? Is the placebo effect only for sick people? Is the placebo effect a drug, a trick, or a cure? Is the placebo effect used often or regularly? Dose the placebo effect work? Is the placebo effect useful? All of these questions will be addressed regarding placebo effect, from what is the placebo effect, why the placebo effect is used, who the placebo effect will work on, when the placebo effect is used, as well as the effect the placebo effect has on the body and on the mind, as well as the method of the placebo effect that would be used if necessary. Just like any from or kind of treatment the placebo effect has its limitation. The placebo effect will not always work, and the placebo will not work on everyone.

When people are ill, the only thing they want is to feel better. The traditional way to achieve this in the western world was to attend a doctor and receive medication. However, more attention is now being paid to other forms of treatments. One of these is using the placebo effect as a treatment.

Imagine going to the doctor and being given medication to heal your pain. Now how would you feel if after taking the medication and feeling better you came to find out you were given a placebo? This may sound upsetting to some, however, “ a recent survey of U.S. internists and rheumatologists found that some 50% regular prescribe placebos.” A placebo is defined as a false treatment without any significant chemical properties or active ingredient. The use of placebos as a primary form of treatment with any pathology is not happening anytime soon, but their positive impact and usefulness in the medical field is becoming hard to deny. In the article, “The Magic of the Placebo”, author David Bjerklie attempts to explain the growing change in

The study subjects were gathered from various ICU centers at various institutions, which is appropriate for study given the study objective and what the study was aiming to examine and determine (using a study drug vs. placebo in an ICU environment). Inclusion criteria were appropriate to assess the effects of the anti-pyretic acetaminophen due to their specificity of including those patients who were febrile with an infection that had been initiated with antimicrobial therapy. The exclusion criteria was extensive and included patient characteristics and disease states that may have skewed the true effect of acetaminophen. It was appropriate to limit these patients with the exclusion criteria from receiving treatment since their comorbidities

An fascinating part of alternative medicine, and a popular method of debunking alternative medicine, is the psychological anomaly of the placebo effect. Interestly enough, this mainly arises around the subject of acupuncture and acupressure, both of which are within the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) category of CAM. Acupuncture is a practice which gained popularity within the United States as the story of a man name James Reston’s experience story spread like a wildfire across the nation. He had received an operation to remove his appendix while spending time, living in China. For the operation he was given standard drugs to serve as an anesthetic to numb any pain he may feel during the surgery, but it was his out of hospital care which he would report back to the US. After the

A placebo substance is an inert substance that should not directly cause any positive or negative changes in our health. These pills have no medicine in them and the patient gets well. To understand the placebo affect you need to understand the power of the brain. More than half of the population appears to have a positive experience from the placebo effect. Why doesn’t the rest of the population respond in the same way? The human brain is capable of preventing even the best well thought-out drug, medical procedure, therapy or nutritional program from working. Then why do we need supplements of medicine to feel better or reverse disease? Most diseases are related to nutrient deficiencies, chemicals, parasite or metal toxicity.

There does seem to be some neurological explanation to the pain relief of a placebo. The placebo effect should be more accurately named the placebo “response”. Although containing no medicine the action of physically taking a pill coupled with the expectation it will make you better is enough to catalyse your brain's ‘endogenous health care system’. Opioids are medicines that alleviate pain and placebos mimic these by triggering a release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain. This alleviates stress, insomnia, and regulates cortisol production, a glucocorticoid that shuts down the immune system in response to

The placebo, though unknown at the time, has been a fundamental part of medicine since antiquity. Simply put by Shapiro and Shapiro (who are considered influential writers in placebo research), “the history of the placebo is the history of medical practice itself, until modern times”. (Shapiro & Shapiro, 1997) In their book, ‘The Powerful Placebo: From Ancient Priest to Modern Physician’, there is an extensive list of ancient medicine medicaments and procedures all of which would now be deemed bizarre and inexplicable. For example, medicines included parts of frogs and scorpions, the flesh of vipers and grated skull. It must be remembered that the eccentricity of these treatments is accounted for by the lack of

Pain is a significant public health problem impacting millions of people’s worldwide. It’s a distressing feeling affects multidimensional aspect of life; physical, social, spiritual and emotional. Pain is considered a complex phenomena and the most subjective experience. Mostly health care providers are unable to precisely determine the intensity of a patient’s pain; since that there is no any test or physical finding for pain. For these reasons, assessments of pain should be based when possible, on the patient’s self-report, and the health care providers should not underestimated the patient complaint of pain, and try to manage pain in a proper professional way. However placebo use in place of effective pain medication to manage pain is a controversial issue which has been greatly recognized as unethical, ineffective, and harmful. (Zalon, Constantino, Andrews, 2008)

The use of placebos in research is a controversial topic. Critics argue that the use of placebos is unethical due to the possibility of patients not receiving the highest known method of care or perhaps any treatment at all (Temple & Ellenberg, 2000). This is unfortunate, as placebos play a vital role in determining the efficacy of new drugs as well as in the treatment of many disorders (Stang et al., 2005). By discussing the theories behind how placebos work and demonstrating that placebos can be implemented ethically, the aim of this paper is to illustrate that placebos are an integral part of research.

Knowing that placebos can be an effective method of treatment, Espay et al. (2015) wanted to see if the price of a placebo would alter its effectiveness. The researchers conducted a double-blind study with twelve patients with moderate to severe Parkinson’s disease. The participants were told that they would be receiving two new injectable dopamine agonists which, despite their large difference in price ($100 and $1,500) were thought to be equally effective. Participants were further told that the purpose of the study was to support that the two new medications were indeed equal in their effectiveness.

the Placebo effect is interesting and open minding video, specially how the open the knee of the patient without doing anything, and how that made them feel relive. I like the part of positive thinking and working out and being more active.

The placebo effect merely emphasizes an individual's belief that something will happen. Once this belief is put into place, the power of self-persuasion comes into effect, and the ability to trick one's own brain becomes much easier. To summarize, if one thinks something will work, the chances of it actually working increase greatly. Dr. Hall, a woman who has devoted great time to the study of placebos has come up with a four variable explanation of how and why they work. These variables include “patient expectancy; motivation (the desire to improve one's health); a certain amount of conditioning, including from advertising; and endogenous opiates, or pain-relieving chemicals produced in the brain, which copy the effect of pain-relievers

Torok, an author to another study regarding Ménière's Disease, reviewed 834 articles pertaining to Ménière's Disease between 1951 and 1975. He found that advocates of either medical or surgical treatments claimed success in 60% to 80% of patients. Because there are so many different therapies deemed successful, Torok believed that the placebo effect might be a common factor to all of those treatments.

In 1796, Elisha Perkins invented pointers made of alloys used to extract pain and reduce inflammation (Miller 1935). Since he saw how popular the Perkins Tractors were, John Haygarth decided to conduct an experiment. In 1799, just a few years after the Perkins Tractors were introduced, Haygarth made his own version of the Perkins Tractor (Booth 2005). The Perkins Tractor was somewhat pricey, so Haygarth chose to make his tractor affordable (Booth 2005). Haygarth’s tractor was made out of wood and still advertised the same effects of the Perkins Tractor (Booth 2005). Haygarth found that if the patient believed that a simple tractor, whether made of wood or metal alloys, would cure their inflammation or pain, it would (Booth 2005). Objects were not the only things that caused the placebo effect.