Why and How Is the Brain Fooled by the Placebo Effect? Essay

The placebo effect has been affecting people for hundreds of years. In the 1940s sugar pills were sold in doctors’ catalogs specifically for the purpose of prescribing them to psychiatric patients. Today, over 60% of doctors admit to prescribing placebos to their patients, although there is an unwritten rule among doctors in the United States that placebos should no longer be given to patients. Some even do it on a regular basis because they believe the effect a fake drug has on the brain is more effective for its price than the real medication or treatment. In the documentary, Placebo: Cracking the Code, viewers see a few different perspective of the placebo effect. They hear from doctors, patients, and researchers to more fully understand the ins and outs of the placebo effect. These different viewpoints serve as an effective way to bring light the producers’ purpose: to show just helpful and sometimes harmful placebo drugs can be.

Proponents of placebo-prescribing argue that clinicians “can use non-deceptive means to promote a positive placebo response in their patients” (Brody, 1982, 112). However, some proponents also argue that

As Marston states, “people need real cures based on real science – not misleading and antiquated animal experiments (Pycroft and Marston 36).”

The author continues to demonstrate how the placebo effect works by comparing it to the famous biological study by Ivan Pavlov. In Pavlov’s experiment, dogs are conditioned to respond to a specific stimulus and eventually begin to respond to the same stimulus in the same way all the time. Bjerklie explains that, “as far as the placebo effect is concerned, we may as well be those impressionable canines.” What Bjerklie means is that the human mind has the ability to be conditioned to expect certain outcomes. The placebo effect builds on the human minds ability to be conditioned and an individual’s faith in the healthcare providers it choses to visit. Overtime the human mind has come to believe that if given a medication that is suppose to have a positive effect on a specific pathology, it will in fact have an positive effect.

Placebos were first introduced into the medical world in the late 18th century (Seymour, 2011). Placebos are used as a therapeutic procedure that affects a patient and removes symptoms of an illness or pain by giving them a sham pill with no actual medication in it (Seymour, 2011). A placebo effect is therefore a change in the patient’s symptoms or illness after a placebo is given (Seymour, 2011). A nocebo on the other hand, is the negative equivalent of the placebo effect; when a patient expects a negative outcome of a treatment he or she will experience the undesirable outcome that was expected (Benedetti, Durando, & Vighetti, 2014). Both placebo and nocebo effects can be provoked by observing others, which causes the release of several neurotransmitters, such as opioid, endocannabinoids and

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.

Even through all the enhancements in technology the brain still hides some secrets, the influence of the brain over the body in some aspects is inexplicable. In other word, it has not been determined a specific magnitude of how the brain will affect the rest of the body, especially related to healing. For example, the morphine could be able to reach a hundred percent of effectiveness if doctors talk before with their patients about the administration of morphine to reduce the feeling of pain, against a fifty percent effectiveness of morphine when they just administrate without telling. The name of this effect is called the placebo effect, which means in Latin “I shall please”, related to any substance without a medical treatment, to convince a patient that him or her will heal. It could

c) Classical conditioning could help patients reduce pain and anxiety through the use of placebos. For example the use of pills and injections that have no active ingredients or treatments that have no direct physical effect on the problem. The bigger and more impressive the placebos are, the stronger their psychological effects are.

A Placebo refers to any medicinal treatment that claims to be real, however turns out to only be a façade. In other words, the treatment is all bark and no bite. The concoction does absolutely nothing based off of the medicinal aspect of it. They contain nothing that contributes to the effect of one’s health. Researchers often use placebos during revisions to help contribute to the understanding of what effect a new drug or some other medicine might have on a certain condition. For instance, some people partaking in a study that might be given a new drug to lower blood pressure. Half of the people participating in the study would receive a placebo, and the other half would receive the drug with the intended treatments. None of the people in the study will know if they got the real treatment or if they had received the placebo. Researchers will then compare the effects of the drug and the placebo on the people in the study. In this way, they can then determine the effectiveness of the new drug and subsequently check for side effects. There are rare occasions in which people have reactions to the placebo. The response can be positive or negative. For example, the person's indicators may improve. Or the person may have what seems to be side effects from the conduct. These responses are mostly known as the "placebo effect." These effects can often result in less favorable results, such as, depression, pain, and sleeping disorders. However, many beneficial results have been documented as

Many people would have experienced their illness have been cured by taking inactive medication. Imagine that you are having a harsh flu, sitting in the waiting room of the hospital. As waiting for the nurse's call to see the doctor, you are feeling that your body is as heavy as an elephant, repeatedly sneezing and coughing. You are wishing that your turn is right next to try to distract yourself from your pain, and you are hoping whatever the doctor describes will work. After a long wait, you eventually see the doctor and take the medication that the doctor prescribed religiously. After a few weeks, you feel that you are feeling better and return to the doctor's room, and you realize that what you have been prescribed

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

In this essay I will begin by explaining the five major points of the placebo effect, such as the understanding of placebo, the history, phenomenon, experiments and case studies. Placebos are used in everyday life, from it being your doctor or even a commercial you've seen on the tv. Do we really need prescribed medication or do we just think we do?

The placebo effect is well documented in reducing pain, depression, and anxiety. The response from a placebo can be positive or negative. The person’s symptoms could improve, or the person may appear to have side effects from the treatment. But how does the Placebo Effect work? One of the most common theories is that the placebo effect is due to one’s expectations. If an individual expects a pill to do something, it is possible that the body’s chemistry can cause effects that are similar to the effects of medication. The placebo effect is used practically every single day. When I am at the gym lifting weights, I struggle without having a spotter. But as soon as someone is spotting me and touches the bar in any form, I suddenly do much better.

The Placebo Effect is essentially mind over matter in the sense that placebo means belief. The patient’s belief is in the treatment and or drug to be “real” even when there is no actual treatment or drug. Placebos are fake treatments and do not contain any active substances that may alter an individuals health. Placebos can come in all forms whether it be a pill, drink, shot, etc. Placebos are used in research studies in order to understand the effects and outcomes of a new drug or treatment. Placebos are linked to individual’s expectations of the drug or treatment. Mind over matter plays a huge role in the placebo effect when an individual expects to feel something different whether it be positive or negative. Your body responds in the physical

The placebo effect is often thought of as an act of fooling the mind into perceiving a benefit that has no physical basis. This depiction of the mind as a naïve and foolish organ may be incomplete and ill-representative of the mind's abilities. Indeed, the mind may orchestrate a physical response in the body based on its