The story behind the self-healing technique- Placebo Effect
Imagine a few things, excluding your daily chores, your everyday regime, or something that seems possible for a human mind. Well, mostly our mind recalls the tasks related to psychomotor or cognitive work. But there is another magnificent ability that is rather underrated but is indeed secretly beneficial. Ever wondered when our mom used to kiss our arm when we bumped it and it suddenly felt better?
It was actually the Placebo Effect in action.
History
56 volunteers actively volunteered in 1996 in a study that tested the effect of a painkiller called Trivaricaine. Then, to test the effect of the medicine, on one hand of the index finger, the medicine was applied while the other index remained bare. They simultaneously squeezed them both until painful cramps. Upon further observation, the subjects reported that the treated finger hurt less than the untreated one.
Well, it doesn’t seem surprising, but the medicine applied wasn’t actually a painkiller. Instead, it was a brown lotion that contained water, iodine, and Thyme oil with no pain-releasing properties at all. You guessed it right! It was entirely psychological.
So, what actually happened is an unexplained phenomenon wherein drugs, treatments, and therapies that aren’t supposed to have an effect, and are often fake, miraculously make people better.
The term placebo dates back to the 1700s when doctors realized the power of fake drugs to improve people’s symptoms. Science was not that advanced in ancient days and proper drugs weren’t available. That’s when the placebo’s true power unleashed.
In fact, the word placebo means “I shall please” in Latin.
Placebo had to mimic the real treatments in order to be convincing, so they were manufactured as sugar pills, water-filled injections, and even sham surgeries. Soon, doctors realized that duping people in this way had another use: IN CLINICAL TRIALS.
By the 1950s, researchers were using placebos as a standard tool, to test new treatments. Half patients were given real drugs and the other half were given a placebo. Since patients wouldn’t know whether they’d received the real thing or a dud, the results wouldn’t be biased, the researchers believed.
Then both the drugs were compared and if the new drug was more effective than the placebo, then it was used.
Ethical issues
But nowadays it is less common to use it this way because of ethical issues. Because if the person is facing a serious ailment, then this method cannot be administered.
Placebo is often used as a control to fine-tune the trial so that the effects of the new versus the old drugs can be precisely compared.
But thanks to the placebo effect, patients have received relief from a large range of ailments such as asthma, heart problems, and severe pain even though they’d received a fake drug or sham surgery. But doctors are still trying to understand how?
Some believe that instead of being real, the placebo effect is mainly confused with other factors like patients trying to please doctors by falsely reporting improvement. Researchers think that if a person believes a fake treatment is real, their expectations of recovery actually do trigger physiological factors that improve their symptoms.
Placebo seems to have a measurable change in blood pressure, heart rate, and the release of pain-reducing factors like endorphins. Placebos may even reduce levels of stress hormones like adrenaline. So, shouldn’t we be celebrating the effects of a placebo?
NOT NECESSARILY.
If somebody believes that fake treatments have cured them, they may miss the actual treatments. Plus, the positive effects of a placebo may fade over time and they often do.
The Placebo Effect makes sense. To quote Kung Fu Panda: “To make something special, you just have to BELIEVE that it’s special.”
Now a question may arise among the readers: if we know how Placebos work, they won’t anymore?
Actually, it still works. A new study in The Public Library of Science ONE (Vol. 5, №12) suggests that placebos still work even when people know they’re receiving pills with no active ingredient. That’s important to know because placebos are being prescribed more often than people think.
Quick tip- The best thing we should get out of the placebo effect is that we humans possess great power of ‘healing’. By being happy, socialized, in love, having adventures…Simply, doing the things we want to do can make us healthy.