Here are three interesting placebo stories.
- This study shows the impact of the perceived cost a treatment on the outcome. 82 volunteers were given electric shocks to see how much pain they could stand. Half of them were then given a brochure about a new painkiller which cost $2.50 a pill. The other half were given a brochure about a new painkiller which cost 10 cents. They were all then given the painkiller they’d read about and given electric shocks again. In the $2.50-price group, 85 percent of subjects experienced a reduction in pain after taking the placebo. In the 10 cent group, 61 percent said the pain was less.
- Recently there was a report which analysed the trials conducted on four commonly prescribed anti-depressants. It came to the conclusion that these modern anti-depressants were actually no more effective than placebo. That’s not that they didn’t help anyone. It’s just that placebos helped people just as much. This is an important point. The anti-depressants helped most of the people who took them. The placebos did too.
- Here’s a third story. This one dates back to the 1950s and concerns a case published in the Journal of Projective Techniques and Personality Assessment. This patient was terminally ill with a cancer of the lymph nodes. He heard about a new drug called Krebiozen and managed to persuade his doctors to give him it. To everyone’s total amazement within 10 days all signs of the disease, including his massively swollen lymph nodes, had disappeared and he was discharged from hospital cured. However, reports of Krebiozen failing and actually being useless began to circulate and the patient, who kept up with the reports rapidly went downhill and was re-admitted two months later again in a terminal state. His doctors decided to carry out an experiment. They told him the newspaper reports were wrong and the problem was the drug wasn’t strong enough. More than that they told him they had ordered up a new “super strength” version of the drug but it would take a couple of days to arrive. His anticipation heightened his optimism. They then injected him with sterile water. Once again he experienced a miraculous recovery and stayed well until the American Medical Association announced “Nationwide tests show Krebiozen to be a worthless drug for the treatment of cancer”. Within days, he became dejected and died.
What do you think about these stories?
The placebo effect is not understood. Often placebos are seen as some kind of pretend medicine, probably because of the kinds of experiments mentioned in the first and third stories where the person taking the placebo is deliberately tricked. But the effects are not pretend. The volunteers receiving the more expensive placebo really did experience less pain. The patient with the lymphatic cancer even more tragically showed how the placebo effect reversed his pathology and how the loss of the belief (an essential component of the placebo effect) led to a rapid death. Nothing pretend about that. So that’s the first thing we should understand about the placebo effect – it’s real, and it’s significant. In fact some people say we should change the name of the placebo effect and call it the self-healing effect. That’s what placebo studies reveal – the capacity of the human body to self-heal.
The study of the anti-depressants reveals another important point. With belief in a treatment the treatment can be effective. It’s not just belief in placebos where we see this. It’s also true of pharmacological drugs and even of surgical operations. Without belief, any treatment is less likely to work. I’ve seen this frequently as a doctor. If a patient doesn’t believe in a particular pain killer or blood pressure pill or whatever, it doesn’t work for them. Similarly, if someone is convinced a drug will harm them, it’s highly likely it will.
I don’t think any doctor should use a treatment he or she does not believe in. No doctor should trick a patient. Trust is essential if belief in treatments is going to extend beyond the short term. And from the point of view of the patient, beware of agreeing to any treatment you believe will harm you, or which you don’t believe will help. If you’re in that position, ask the doctor, and others who you trust, for their advice and support to help you clarify your beliefs about the proposed treatment.
What do you think? Do these stories surprise you? Do they change what you think about medical treatments?
I think what these studies show more than anything, Doc, is that we’re still not tapping into our own innate ability to heal, that we put too much (all?) of our faith in agents OUTSIDE of ourselves to do the healing for us.
I’m not passing judgment here; I take medications every now and then – an Advil for a headache, anti-virus meds for my shingles (and let’s not forget the birth control!!). Do I NEED those medications? Probably not, but I’ve not quite gotten myself to the point where I can believe myself well. Yet. (and I’m not taking any chances with the birth control, either!)
I’ve been bouncing around the idea that we’re just on the other side of a breakthrough, if not as a race, then certainly individually. If we can hurt ourselves, we should be able to heal ourselves, too. My understanding is that drugs and therapies only create the environment where the body can do its healing work – the Advil doesn’t cure my headache, but it facilitates the conditions under which my body can make my headache go away. The trick is to be able to create those conditions in ourselves – believing that our ability to do so is not only real, but that it is our right as sentient beings.
I do not know why placebos work, but I know that they do. The stories I know are different than these (being older). I wonder what it is in us that makes placebos work.
An old story from South America. A native tribe believed that eating a white deer was deadly. A foreigner killed a white deer and served it to a friend to prove it wasn’t deadly. Ten years later he told the friend it was a white deer he had eaten. Within the day the friend died.
Then a personal story I was just talking to my sons about yesterday. I had warts all over both hands. Freezing and burning were temporary fixes which left me with scars and my warts returned. The doctor told me to rub them with a potato, bury it, and not dig it up. My warts went away and never came back.
My father told me that this would work because when he was a boy people wrote to “the old man in the hills” when they had warts and they would disappear. My father got rid of his warts with a letter. Then a girl in his class had a horrible case of warts, all over her legs and arms. He wrote the old man in the hills, without telling the girl. Within a week of his letter, all her warts disappeared never to return.
What is a placebo?
Placebos just show the power of the mind over the body. This power is just not harnessed enough, because we don’t know how to do it. Yet.
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Dear damyantig:
I have good news for you. We do know how to do it-
“There is ONLY a Stream of Well-being which you are either allowing or not.”
This powerful quote from Abraham-Hicks has stopped me in my tracks and has changed my life. Here is one of many examples of its practical application:
I have suffered from seasonal allergies all my life- this year, when I started to get very ill (which in the past has been debilitating to the point where I have had to have steroid shots), I go to a quiet place, get still, and allow this Stream to flow even stronger.
Within minutes, all the allergy symptoms begin to abate. I have been using this technique over this past week when the alder trees have been seriously sending out the pollen!
I also have been recognizing that my cells are trying to maintain equilibrium and when I become quiet I visualize them as doing their best, and that I am assisting them.
I truly believe that if everyone understood this “Stream of Wellness” and how to “allow it” we could cure ourselves of any “disease” on the planet and experience radiant health which is our birthright. You can get more information on this from the web site, books, tapes and CD’s by Abraham-Hicks.
What an interesting post – I have been looking into Quantum Touch recently, which is very similar to Reiki – healing by tapping into the universal energy source present around us and in us all the time.
I suffer from scoliosis, which is curvature of the spine, and have been reading how Quantum Touch *may* be able to realign bones again.
You know what? Although I ask myself whther it could possibly work for me, I am not stunned, amazed or surprised in the slightest that these ‘miracles’ happen. And the healers assert that IT IS NEVER THEM WHO HEAL THE PATIENT, they only act as the catalyst which induces the patient to heal themselves – energy is moved, blocks are broken down, auras smoothed out, etc. The faith lies in something outside of the healer; part of this universal energy source, she is only the conduit for the energy.
I believe that placebos work in the same way. The patient receives something that triggers the healing process within themselves. They do not just receive a pill or a treatment, they receive a shift in belief that they can now heal. Once they have made that shift in their belief, the universal energy force is allowed to step in and help the body heal.
I was very inspired recently by this post:
http://freeingmyself.wordpress.com/2008/03/08/master-ou/
And if you read the book “The Field” by Lynne McTaggart (about scientific studies done on energy healing) you will never think of ’emotions’ and the ‘power of thought’ as possibly being anything but totally connected to the health of the body ever again!
As someone with bipolar disorder, I can offer an easy explanation: mood changes everything.
When I am up or hypomanic, every part of my body operates better–my IQ goes up, I’m more alert, focused, athletic, etc.
When I am down, the exact opposite is the case.
I have to imagine my immune system and ability to stay well also vary with mood. Thus, good news that can boost the mood will certainly have an impact. If there weren’t a placebo effect, then I’d be worried.
The stories doesn’t surprise me. I read all about placebo’s before, but I don’t think people should refrain from taking drugs if they don’t believe in them. They are not doctors and their beliefs may not be scientifically grounded. What don’t they help themselves by believing the doctor and his prescription!
Dear Jay,
Very interesting and in line with the teachings I have been studying: the more we have emotions of joy and appreciation and excitement about life, the more we are “in the flow” so to speak, and all those things we desire will appear. We are happier, more enthusiastic and are actually closer to who we truly are- pure, positive energy.
With your experiences of knowing with more intensity than most of us the allowing and not- allowing of the stream of life ,the differences are very clear to you.
The work is to reach for those thoughts that move us from despair and hopelessness to better feeling ones. And when we feel better, our health reflects that. I wish you well on your journey.
@mrschili I completely agree. That’s exactly what most medical treatments do I think – create the environment in which the body can heal. You put it so well.
@suzi I’m sure somebody must have written a book about all the weird and wonderful wart cures. Really, warts are such a strange thing. Interesting that we don’t understand yet how the body gets rid of them.
@damyantig Exactly. I think the human race would really benefit from some good scientific research into how we heal. And then to develop the techniques which most effectively support and stimulate healing
@rainbow9 Thanks for sharing that. I think it’s great you’ve learned a technique which works for you. And thank you for encouraging others to be optimistic and find what works for them too. I think its a common experience that positive attitudes and the emotions that accompany them are the precursors to better health and better quality of living. I think we should always do our best to foster hope.
@Tawny Thank you also, like rainbow9 for sharing your discovery of methods that work for you. I so agree with your statement that what the patient receives is a trigger to healing
@jay It’s strange to think that areas of research such as Psychoneuroimmunology and Psychoneuroendocrinology are pretty much less than 20 years old (and in fact, in my experience, still almost completely unknown by medical students and young doctors), yet these important areas of study are showing us exactly what you are experiencing – the intimate relationship between the psyche and the immune system
@sugarmouse How lovely to see you active again. Welcome my friend! I don’t think people should refrain from taking treatments they don’t believe in either but I do know that if someone believes in the possibility of a particular treatment helping them, then they are likely to experience a better outcome than those people who don’t believe. And, on the negative side, that those who believe the treatment is more likely to harm than help will also be more likely to experience the harm. Beliefs are strange things, aren’t they? Sometimes they come from scientific understandings as you suggest, but probably more often beliefs have cultural and social origins rather than scientific ones!
I think that my own conclusion from this whole discussion is: a human being is one. There is no sharp line between mind, body and soul; all of them affect each other. The reason why some theories make the separation is that our knowledge of ourselves is very little, so scientists try to break things down and approximate in order to solve some of our -usually- complex problems. The models that we use to describe ourselves and the nature around us are simplistic in comparison with reality. Maybe the whole idea of modeling is wrong. Anyway, I just wanted to say that this post reminds me that “a human being is one”.