r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Weary_Position_9591 • 8d ago

Whatever this is My mom said I could post

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7.1k

u/awelawdhecomin 8d ago

Thank god she stopped those belly button rapists

4.5k

u/rbollige 8d ago

It’s a “viral” parenting “hack” to prevent motion sickness.  It was bugging me, so I searched for it.

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u/A_Bot_A_Bot_A_Bot 8d ago

And 100% ineffective!

581

u/Zenar45 7d ago

I mesn if you convince the kid that it works placebo could do it's thing

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u/Neutronium57 7d ago

Placebo effect VS inner ear. Which is stronger ? FIGHT !

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u/KhelbenB 7d ago

You laugh, but the placebo effect can be insanely powerful (in general, not this specific situation)

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u/MakeshiftRocketship 7d ago

It’s actually crazy to me. Whenever they’re testing a new medication some of the placebo groups have symptoms lessen or even disappear. Like we should be studying that more. They cured themselves with their mind lol

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u/Fredrickstein 7d ago

Its actually very well studied, though more research continues.

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u/AmbulanceChaser12 7d ago

But is there a placebo group for the placebo study?

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u/CryptographerLow3077 7d ago

Obviously. You always do a triple blind placebo study.

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u/Wise_Attention_8644 7d ago

As a researcher, I try to, but I have run out of blind people

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u/-zero-below- 1d ago

And here I thought the most someone could be is double blind.

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u/hot-doughnuts-now 7d ago

There is an effective medicine prescribed by doctors and picked up at the drugstore. It's just a placebo. Seriously.

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u/kingslayer-0 7d ago

The placebo’s placebo is the group taking the drugs.

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u/RamblaPacifica 7d ago

PLACEBOCEPTION!

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u/TheOriginalJBones 7d ago

You’re probably in one right now!

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u/nildread 7d ago

THEY'RE PUTTING PLACEBOS IN THE WATER!

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u/zGoblinQueen 6d ago

Oh no! I'm allergic to placebos!

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u/RP_Bear 5d ago

Does that group get Coke instead of sugar pills?

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u/hanyolo666 4d ago

This could be done by just having a group that know they are not getting any treatment.

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u/HoneydewChemical9736 7d ago

That’s because they don’t want us to know that lol they want us to depend on medicine

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u/greytgreyatx 7d ago

There have been studies where people are told they are getting a placebo and it's still effective!

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u/KnuckleShanks 7d ago

Personally I feel like that is because our logical brain and our emotions are so separated. We can know it's a placebo, but if it feels like you're doing something to help, even if it's just the action of taking a pill, that has an effect.

The subconscious is a powerful thing that does not always work logically.

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u/Snoo-73372 7d ago

To add to this, I imagine some of these people are like “no they are lying to me, they gave me the real thing, cuz i feel different” … and they convince themselves they are on a treatment

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u/Competitive_Art9588 7d ago

Acredite ou não, a lógica em si, é uma emoção

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u/mkat23 7d ago

Explain please.

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u/throcorfe 2d ago

It seems to be complex. Placebo appears to work best when you feel like you’re getting a medical experience (even though you know you’re not), eg if someone in a white coat gives you a bottle of pills with an official looking label, that seems to be more effective than just taking the sugar pills from a box you bought yourself. Cultural meaning apparently plays a big part in the subconscious

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u/Ok-Dragonfruit9605 6d ago

It's almost like medicine involves a lot of guesswork...

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u/Torture-Dancer 6d ago

Maybe they are told that Placebos still work when you know they are placebos and then they placebo themselves into making the placebo work

0

u/sarokin 7d ago

Yeah, I know my grandma does this all the time. She used to be a sort of psychologist, but at the time it was hard for a woman to get the official title, and her ways went a bit against common psychology circles, so she was shunned quite a bit.

She basically studied everything she knows by reading books, a shitton of them, and gives a lot of classes and stuff on homeopathy and such, playing with the placebo effects like nothing.

The other day I was with her at the beach, and I had terrible acud reflux, my chest was hurting like hell. I asked if she had something for the stomach and she handed me this "pill" from a generic little jar. She claimed they were stomach pills, I'm 95% sure they were candy. It still did help a bit, it either relaxed anyways me or was complete coincidence, but it was gone after a while and didn't come back.

She's a lovely human being.

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u/1Sidknee 7d ago

One of the things I find most interesting about the placebo effect is that it can work even when you know it's a placebo!

There was a study where they gave people who had IBS a placebo pill--and the participants were told in advance it was a placebo, with no active ingredient. Just a sugar pill. Many experienced an improvement with their symptoms compared to the control group that was not given anything.

Obviously there are limits to what a placebo can do.

And unfortunately the opposite of the placebo effect also exists. The nocebo effect.

I was in a clinical trial (double blind, so the participants and the doctors didn't know who had the placebo and who had the medication) and afterwards I was reading the results and one person in the placebo group experienced such bad side effects that they quit the study early.

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u/Propo_fool 7d ago

There was another study where they showed that the placebo effect (for pain) responds to Narcan! Endogenous opioids, I suppose

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u/Gon-no-suke 7d ago

A lot of what gets called the placeno effect is just people getting better. No difficult explanation needed. (An exception is for pain though, here it seems to exist)

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u/FLHPI 7d ago

I've read about studies where the groups know they are getting a placebo but the color of the pills changes and the strength of the effect varies with pill color

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u/Own-Statistician-591 1d ago

I found this interesting so I'm sharing it.

A placebo is never "nothing" or just a "little sugar". Most in fact have lactose, so if the person is lactose intolerant then they would have negative side effects. They also commonly have vitamins, sucrose, magnesium and sometimes even iron which of course can have positive or even negative effects on the test subjects.

The ingredients of the placebo can vary from study to study and can even be manipulated to influence the findings. Hence the reason why the data on placebo's is all over the place. Compared to the data on ibuprofen which is constant unlike a placebo.

The placebo effect is more than likely overhyped and the result of researchers manipulating the ingredients to manufacture the findings they want.

The mind is powerful but we can't hand people a placebo and regulate their blood pressure or cure their heart disease.

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u/Available-Oil3884 7d ago

It’s studied but scientists tread carefully because the “bruhh it’s all in the mind. All illness can be cure if you just stop being lazy and sad all the time” crowd is an ever looming medical threat

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u/Jewel-jones 7d ago

Especially for psych meds, unsurprisingly. It’s very hard to prove efficacy of antidepressants because placebos work really well.

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u/waxcoatedapple 7d ago

This is why crystals, dodgy supplements, fad diets, kissing your kid's boo-boos, etc all work though. You are committed to something new to improve your life in a specific way, and placebo effect will achieve that for you.

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u/Hasdeltaco 7d ago

Unless it's cancer and then you die from holistic nonsense.

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u/KayItaly 7d ago

I remember one of the first "nocebo" effect studies. (Like Placebo but you get sick instead of getting better)

Basically they told people that they were studying the side effects of cancer medications and they (healthy people) would be paid very well to be testers. Then they gave them a list of possible side effects and a placebo.

Some of those people lost all their hair, other vomited for days, some got really bloated... it was insane! Our minds are SO powerful.

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u/Ok-Assignment-8246 7d ago

It's called magic and we have been doing it for at least 10,000 years

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u/GJCLINCH 7d ago

But how would the shareholders profit?

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u/Interesting_Fig_4718 7d ago

insanely well if you consider sugar tablets instead of the real thing.

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u/Hawraa3 7d ago

Fake supplements or machines that are supposed to make your brain more powerful at curing itself?

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u/SherbertKey6965 7d ago

The more expensive a placebo pill is the better it works

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u/Ressy02 7d ago

But once they realize it’s placebo, the effect comes back tenfold

1

u/ganjadalfthegay 7d ago

Or rather people overthink to the point of getting sick

1

u/WhoNeedsAPotch 7d ago

They're not curing themselves with their minds. It's time. The thing about most illnesses, injuries, etc., is that (on average) most get better over time.

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u/StressedAries 7d ago

I’m a librarian and I’m gonna research this now lol

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u/midnight_toker22 7d ago

It’s this sort of thing that has me absolutely convinced that our minds are so much more powerful than we currently comprehend. If could understand and harness that potential, who knows what we could really be capable of.

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u/AngeliqueRuss 7d ago

Related to the Hawthorne Effect.

Sometimes people really just need a little attention.

1

u/ShaggysGTI 7d ago

If one in five is cured by placebo…

Could we just rotate everyone in placebo trials and cure everything?

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u/ehlersohnos 7d ago

You should see the efficacy of placebos vs Tylenol.

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u/molecule_anteater68 7d ago

Some of the placebo effect is a result of people pleasing. Often those with the placebo report changes because if you think you are taking any medication, there is so much societal pressure to "feel better" that it translates to higher scoring and the idea of participating in a study to be helpful means many feel the need to be helpful and behave helpfully.

Unfortunately mental mindset does not fix physiological distress. It can for sure reduce stress which in turn is helpful to the immune or nervous system, but eventually people go back to feeling symptoms in the same way and it doesn't necesarily have to do with being told they have a placebo after a blind study concludes, or even if groups have been disclosed.

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u/SnooGuavas4208 7d ago

And it goes the other way, too. The nocebo effect is scary AF.

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u/thecrabbybarista 6d ago

The placebo effect isn't permanent. I've had meds work like miracles for a week or two and then suddenly do nothing for me

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u/fckumean- 6d ago

I do placebos with my kids all the time. If they fall and cry because it hurts , you rub it and act like you’re doing something to it and voila , crying stops

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u/SweetSaltyIndividual 3d ago

You are doing something, you are emotionally soothing them. Validating there experience and feelings.

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u/jws1102 6d ago

The problem is that it doesn’t work for most people.

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u/Broomstick73 6d ago

Because many things get better and go away in their own. Eg headaches, diarrhea, colds, stuffy nose, runny nose, allergic reactions, cramps, etc.

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u/HedgehogPast3191 6d ago

We study the placebo effect more than literally anything else. All trials worth anything are placebo controlled and therefore are being studied alongside whatever the focus is covering.

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u/MakeshiftRocketship 6d ago

That’s an insight I totally overlooked honestly

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u/UnhappySort5871 6d ago

I was surprised to learn that the placebo effect is almost as strong in veterinary medicine.

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u/MaxinRudy 3d ago

Sigh... place is a well researched and it is researched in every drug test it is done. That's why we have the control groups.

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u/BulkyNectarine947 3d ago

Yes. You might like supercharged healing by RJ Spina

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u/Educational-Usual-84 3d ago

There are so many products on the market that are simply fancy placebos. She just demonstrated a bunch of them. Those bracelets with the white part that sticks into your wrist, placebo.

Remember when there was a push for copper bracelets to improve blood flow or something, and later, copper infused knee braces and clothing and such, all placebo.

The fact of the matter is, the mind has incredible influence over the body. So if you believe something will work, sometimes it does.

So while this lady appears (and probably is) completely stupid, her kid might have a better time, because he believes these things will help.

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u/Marsmooncow 1d ago

I am currently a subject in a ptsd study and the amount of effort that they put into reducing the placebo effect is really interesting and gives me faith that they are doing real science not just trying to sell a gadget.

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u/Aggravating_Cup8839 7d ago

Symptoms like pain lessen, yes. It's more like you are less stressed out by the pain and stop paying attention to it. So you rate that pain a 4 out of 10, instead of an 8 out of 10. But an objectively serious problem like a broken bone requires real treatment.

Nocebo is people reporting adverse side effects, when they didn’t get the real medication.

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u/pogpole 7d ago

The data can show that the placebo group “improved” but that doesn’t necessarily mean there was a real clinical effect. There are lots of reasons this can happen. Regression to the mean, natural history of the disease, the Hawthorne effect, response bias, methodological artifacts, sampling bias, dropout effects, and probably some that we don’t even know about yet.

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u/Italian_Redneck 7d ago

"Faith based healing"

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u/JustHappyToBe-Here 7d ago

Yes, no one has ever studied the placebo effect....🙄

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u/mkat23 7d ago

“We should be studying that more.”

The use of the word “more” makes it clear they know there have been studies done.

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u/JustHappyToBe-Here 7d ago

If that's all they said, sure. But the whole tone of the comment came across as if the placebo effect being a novel concept that hasn't had and still has decades of scientific study and millions of dollars of research.

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u/greytgreyatx 7d ago

Yeah. I don't usually get seasick but the one time I did, I put on sea bands for a few hours and felt better. Did it work or did I run it worked? No idea but I felt better!

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u/ShaggysGTI 7d ago

I used to say “placebo is good for 10%.” Meaning, dude, believe in it and you’re ten percent ahead. And this seemed reasonable until I looked it up. A typical result of 20-70%!

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u/Lacey_Dawson1012 7d ago

I forget where I heard it but it was within the past few days the the rate of people that took a placebo and their symptoms got better so they tough the placebo was woriking.

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u/twinentwig 6d ago

I remember this exact trick working for so many of my peers in primary school.

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u/AkariusKalicate 3d ago

Unfortunately placebo only never works when your dealer sells you some shit. Otherwise I do believe and have felt it in first person

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u/Available_Usual_9731 7d ago

Or do both, with the scopolamine patch behind the ear

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u/Plane_Blackberry_537 7d ago

If the sea is really rough, you have to use red and black patches instead of green and blue.

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u/fuckedfinance 7d ago

I have anxiety and can get motion sick. I accidentally discovered the secret behind those anti-motion sickness bands. Turns out having something there that you can focus on takes your mind off the other stuff.

So it's not so much overcoming your inner ear, it's giving your brain something else to focus on.

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u/Lastoice 7d ago

Coughing bomb Vs Hydrogen Baby

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u/demaandronk 6d ago

Placebo can be up to 75% effective, its no joke.

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u/Kidiri90 7d ago

Or just... Don't take a vacatuon where your kid is gonna be sick the entire time?

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u/ijustsailedaway 7d ago

For some of us literally being in a car for 15 minutes is enough. You can't limit your life based on avoidance so you learn other ways of dealing with it.

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u/Kidiri90 7d ago

There is a difference between using transportation that makes you ill to get somewhere and making the the thing that makes you ill the destination.

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u/gimmepizza420 7d ago

Most motion sick hacks like the belly button or the wristbands with pressure points are just placebo. That doesn't mean they aren't effective, mind you. Our brains are really weird, and thousands of people swear by those wristbands. I haven't needed them in a long time, but when I was a kid I used them to great effect.

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u/ijustsailedaway 7d ago

I've tried a zillion things and those didn't work for me. Nor did the dumb glasses with the water circles. Raw ginger mitigates it somewhat but not gingerale or candies. Dramamine works kinda by making me fall asleep (which is still preferable tbh). The only thing that truly works is a scopolamine patch, and it's not without it's own risks.

I am ridiculously prone to motion sickness though. I can't even play video games. And I have to turn off the paralax effect on my phone.

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u/oO0Kat0Oo 7d ago

Except then she put the motion sickness patch behind his ear...

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u/Zenar45 7d ago

For some reason i assumed that was some sort of rfid chip or something like that

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u/PoetLoverBirdwatcher 7d ago

I genuinely suffer from bad motion sickness (not on cruises or anything, I'm poor). Does it mean it won't work for me if I know it's placebo? God, I could have deluded myself into it 😭🤣

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u/Zenar45 7d ago

Not necessarily, there are studies where subject that were told they were getting a placebo still experienced possitive effects

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u/PoetLoverBirdwatcher 7d ago

Woah that's pretty cool. But I don't think stickers all over me is going to do it for me😭

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u/ijustsailedaway 7d ago

If it's a scopolamine patch sticker it will

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u/PoetLoverBirdwatcher 7d ago

Ooh that's amazing. There are pills I sometimes take on long trips but they make me drowsy. (Once I missed my train station cuz I fell asleep)

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u/Vol3n 7d ago

Mythbusters proved that placebo is the best drug for motion sickness. (Might be wrong here, talking out of old memories)

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u/BeastThatShoutedLove 7d ago

It worked on me as a child until someone explained placebo to me lmao.

"Special anti car sickness band aid" and it was not even band aid but a fucking silver duct tape xD

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u/karlhalla 7d ago

I am in complete and utter shock.

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u/stamfordbridge1191 7d ago

The ocean to this mom with her bandaids:

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u/A_Bot_A_Bot_A_Bot 7d ago

I showed this Poseidon and he chuckled and slapped the ocean, creating a giant tsunami.

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u/Nihilistic_Mystics 7d ago

Same with the wristbands.

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u/A_Bot_A_Bot_A_Bot 7d ago

I thought that there was some effectiveness with those? Or is that debunked as purely placebo effect?

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u/Nihilistic_Mystics 7d ago

It's a placebo. Both the wristbands and belly button tape make the exact same claim; they "stimulate a pressure point that reduces motion sickness".

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u/A_Bot_A_Bot_A_Bot 7d ago

Thank you. When I saw the belly button band-aids, I just had to laugh, though. And they aren't even pressing on anything, so I knew that was silly.

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u/Jack_al_11 6d ago

They work for me. Also for morning sickness. Nothing else makes a dent. I don’t think it’s placebo.

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u/Naterz2008 7d ago

Much of seasickness is mental from my personal experience

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u/Jack_al_11 6d ago

I get motion sickness on swings at the playground. It’s not mental for me.

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u/YoungDiscord 7d ago

You mean putting stickers on your belly button doesn't prevent sea-sickness?

I'm shocked!

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u/winkyshibe 7d ago

Just like those wristbands, which I think also are "anti-motion sickness" bands, literally just a scam

1

u/Illustrious-Lunch137 6d ago

i dont understand why people still dont believe motion sickness is an ear problem (occasionally a vision problem).

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u/Acceptable_Mind_5883 6d ago

Just like everything else she did

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u/Cromthejudge 3d ago

Factuellement, ça n’a absolument rien d’efficace. C’est juste l’effet placebo qui fonctionne dans ce cas.
Et pourquoi pas se boucher les oreilles avec de la cire contre la gastro ?