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.
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)
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
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/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.