The placebo effect is SCIENCE

[bonzaga]

It's an actual thing. If people believe that something is curing them, then it turns out that something happens in the brain to allow the body to help things along. This is not quite yet understood, but it is well documented, and it is real.

Homeopathy is bullshit (it's water, people), so is acupuncture, so are a lot of so called "herbal" treatments and cures. Chiropractors are 99% of the time a scam as well. Praying doesn't do anything, either. For the most part, these things are little more than superstition.

But if people really, truly, believe that something is happening in their bodies, then the placebo effect takes over. I know this is hard to swallow for us science minded folks. But sometimes ignorance truly is bliss. If I was suffering and nothing else was working for me, I'd' wish that I was science illiterate so that maybe the placebo effect would happen for me.

[Xipe Totec]

1. The Strange Powers of the Placebo Effect

[CanSocDem]

8. That's an important clip in todays discussions...

...despite the fact that it is routinely ignored. Medicine is only as effective as you believe it to be and why the pharmaceutical industry spends so much money on advertising.

There was a study not that long ago, posted on DU, that showed a large percentage of Medical doctors regularly prescribed "placebo" medicine.

.

[arcane1]

2. It definitely reduces stress/anxiety to believe something is working.

And the healing process works best when it's not competing with adrenaline, etc.

[Igel]

3. Yes, and medical doctors sometimes use it.

However, a lot of quacks take advantage of it. Pharmaceuticals don't just match the placebo effect but are expected to exceed it in more than just a statistically barely significant way.

There shouldn't be a place of first-recourse labeled "Placebos' Place" that specializes in placebology. It's what you fall back on when nothing else works.

I always found it funny when friends that were into faith healing and friends who were into foot reflexology, iridology, or homeopathy got into tussles over which one was "right."

[longship]

4. For pain and non-specific symptoms.

It does not cure bacterial or viral diseases. It does not cure genetic afflictions. It cannot cure cancer, or heart disease. It cannot rid you of your kidney stones. If your appendix becomes inflamed, a placebo will not heal it.

By definition, a placebo is a null treatment, one that does no more treatment than the intervention by the physician. That intervention itself has an effect on symptoms even though it cannot effect the underlying causes of the symptoms. Anybody claiming otherwise is likely marketing woo.

The Placebo effect is psychogenic, not physical.

[Vashta Nerada]

5. This.

[kelliekat44]

6. Unless you tried it all...blind and double blind...there is little to debate here. nt

[Warpy]

7. It's also not predictable at the individual level

It's unethical to prescribe placebo treatment to patients who might or might not benefit from it when there is a known treatment they will respond to.

[Aristus]

9. I've never prescribed a placebo for a patient, although God knows there have been times

when I wanted to.

There are some minor ailments that require nothing more than some conservative management, i.e. rest, plenty of water, warm saltwater gargles, warm wet compresses, hot vapor treatments, etc. And most of my patients accept that and comply with the treatment plan, and end up feeling better.

But there are always those patients who express irritation or anger if they don't receive a pill of some kind. These are the ones I wish I could prescribe a placebo for. I wish I had a bottle of sugar pills in the office, labeled 'amphohydrotiracetezine' or something, and give these to patients who will recover just fine with a fairly conservative treatment, but insist on pills just the same.