You’ve seen the commercials for everything from Prilosec to Viagra – the announcer says something about how the pill worked and the side effects you could get compared to a sugar pill. The sugar pill they refer to is the placebo they used in clinical trials. A placebo is used to determine if any improvement is due to the active drug or to the placebo effect.
The placebo effect can be powerful. The expectation that we are going to get better can lead to neurochemical changes in the immune system. These immune system changes can make a person get better for days, weeks, and even months. Other causes of placebo effects are that the disease has run its course or gone into remission. Whatever the reason, this bolsters the case that you should maintain a positive attitude when you get sick.
People often turn to alternative medicines as a result of being frustrated with traditional medicine or as a last resort. Sometimes people get better from alternative medicine treatments, at least for awhile. It’s possible that the treatment worked, that the disease ran its course, went into remission, or that the placebo effect caused it. To really determine whether an alternative medicine treatment is effective or not, it needs to be tested as rigorously as other treatments.
This brings up the topic that we need better designed research studies. In addition to a control group that includes a placebo, researchers should include a control group that receives no treatment at all. Then if the placebo group outperforms the no treatment group we could determine whether a placebo effect was present or not.
Our thoughts and expectations can definitely influence our bodies. We need to continue finding out which treatments work, which don’t, and what parts of the brain cause the placebo effect. In the future, doctors might incorporate placebos as part of their treatment regimens. We may even get to the point where we can synthesize a pill that triggers the placebo effect without a person needing to believe anything is supposed to happen.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment