Can placebos actually work purely on with a mental effect?
Self hypnosis is a good example. You can cause large scale changes in mental feedback loops, with nothing but some effort and a guiding voice. It’s to the point where people have had surgery without anesthetic. They used hypnosis to literally turn off pain.
I suspect most placebo effects work through the same pathways in the brain. The trick is tapping into them and creating a new stable feedback loop.
Weird question. Do you know what would happen if you gave two groups a painkiller, told one group that it should help and told the other that it shouldn’t work (or that it was a placebo)? I’m curious if the drug would still work as well if the patient was told it isn’t supposed to.
I’d google it, but I have no idea what keywords to use lol.
A lot of aches and pains are just made up by your brain. Modalities such as massages, foam rollers, etc… does nothing to you when it comes to actually healing your body or helping your recovery, but many people swear by it regardless.
Slight ache in your lower back? Depending how you mentally approach it, that pain may dissappear or get worse.
It’s why doctors have to careful about the nocebo effect, you might end creating a negative side effect for for your patient by just mentioning the potential side effects.
remember, it works best when a man in a doctor’s coat gives it to you!
Placebos prove that our bodies could heal us, but choose not to.
Well ACKTSCHUALLLY:
The placebo effect includes the positive response of getting rid of an illness that without any pills or effect would have been solved by the body anyways.
Yes there are occasions where without the mind thinking it will help you will suffer longer from a disease but most of the time a positive mind is just enough. So a clown might be more effective than a placebo pill.
It’s rather the body heals us and we give the pills the credit for it.
You’d think that, but there have been studies where the subjects have been explicitly told they were receiving placebos, and still had positive effects.
In fact, there is a woman who was told essentially “this is a study to see if placebos can help with IBS, here is your placebo, it should do nothing.” And they helped her to the point that she begged to continue receiving the placebo pills because they helped her.
So it’s not just a feeling, or a mindset. There’s something to placebo we still don’t understand.
It blows my mind that the whole antihistamine market is just a bunch of decongestants. WHERE DO MY ITCHES GO!?
What’s really wild is that the side effect of coming off of stuff like zyrtec is ITCHING. Once I got through the itchy “withdrawals” I hardly ever needed it anymore other than occasional bad reactions. Like, wtf? They really make it seem like it should be taken every day when it absolutely shouldn’t. Not to mention the weird weight gain it causes that they never seem to mention anywhere ever.
Obviously everyone’s mileage may vary but it’s kinda creepy looking into antihistamines and some of their shenanigans that get swept under the rug.
