Why the placebo is more effective than you think -

A broken electric kettle won’t boil water, and a car with no engine won’t drive, and, yet, fake medicine can sometimes work? It's complex, but the answer is that, in certain cases, yes it can.

For example, a person suffering from depression can be prescribed a sugar pill, thinking it’s an antidepressant, and their symptoms decrease. The same goes for many different illnesses and conditions. Of course, this is putting things rather simply.

But is this as far as it goes? Absolutely not. How the placebo effect works is astounding. To learn all about it, click through this gallery.

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Beyond the sugar pill -

It goes further than sugar pills. There are all manners of fake treatments, even placebo surgery, and the more dramatic the 'treatment,' the better it works.

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Fake surgeries -

A BMJ review found that fake surgeries led to improvements 75% of the time.

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Injections beat pills -

For example, placebo injections are, in many cases, understood to be more effective than pills.

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Administration is key -

A lot of how it works is also based on who the 'medicine' is administered by. For example, a robot that pumps morphine into patients at undisclosed times needs twice as much for it to have the same effect as someone who physically sees a nurse administer it by injection.

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Hooking up patients -

It’s also been found that placebo treatments are more effective if the patient is hooked up to a machine when it’s administered.

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Hospitals work best -

Similarly, if patients are treated with a placebo in a hospital rather than a small private clinic, the results are more effective.

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Canines -

Did you know that the placebo effect isn’t just effective with humans? Canines being treated for epilepsy can also benefit from placebo treatment.

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Canines and owners -

However, it’s suggested that it’s possibly just because their owners interact differently with them when they know they’re undergoing treatment.

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The power of the mind? -

The truth is that psychologists aren’t 100% sure as to why it works. For a long time, the scientific community believed that it resulted from some unknown result of the mind's power.

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Endorphins -

However, it’s been proven that when we take placebo pills, our brain releases endorphins. Endorphins kill the pain.

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Blood pressure and heart rate -

Placebo medicines can also have a physiological effect on our blood pressure and heart rate.

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Pavlov’s dog -

It’s a similar phenomenon to Russian physiologist Igor Pavlov’s experiments where he conditioned dogs to produce saliva by ringing a bell just before he fed them. Eventually, their mouths drooled with saliva upon the noise of the bell, with no accompanying food to see or smell.

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It works even when the patients knows it's a placebo -

Findings that upended our understanding of the placebo effect were that people can still benefit from the placebo even after being aware that it’s a placebo!

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Nocebo -

Another less studied area in this field is what has been coined as the "nocebo effect." Essentially, it’s the same thing, but the patients’ anticipation of the medicine having adverse side effects makes them more likely to experience them.

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Confirmation bias -

The placebo effect also works through confirmation bias. This occurs because the patient anticipates the placebo medicine will make them better. In expecting to feel better, the patient pays closer attention to the signs that suggest they are “feeling better.” They may also overlook the signs that they feel the same or worse.

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Care and warmth -

Warmth and emotional care produce results in treatment. When an acupuncturist asked more questions and was more sympathetic with IBS patients in an experiment, the treatment was more effective.

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The physician is everything -

As previously mentioned, it’s not just about the pills themselves. It’s about the environment and everything else associated with them, like the physician’s demeanor. With this said, it can be deduced that certain doctors administering a placebo medicine will see better results than other doctors.

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Placebo effective for some physical ailments -

A systematic review found that placebo effectively treats physical ailments like pain, nausea, and asthma.

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Phobias -

The same review also found them effective in treating certain issues related to the brain, such as phobias.

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The cancer myth -

There are considerable limits to what placebo treatment can achieve. For example, there is no way of producing cancer-killing chemicals with a placebo.

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Visible physical changes in the brain -

You can see more activity in the periaqueductal gray matter of the brain (the part responsible for pain management) of a patient with an MRI machine when they’re receiving placebo treatment.

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Color and branding of the pills -

The color and branding of the placebo pills affect how well they perform in treating a patient’s symptoms.

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Blue and branded placebo pills are most effective for sedation -

Blue placebo pills work better as sedatives than pink ones, and branded ones are more effective than ones with no label.

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Placebo works best for optimistic and friendly patients -

Placebo treatments work better for people who are more optimistic and friendly, especially for analgesic treatments.

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Placebo in sports -

The effects of placebo are not just bound to medicine. For example, there have been cases where cyclists who were asked to train until exhaustion would cycle longer if the clocks were tampered with to make them run slow.

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Placebo for creativity -

It works for creativity too. If two groups are told to perform a creative task, and one group is told to first smell an odor that makes them more creative, the group told to smell the odor will perform better.

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Placebo, sleep, and performance -

When subjects taking part in a sleep experiment were told that they had more REM sleep than they did, they performed better in language and arithmetic tests.

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Placebo and physical health -

When hotel staff were told that their work counts as exercise, they saw physical benefits in weight, body mass index, body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, and blood pressure.

Sources: (Vox) (Walden University)(Harvard Medical School) (BMJ)

See also: Everything you need to know about CBD

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