Do you that Placebo has been scientifically proven to cure a whole lot of things including pain, headache, fatigue, boredom, blurred vision, receding hairline, acid reflux, teeth decay, chronic back pain and a whole host of common ailments.
Let's go back to the North African Battlefield of WW2 where there were a lot of wounded soldiers with no more Morphine to give the soldiers to help with their pains. There was need to operate on wounded soldiers and doctor Henry Beecher had no drugs to help them with pain, so a nurse decided to inject the soldier with salt and water to help relieve the pain and it did the jobs as the soldiers miraculously had reduction in pain. When doctor Henry Beecher got back to Harvard University, he realized that lots of ailments from common cold to wounds from gunshots could be treated using fake medicine.
Image:Spektrum
This is known as the Placebo Effect meaning I Shall Please in Latin. Placebos are drugs that do not contain the active ingredient of a real drug. These drugs can have ingredients such as sugar (sugar pills), corn starch, yeast, cellulose from plant, and other ingredients that make the drug stick together as well as break down in the stomach but unless what a placebo is made off is mentioned in trials, we do not know exactly what they contain.
A research study titled "What's in placebos: Who Knows? Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials", over 150 trials were studied from 4 medical journals and only about 8% of the trials from the journals disclosed what was in their placebo. So it is very different to tell the ingredient of a placebo from another and there is a possibility their their ingredients are a reason for why some are more effective than others. It is believed that Injection placebos work better than Capsule placebos which work better than tablet placebos and placebo machines work better than all of them.
Image: Picryl
Something interesting about placebos is that having a great talk with the doctor because taking it can increase the rate at which it works. Other things that are amazing with placebos is that taking two placebos is better than taking one (just like two heads are better than one), also just like people believe that expensive branded antibiotics work better than generic ones, so does expensive branded placebos work better than generic ones or putting them in fancy packs and nice names make them more effective when used. Other things like color also play a role in how well a placebo works for instance, sleeping pills work well when they are blue.
So we can say that placebos are effective base on perception of the pill effectiveness but they cannot be referred to as fake because they can stimulate certain changes in the body such as stimulating the brain to release its pain killing chemicals thereby causing the placebo to work for pain relief. they can also be effective in improving the symptoms in Parkinson's disease patients as they cause the release of dopamine.
Image ccnull
While these pills have shown great result in some areas especially with common illnesses, the pills cannot cure cancer, shrink tumors, or cure infections. When companies are about to create medications, they test it against placebo to see the effect on people. They then subtract the placebo group from the real group and they are left with the real effect. In recent times, drugs are failing to pass the placebo test as it looks like the effect of placebo is getting stronger and the growing placebo effect on humans make it difficult to identify which drug really works and which doesn't help with treatment.
In a study, patients were told they were getting placebo and it still gave a positive effect possibly because they have been told placebos have healing effects and it now looks like the active ingredient that makes it work effectively is the expectation that the patient have in mind before taking the medication.
The placebo effect is a fascinating and powerful phenomenon that demonstrates the incredible influence of perception and the expectation on our health as individuals even when the medication isn't working properly. While placebos cannot cure severe diseases, they can provide significant relief for various common ailments through psychological and physiological mechanisms and sometimes, could lead to a possible cure in cases of minor diseases. Understanding and harnessing the placebo effect can offer valuable insights into patient care and the development of new treatments.
Read More
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/placebo-effect-a-cure-in-the-mind/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2814126/pdf/nihms168943.pdf
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199828340/obo-9780199828340-0196.xml
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/21677026211009799
https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/sage/placebo-effects-a-new-theory-mNIRnVg32L?key=sage
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2832199/
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18511