The Placebo Effect is well known, but not well understood. The
word Placebo comes from the Latin for "I shall please." Patients
given a placebo with have "an actual or perceived improvement" in
their medical condition. In essence, "what your mind believes to be true,
becomes a reality." Therefore, if you "believe" a medication,
treatment or procedure will help you heal, recover, relieve your pain, it will
do so about 33% of the time. This is a quote from the Official Journal of the
American Academy of Neurology, "How
placebos work is still a mystery. It is important to understand that not all
placebo effects are good. Just as some patients improve with the power of
positive thinking, some get worse and drop out of research studies because of
the side effects caused by the placebo. In a recent, well-publicized and
fascinating study of Parkinson disease (PD), it was discovered that the
patients who improved with placebo had changes in their brain that were
identical to the changes caused by the actual medication (called levodopa).1 Levodopa causes an increase in brain
dopamine, and the placebo should not. However, the patients who got better with
placebo had a similar increase in dopamine, identical to what happened in those
who were given the drug. Talk about mind over matter! That is like convincing
yourself you can run a 40-yard dash in 4 seconds and then doing it. Similar
effects of changes in brain chemistry have been found in studies of pain and of
depression. However, this does not work in secret. When patients in a study of
treatment for pain were given pain medications without their knowledge, the
benefit was far less than when they were given placebo and they were able to
expect a benefit." Hypnosis,
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Positive Psychology can all help.
The link below is a very interesting and useful explanation
of just how placebo works in the mind.
Placebo Effect VIdeo