What is the placebo effect

  • Nov 09, 2021
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What is the placebo effect and how does it work

The phenomenon of the placebo effect, considered until a few years ago a boring artifact in the medical and therapeutic field, remained for a long time linked to clinical research, in which it was necessary to compare a group of patients with the real treatment to be tested with a simulator: the placebo.

It may indeed happen that a pain can be relieved by having taken a substance that is believed to be a medicine, but in It is actually inert, without an active principle, and therefore cannot have any kind of therapeutic effect: it is the so-called effect placebo.

Therefore, even a tablet of sugar, for example, or cornstarch, a common excipient used in pills, it can elicit a feeling of well-being and efficacy from a supposed therapy. It really happens, even though there are still many mysterious aspects to how this phenomenon works. In this Psychology-Online article, we are going to try to go deeper into the subject, to understand what is the placebo effect and how does it work.

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Index

  1. What is the placebo effect
  2. How the placebo effect works
  3. The effects of placebo
  4. The placebo effect and alternative medicine

What is the placebo effect.

A placebo is an inert substance or a medical treatment without any therapeutic properties, while the placebo effect or placebo response is the consequence of its administration. This effect consists of an organic or mental change related to the symbolic meaning attributed to an event or object in the field of health.

What is the placebo effect of a drug? This term placebo derives from the Latin verb pleasure, which literally means "I will like it." In medicine it refers to any inert substance, biologically inactive, without intrinsic therapeutic capacity, is presented to the patient as an effective remedy and is then administered to induce psychotherapeutic suggestion or to make comparisons with drugs in clinical trials.

Probably the most complete definition of placebo is provided by Dr. A.K. Shapiro: any procedure deliberately applied to obtain an effect or which, although not is aware of it, acts on the patient or on the symptom or the disease, but that objectively lacks any specific activity with respect to the condition object of the treatment. This procedure can be applied with or without medical directivesregardless of the type of medicine used.

How the placebo effect works.

Attempts to explain why placebos work have implicated behavioral scientists and biologists in the last half of the 20th century. The placebo effect and its principles of operation have been predominantly understood and interpreted in psychological terms.

If you wonder how the placebo effect works, it is an underlying psychosomatic mechanism in the sense that the nervous system, in response to the full meaning of expectations given to the prescribed placebic therapy, induces neurovegetative modifications and produces numerous endorphins, hormones, mediators, able to modify your perception of pain, your hormonal balances, your cardiovascular response, and your immune response.

An essential requirement for the placebo effect to manifest itself is the autosuggestion of the one who takes it. In other words, the patient must be convinced that he is taking an effective treatment and trust him, or at least he must be led to believe it by the doctor prescribing the treatment. In this article, we tell you more about How does the human mind work.

It is important to emphasize that the placebo effect is due to the psychosocial context in which the treated patient is located. It consists of any object or person related to the treatment, capable of communicating with the patient who is receiving treatment and that, therefore, it is expected that in the near future there will be a reduction in symptom.

The effects of the placebo.

Until recently, much of the therapeutic effects of medicine were due to the placebo effect, for example, strange mixtures prepared with blood or animal parts, etc. However, when discussing the therapeutic effect of placebo, do not make the mistake of attributing any clinical improvement observed in patients taking it to it. The effects of placebo can be due to many other factors:

  • Natural enhancement and spontaneous: It has been observed that many patients tend to go to the doctor in the most acute phase of the disease, which then would tend to improve spontaneously due to its natural course.
  • Independent factors: a new love, a profit, a vacation, etc. These situations lead you to perceive an improvement in your health, while, in other cases, you can report the benefits obtained only because you want to please the doctor.

These are some of the examples of the placebo effect. In fact, to measure the placebo effect it is necessary to exclude a number of factors that have nothing to do with the actual placebo effect.

The placebo effect and alternative medicine.

The placebo effect may be the link between the defenders and detractors of the so-called alternative medicines. In the varied and unequal group of alternative medications, there are all those therapeutic practices whose efficacy has not undergone controlled clinical monitoring or that he hasn't gotten over it.

The fact that the efficacy of an alternative medicine cannot be demonstrated through clinical trials mentioned above, does not necessarily mean that it is totally useless for the patient: the placebo effect could explain positive experiences of doctors and patients who successfully decide to resort to alternative treatments.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to What is the placebo effect and how does it work, we recommend that you enter our category of Cognitive psychology.

Bibliography

  • Bernini, E. (2013). Effetto placebo. Cos’è, thing says the scienza oggi, thing says the scienza di domani. San Lazzaro di Savena: Area 51 s.r.l.
  • Mypersonaltrainer (2021). Placebo - Effetto placebo. Recovered from: https://www.my-personaltrainer.it/salute/placebo.html
  • Pace, A. (2020). Che cosa sappiamo sull’effetto placebo. Recovered from: https://wonderwhy.it/che-cosa-sappiamo-sulleffetto-placebo/
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