What is the Placebo Effect?
The placebo effect is a term used in medicine whereby someone’s beliefs or ideas about a treatment make their body respond to a physiologically inactive procedure- either a ‘drug’ or ‘surgery’. Why is it important? The placebo effect is important because it means that our beliefs can alter our physiological chemistry, which is profoundly significant. Around 1/3 of all healing is attributed to the placebo effect. What research has been done into the subject of the placebo effect? The effects of placebos have been well documented in various scientific literature. In a sports performance study at the University of Turin, athletes were given opiate placebos that would generate the belief that they could run faster with less pain- and they did. It is noted by Irving Kirsch (2002) that up to 80% of the response to antidepressants is due to the placebo effect. Studies at Duke University have also found that a costly placebo is more effective than its cheap alternative, which further suggests
During almost all clinical drug trials, a certain percentage of volunteers receive an identical looking but chemically neutral pill or injection called a placebo. The group of volunteers who receive this placebo may be used as a control group, meaning their reactions during the trial will be compared to those volunteers who actually received the real medication. There is also the possibility that the volunteers or the testers themselves would have no idea which volunteers took a placebo and which received the real drug. In this scenario, a controversial phenomenon known as the placebo effect has been known to occur. The placebo effect occurs whenever a volunteer’s strong belief in the treatment actually triggers an improvement in his or her health. Even if the patient or volunteer is given a completely harmless sugar pill or an injection of sterilized water, the possibility of receiving a benefit from the real drug creates a placebo effect. According to some researchers, a certain perc
