The placebo effect - fact or fiction?

The Placebo Effect has divided opinion for many years. Is it a psychological trick and why does it work?

Placebos are often considered “fake ” treatments. They can be in the form of pills, injections, or even entire procedures. There is a difference between the term placebo and the placebo effect: the term placebo refers to the inactive substance itself, while the term placebo effect refers to any effects of taking a placebo medicine that cannot be attributed to the treatment itself.

The Placebo Effect is an effect your body feels after medicine or a cure that looks and seems real but doesn ’t actually have any medicinal qualities. For example, a person suffering with insomnia may be given a sugar pill, that they ’ ve been told is a pill to help relieve them of their insomnia. Because they think this placebo pill will work, they will experience the

‘benefits ’ of the pill and their insomnia will be cured, even though the pill is fake and not at all curative. A number of things can influence how much a placebo will work. Researchers have found that the more a person believes the placebo is real, the more likely they are to experience the placebo effect. This is also the same the opposite way round: the more sceptical a person is that a placebo pill will work, the less effect it will have on them. This means the placebo appears to be a psychological deception.

The placebo effect can be positive and negative. For example, if someone is given a placebo medicine, telling them it will cure headaches, they are likely to think their headache has been cured by that medicine. However, if someone is given a medicine and they are told a side effect is getting a headache (even if it isn ’t true), they are more likely to get a headache from the medicine. The placebo has been known to work in many cases. As well as pain relief, insomnia cures and fatigue, placebos have also been known to work on depression. When people suffering with depression were given placebo antidepressants and a placebo mood-boosting injection, PET scans showed increased activity in the brain relating to stress reduction, showing that the placebo cures were having an effect on them. There are many theories as to why the placebo works, but no one knows for sure. One of the theories is hormone response. Taking the placebo triggered a release of endorphins which have a structure similar to morphine and other strong pain killers. Endorphins are known as the brain ’ s natural pain killers. Researchers have been able to demonstrate the placebo effect in action using brain scans, showing that areas that contain many painkilling receptors were activated from the placebo.

Another theory about why the placebo works is conditioning. This is when you form an association between stimuli resulting in a learned response. In some cases, a placebo can be paired with an actual treatment until it induces the desired effect. For example, if you ' re regularly given the same arthritis pill to relieve stiff, sore joints, you may begin to associate that pill with pain relief. If you ' re given a placebo that looks similar to your arthritis pill, you may still believe it provides pain relief because you

Although the placebo seems to help with many ailments, it is proven that it doesn ’t actually help with any underlying illnesses, but it actually helps with the patient’ s perceptions of the illness. For example, if someone took a placebo painkiller because they had a headache, the placebo wouldn ’t cure the headache, but, instead, it would make it seem like the ache has gone away.

The whole concept of how and why the placebo works is still a mystery. However, the most confusing thing is that the placebo will still have an effect on the person even if they know it is fake. For example, if a person takes pain relief medicine but they are told it is a placebo, the person will still experience pain relief symptoms.

Even though scientists don ’t know why, the placebo has been proven to work on many occasions. Many scientists, including Dr Ted J. Kaptchuk, a Professor of Medicine at Harvard University, have been working on using placebos to treat a number of things, including side effects of cancer treatments. Will the placebo be just as effective, and will it ever completely replace medicine as we know it today?