Tag Archives: Placebo Effect

Legitimising alternatives!? No way! Well … maybe …

placebo_reiki_del

“Britain’s Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust wants to hire a reiki therapist for a hospital in Epping.”

This caused a controversy and a flurry of disgruntled email. BUT …

“If drugs are effective and placebo responses small, this does not matter much. But people tend to turn to alternative medicine for subjective, stress-related conditions such as chronic pain, depression, nausea and fatigue (all problems that can affect cancer patients in treatment). Drugs for these conditions have significant downsides, such as unpleasant side effects and addiction, and placebo responses often account for most of the effect of the drug. So it becomes plausible that compared to popping a pill, a patient might get more relief — and fewer side effects — from an hour with a sympathetic therapist.”

 

A personal account of the value of placebo

placebo_in_bowl_del

A journey to the land of “I Shall Please”

“I grew up in Marin County, California—a hotbed of holistic health, where “healers” of all stripes (legitimate or not) thrived. My own father was an acupuncturist who treated most of my ailments with tiny silver needles or stinky Chinese herbs. I went to the doctor only for routine physicals and shots required for school. Thus, I grew up believing that my body had the power to heal itself.

Once I left home and moved to the more conservative burbs of Santa Clara County, I came to realize that the average person considered alternative medicine to be a placebo at best—and an outright sham at worst. But perhaps placebos have been getting a bad reputation. New research into the placebo effect suggests that our expectations and beliefs can play a much bigger role in healing than previously thought.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Is it genetic?

delete

More on the Americans developing a ‘tolerance’ to placebos. Can the answer be genetic?

In May, researchers from Harvard Medical School described a set of variants in 11 genes that they say are linked to the placebo effect and called it the ‘placebome.’ Scientists have known for quite some time that some people are more prone to experiencing the effect than others. And early investigations implicated the body’s natural pain control systems, including the opioid-like chemicals made and released in our own brains.

The Placebo Effect: Can You Be Tricked Into Exercising More?

delete

It’s true; in workouts and exercise we all get random adrenaline rushes that allow us to give max effort, even when the tank is empty. But what about taking pre-workout supplements, which promise to give you that extra boost? Do they really work, or is it more just the mental idea associated with it? And how much power does your mind actually have? A recent study shows just how much of physical fitness is mental. Read more about placebo ‘encouragement’ in exercise here.

Re-framing the placebo effect and informed consent

delete

(Medical Xpress)—Imagine that your doctor knows from evidence-based studies that if he tells you about certain, small side-effects to a particular drug, you are significantly more likely to experience that side effect than if he did not tell you about it. Given the three values of autonomy, beneficence, and nonmaleficence, what should he do?

On the flip side, what if your doctor knew that statistically who are gradually weaned off of a chronic pain medication by decreasing their dosage until it is a placebo will still experience relief from their pain as a result of habituation? Should the doctor lie to you about your dosage in an effort to help your chronic pain while mitigating side effects?

Mark Alfano, bioethicist at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands writes a compelling argument for re-defining our views of placebos and placebo effects and how, by defining them in terms of classical conditioning, expectation fulfilment, and somatic attention and feedback, the ethics of informed consent changes by doing so. His is the target article in this month’s issue of the American Journal of Bioethics.

More information: “Placebo Effect and Informed Consent” American Journal of Bioethics, 15:10, 3-12.

Americans Are Strangely Likely To Fall For Fake Pain Drugs

delete

Research published in August 2015 (Increasing placebo responses over time in U.S. clinical trials of neuropathic pain) and published in the Journal Pain focused on over two decades’ worth of clinical trials – 80 in all. The results showed that, as many have speculated, our placebo response is indeed getting stronger. And, because one measure of a drug’s effectiveness is its ability to perform better than the placebo, more pain-drug trials are failing than in the past. But, interestingly, the researchers found that this increase was only true for studies conducted in the U.S.

“When effective drugs do exist, placebo effects can enhance their impact.”

delete - placebo 01

More research from Ted Kaptchuk, in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“Placebos don’t necessarily provide cures, but they provide relief. In medical situations in which no cure is available, supportive and attentive health care can help patients to feel better, and when effective drugs do exist, placebo effects can enhance their impact.”

And …

“A significant body of research has resulted in a shift from thinking of placebos as just ‘dummy’ treatments to recognizing that placebo effects encompass numerous aspects of the health care experience and are central to medicine and patient care. Recent scientific advances have enabled us to identify a trove of neurotransmitters and detect relevant neural brain pathways as well as genetic markers that help explain the biology of the placebo effect.”

More reviews of the research here and here.