The PLACEBO effect...

The placebo is any substance which has no known treatment value to it, such as a sugar pill, saline injections or any other administered placebo, the actual therapeutic and healing effects they have without the medicinal contents is called the placebo effect. It’s funny to see people reporting that their headaches have subsided after taking the medicine, when what was administered was a simple sugar pill.

Why does it work? There’s been a lot of debate as to why does it actually work but the common opinion to this is that any illness is part physiological part psychological, which means that your brains also dominates the effect of a thing or in this case medicines. What happens is when a person continuously reports some pain which does not subside without taking a medicine, that person is given a placebo and what that does is, it makes the person believe that his pain would go away because now he has taken his medicine and that does happen because now after taking the placebo his body would release the natural pain killers and the pain would diminish eventually, now keeping that in mind that the body would do that even without taking the placebo but the persons belief is so strong that when he takes medicine only then the pain would go away.

But the placebo has no actual treatment value, it makes the person think that he’s fine now but in reality the illness still persists. And on the contrary it may have side effects as well, that would be called as “Nocebo effect” which in turn means that the person might report even severe headaches after taking the placebo.

What plays the major role in the effectiveness of a placebo is the belief of the person in the treatment he’s offered, nature of his/her illness and also expectation the person has after he/she takes the medicine.

If it has no actual validity in treatment then why is it still used? That is because any illness is never treated solely on the basis of placebos it’s administered with actual medicine (the real deal) and in this case it increases the effectiveness of the treatment by setting the stage for an actual therapeutic effect.

Whether it should or should not be used is as good as any debatable topic because even if you are treating the person and trying to make a positive change in his life but on the other hand you’re deceiving him as well (coz you can’t and won’t take the patients consent when administering a placebo).

But one thing is for sure,

“The Placebo effect is the single greatest indicator that your capacity to heal starts in your mind”

                                                                                                                                    -Anonymous