© ISTOCKPHOTO
Key Concepts
- In recent decades reports have confirmed the efficacy of various sham treatments in nearly all areas of medicine. Placebos have helped alleviate pain, depression, anxiety, Parkinson’s disease, inflammatory disorders and even cancer.
- Placebo effects can arise not only from a conscious belief in a drug but also from subconscious associations between recovery and the experience of being treated—from the pinch of a shot to a doctor’s white coat. Such subliminal conditioning can control bodily processes of which we are unaware, such as immune responses and the release of hormones.
- Researchers have decoded some of the biology of placebo responses, demonstrating that they stem from active processes in the brain.
A man whom his doctors referred to as “Mr. Wright” was dying from cancer of the lymph nodes. Orange-size tumors had invaded his neck, groin, chest and abdomen, and his doctors had exhausted all available treatments. Nevertheless, Mr. Wright was confident that a new anticancer drug called Krebiozen would cure him, according to a 1957 report by psychologist Bruno Klopfer of the University of California, Los Angeles, entitled “Psychological Variables in Human Cancer.”
Mr. Wright was bedridden and fighting for each breath when he received his first injection. But three days later he was cheerfully ambling around the unit, joking with the nurses. Mr. Wright’s tumors had shrunk by half, and after 10 more days of treatment he was discharged from the hospital. And yet the other patients in the hospital who had received Krebiozen showed no improvement.
Over the next two months, however, Mr. Wright became troubled by press reports questioning the efficacy of Krebiozen and suffered a relapse. His doctors decided to lie to him: an improved, doubly effective version of the drug was due to arrive the next day, they told him. Mr. Wright was ecstatic. The doctors then gave him an injection that contained not one molecule of the drug—and he improved even more than he had the last time. Soon he walked out of the hospital symptom-free. He remained healthy until two months later, when, after reading reports that exposed Krebiozen as worthless, he died within days.
As Mr. Wright’s experience illustrates, a patient’s expectations and beliefs can greatly affect the course of an illness. When psychological factors tied to an inactive substance such as Krebiozen lead to recovery, doctors call the improvement a placebo effect.
In recent decades reports have confirmed the efficacy of such sham treatments in nearly all areas of medicine. Placebos can help not only to alleviate illnesses with an obvious psychological component, such as pain, depression and anxiety, but also to lessen the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and inflammatory disorders. Occasionally, as in Mr. Wright’s case, placebos have shrunk tumors.
The latest research has shown that the placebo effect does not always arise from a conscious belief in a drug. Alternatively, it may grow out of subconscious associations between recovery and the experience of being treated, from the pinch of a shot to a doctor’s white coat. Such subliminal conditioning can control bodily processes, including immune responses and the release of hormones. Meanwhile researchers have decoded some of the biology of placebo responses, demonstrating that they stem from active processes in the brain.
- Sidebar Dummy-Drug Doping?
- Head Lines People in Love Are Blind to Pretty Faces
- Head Lines Mystery of Seeing in Three Dimensions Revealed
- We're Only Human A Recipe for Motivation: Easy to Read, Easy to Do
Subconscious Cues
The placebo effect is probably as old as the healing professions themselves. In the 18th century physicians deliberately used inert pills when they had no suitable drug in their armamentarium. They spoke of supporting the healing process. After the middle of the 19th century medical scientists began viewing disease in purely physical and chemical terms. And by 1900 placebos had lost much of their previous popularity as therapy.
Indeed, modern medical investigators have often regarded the placebo response as a nuisance. But a cadre of psychologists, biologists, and other behavioral and social scientists instead view placebos as a key to understanding how the brain can control bodily processes to promote healing.
In the classic placebo effect, a person consciously believes that a substance is therapeutic, and this faith has a physiological consequence that dampens the pain or ameliorates other symptoms. Inversely, in the so-called nocebo effect, a negative attitude or expectation leads to harm or another undesirable outcome.
For several decades, however, researchers have known that placebo effects can also arise from subconscious associations as opposed to overt beliefs. Stimuli that a patient links with feeling better or with physical improvement—say, a doctor’s white lab coat, a stethoscope or the smell of an examining room—may induce physiological reactions even if a patient has no explicit faith in the treatment being given. That is, simply seeing a doctor holding a syringe can produce a placebo reaction if a patient has previously associated that scenario with feeling better. In such cases, the overall effect—improvement or even complete recovery—stems from a combination of the pharmacological action of the drug and the subconscious or conditioned response.
PAGE 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Next»
RSS Feeds
E-mail Newsletters
Blog
Podcasts
Mobile
Widgets
{USERNAME} at {FORMATTED_DATE}
The following is a direct response to this comment.{BODY}