We hear a lot about the placebo effect, that remarkable ability we have to make ourselves feel better through the belief that something beneficial is happening to us. Occasionally it's sold to us as the power of positive thinking, or just looking on the bright side, being optimistic, expecting good things to happen. But how does it work? How can we kid ourselves so effectively? What is really going on?
The placebo effect is certainly very well supported by evidence. People report that they feel better when told they are being given treatment for an ailment, even when the treatment is fake. As long as they believe they are getting something, they behave as if they were actually getting it. They will report that pains have lessened, that conditions have improved, that they feel different, better.
Two questions arise from this. First, has anything changed to make them feel differently, perhaps in their brain chemistry, or in their perceptions? And secondly, has anything actually changed in the body, in the condition of the ailment itself? The first is about the brain's perception of the state of the body, and the second is about the state of the body itself. They are very different questions and both are important.
Our brains construct representations of reality that allow us to negotiate the world very effectively. Not only do we perceive the world through our senses, but being part of the world, we also perceive sensations from our own bodies. Normally, the brain suppresses many of these sensations which we would otherwise feel, because we would be inundated with signals from all parts of our bodies. That would render us unable to discriminate between the important and the mundane.
Our brain discriminates and lets us ignore the unimportant signals from our body in favour of the significant ones that help us move around in the world. That filtering of our body sensations is one of the reasons you can't tickle yourself. Your brain desensitises your perceptions to help you focus on the important things in the external world.
But the brain also constructs our mental world. We learn to empathise by mimicking the expressions of people we see, and this in turn creates similar emotional changes to those we are observing, and hence similar changes in brain chemistry. Just the slight action of copying some facial expression that we see in others, triggers changes in our brain chemistry which produce similar feelings. This is the key to understanding the placebo effect.
Article comments
1 - Beauty Belle
I think the placebo affect still has a place. Ok it doesn't cure things, but if it can help treat symptoms removing the need for the patient to take extra drugs, surely thats a good thing
2 - Bob Lloyd
The question surely is what is the place for the placebo effect? Making people feel better is fine as far as it goes, but if it is not addressing the cause of the illness, it's not offering a cure or effective treatment.
If the illness goes away on its own, then feeling better is better than not. So having someone show sympathy when you have a cold makes you feel better while the cold is clearing up of its own accord. Clearly better than feeling bad. That placebo effect can be produced strongly simply by the patient getting sympathy, but it doesn't do anything to address the illness.
If the placebo effect could be reliably harnessed to reduce pain, for example, clearly that would be a good thing, but far more important is addressing the cause of the pain and actually treating it. Very many alternative practitioners pretend to be transferring energy to the patient, tapping into some mystical healing potential, and use all sorts of the mumbo jumbo when all they are actually doing is ritualising the giving of attention.
But it's the uncertainty and unpredictability about the placebo effect that's the problem. We can't tell who will be affected by it, or when, or for how long. It can disappear without warning. So telling people they're being treated when the therapist or practitioner is only producing the placebo effect is dishonest. Such practitioners are pretending to treat conditions, when all they are really doing is exploiting the brain's response to sympathy. Anyone showing sympathy or concern would be equally effective without the expensive consultations and the mystical talk of healing energy and the like. They're selling illusion.
3 - Robert M. Barga
The question, of course, is what is the ailmint. For certain fake illnesses (CFS, I am looking at you), placeboos are just as effective. Same with people who are "allergic" to things because their eastern doctors indicated as such. Basically, real things are not treatable (save for headaches and that sort of stuff), but this fake crap is.
That said, one of my cowriters on my site is talking about meditation fixing swine flu. He also is talking about those stupid "prayer studies" on dc. any help is appreciated
4 - Bob Lloyd
The case of CFS is interesting because if the cause is actually the brain chemistry associated with feeling bad, then the placebo might make people feel better without affecting the underlying aetiology. The problem of course is that the placebo effect relies on a lie, continually believed by the patient. It's inconsistent and unreliable.
In the case of meditation, there is some evidence that the release of serotonin creates the effect and in that case, it's not just a placebo effect. Personally, I can't see how meditation could address a viral infection, even if it made people more relaxed about it. It's undoubtedly true that the vaccine manufacturers are very keen to pump up the risk and create anxiety, so perhaps meditation can calm some folks down enough for them to get it back into perspective.
Placebo isn't a treatment because it never addresses the underlying causes, simply masks the feeling of the symptoms. CFS doesn't yet have identified underlying causes and maybe will be shown to be a variety of related conditions. It may or may not be a genuine syndrome but it becomes very difficult to filter out the worried well who have been talking to convincing mystics and who then report the same symptoms :)
5 - Robert M. Barga
The problem, of course, is that the placebo can actually treat some conditions. If you have migranes, even without a lie, the release of chemicals from the good feeling of, say Yoga, will help release the problems.
6 - Bob Lloyd
Migraine is a neurological disorder and it's brought on by many different triggers, only one of which seems to be the stress which is reduced by yoga. In fact, there's one theory of the cause of migraine which actually involves serotonin which is released during yoga so it's not clear how yoga would help.
Certainly relaxation is often recommended for migraine sufferers and there are plenty of places selling the yoga treatment, but how it actually reduces the inflammation of the trigeminal nerve (which are shown on brain scans) is debatable. I can't find any evidence that yoga reduces this inflammation. It's that inflammation that is directly associated with migraine attacks.
The fact is that although feeling good about yourself makes your perception of your state better, it doesn't necessarily affect your underlying state. If relaxing through yoga makes the individual suffer less, then that's a great palliative but it's not a treatment of the underlying condition. To my mind though, it's still a valuable way of reducing the impact of the symptoms.