Dear Placebo Effect Blog Readers,

For the past few months, Placebo Effect has been hard at work building the world’s first Placebo App. While that’s meant that we’ve had less time to write blogs, the opportunity has been too big to ignore: We are, for the first time, taking the placebo effect out of the lab and bringing it into your hands!

Our Placebo App – which is currently available for pre-order on our IndieGoGo Campaign page – provides us with the opportunity to use the power of our conscious and unconscious beliefs – the placebo effect – to return agency over our own lives to ourselves, rather than giving it away to some pill or procedure.

To Pre-order Your Placebo App Click Here

The Benefits of our Placebo App are clear, and listed below. Also, we are excited to post two videos – the first introduces you to our Placebo App Campaign, and the second provides you with an overview of the prototype of our Placebo App. Enjoy the videos, and if you’re interested, make sure to pre-order the app.

Together, we can use science, technology, and spirituality to make a lot of people’s lives better. But like everything else, it takes a village to make beautiful things happen. In our case, it’ll be a village interested in seeing how a simple Placebo App technology can support people all over the world in choosing better lives!

Warmest, Daniel & the Placebo Research Center team!

Support Our Placebo Effect IndieGoGo Campaign!

Placebo App Benefits

1. Choose Your Placebo Effect

You - not some doctor or researcher – get to choose your placebo effect. Do you want more health, love, joy… something else? Do you want to stop smoking, decrease stress after work, or support your children in calming down before class? You choose!

2. Use Anytime, Anywhere

You can take a placebo anytime anywhere. You are limited only by where you take your smartphone.

3. Schedule Reminders

You can schedule your app to remind you when to take your desired placebo – once, twice, or however many times a day you need.

4. Personalize Your Placebo

Once you’ve chosen your placebo effect, you get to personalize your placebo ritual by choosing who is the best person to give you a placebo, what you want your placebo to be, and where you want to take it.

5. Customize Your Experience

Whether you want to receive a placebo magic wand from Gandolf in the dark of the night while he says abra cadabra, or you want to receive a placebo from your mother in your childhood home while she sings her favorite song, you can create the perfect placebo ritual for you!

6. Track Your Progress

You can rate your experience before and after you take your placebo. These ratings will help you to judge your own performance, and will also give us data that can allow us to provide feedback that can help you enhance your placebo ritual.

7. Real-time Placebo Optimization

The Placebo App is a living app. It gets better as it goes – based on your feedback, and on the feedback of others.

8. Change Your Life

You have everything you need to create a placebo experience that is directly personalized to your needs, and thus is optimized to create the kind of growth, healing, or change you wish to see in your life.

Preorder Your Placebo App Here!

The post Preorder Your Placebo App Now appeared first on Placebo Effect.

In 2002, the World Health Organization engaged in a Review of Randomized Controlled Acupuncture Trials, that showed the potential of acupuncture. They found 28 diseases in which acupuncture has been proven effective, and 63 diseases for which acupuncture benefits have been noted, but additional proof is needed.

How to Understand the Benefits of Acupuncture Treatment

The problem for researchers hasn’t been finding proof that people are benefiting from acupuncture – there are hundreds of studies demonstrating it. The problem has been figuring out how much acupuncture treatment is a placebo effect. Researchers have typically explored these results by comparing acupuncture to sham acupuncture (i.e. fake acupuncture in which needles don’t hit the skin or are delivered to the wrong points).

The findings of all sham acupuncture studies are quite amazing. While acupuncture does a wonderful job helping patients to improve, oftentimes most of the improvement is a placebo effect.

The Placebo Effect and Lower Back Pain Treated With Acupuncture

In a study out of Germany published in 2007, 1162 patients between the ages of 18 and 86 who experienced chronic lower back pain were separated into random groups. In the groups, they were either provided acupuncture, sham (“placebo”) acupuncture, or conventional therapy. After six months, 47% of patients who had received acupuncture improved, 44% who had received sham acupuncture improved, and just 27% who’d received conventional care improved.

In the study, there was a slight statistically significant benefit of real acupuncture over sham acupuncture, but the difference was small, and the sham acupuncture worked really well too. What was amazing though was the difference between acupuncture (or sham acupuncture) and traditional acupuncture therapy: almost double the number of patients improved! The researchers concluded, “Effectiveness of acupuncture, either real or sham, was almost twice that of conventional therapy.”

What we Know About the Benefits of Acupuncture Treatment

What we know based on recent analyses of all acupuncture studies is that real acupuncture treatment seems to benefit patients slightly more than sham acupuncture in many cases, but that both are still incredibly effective.

From PubMed:
“Our results from high quality trials show that acupuncture is effective for the treatment of chronic pain, with significant differences between true and sham acupuncture indicating that acupuncture is more than a placebo. However, these differences are relatively modest, suggesting that factors in addition to the specific effects of needling are important contributors to the therapeutic effects of acupuncture.”

Conclusion: Most Acupuncture Benefits May Lie in the Therapeutic Treatment Method

If it’s not acupuncture that’s causing the vast majority of acupuncture benefits, then what is it? There’s only one large missing piece remaining: the therapeutic treatment method that accompanies the acupuncture treatment! Something in the therapeutic method of acupuncturists is inciting a tremendous placebo effect. Thus, it is incumbent upon us to learn from that and better understand what it is so that we can consciously replicate successful acupuncture treatments outside of the acupuncturists office!

The post Acupuncture Treatment Benefits: Placebo or the Real Thing? appeared first on Placebo Effect.

To make matters worse, the number of asthma sufferers is growing every year – despite the prevalence of asthma so many medical and natural asthma remedies.

Between 2001 and 2009, 4.3 million additional Americans began to suffer from asthma, and among African American children, asthma rates increased a staggering 43%. To add to the social and health costs of asthma, treatment costs a staggering $57 billion in 2007, the last time such numbers were measured.

To say the least, we are in need of a solution to our ongoing asthma epidemic. But what kind of solutions are there? And is there anything that can serve as an alternative or complement to the steroids and other asthma relief treatments or asthma home remedies that – while effective (and important for some people) – also produce many side effects?

Placebos Can Be Viable Asthma Relief Treatments

For years, it has been believed that the placebo effect did not create objective improvement in asthma patients. Rather it was believed that patients’ consistent reports after feeling better with a placebo were simply a product of their imaginations – their lungs weren’t objectively any healthier.

So in 2007, UC San Francisco Medical School created a study in which they provided patients with either a placebo or salmetoral, a drug often prescribed for relief from severe asthma. The patients were then given  “serial methacholine challenges” – tests that objectively measured the difference in patients’ airways before and after receiving their asthma treatments.

The findings were staggering:  The placebo effect objectively improved lung function by about 20% in asthma patients, and according to the numbers, 18% of those patients were “placebo responders by conservative definitions.”

The conclusion of the study couldn’t have been more clear about the impact of placebos on asthma patients:

“Objective placebo effects exist in asthma. These responses are of significant magnitude and likely to be meaningful clinically.”

So what do these results mean for asthma sufferers looking for relief? How might you use your knowledge of the placebo effect to help support you or people close to you in using placebos as complementary asthma treatments?

Use the Placebo Effect for Relief from Asthma

The placebo effect it is the power of our hearts and our minds to generate what might otherwise be considered miraculous results. Thus, placebos are complementary to doctor recommendations, and do not need to replace professional doctor advice. Oftentimes severe asthma needs to be medically treated. When not treated, it could result in severe complications and even death.

With that said, it’s important to remember that the above and other research studies have demonstrably shown that placebo effect isn’t just the imagination of asthma sufferers; it provides real, important physiological asthma relief. So the next time you are suffering from asthma, you may consider reaching for a placebo. If you’re like many clinical trial asthma sufferers, it may provide you with the natural asthma treatment you need!

Further Research on the Placebo Effect and Asthma Relief

The following articles will help you learn about asthma and how placebos have been proven to relieve the symptoms.

• The authoritative Wikipedia article on asthma.
• The placebo effect in clinical trials.
• The PubMed study on asthma and the placebo effect.

The post Placebos Proven to be Viable Treatment Option for Asthma Relief appeared first on Placebo Effect.

Low self esteem is an epidemic around the world. The statistics are harrowing: Only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful (up from 2% in 2004), up to 80% of people in the world suffer from low self esteem, and oftentimes that low self esteem only feeds on itself – it paralyzes us and disallows us from choosing the life we want because we don’t have the confidence to do so.

So how can we improve self esteem?

Depending on the doctor, program, inspirational speaker, or otherwise, there are a host of ways to improve your self esteem. Some say setting realistic expectations, adjusting your self image, and not comparing yourself to others. Others say one has to get more active, to go out and do things that improve our confidence. But for many people, such tips are diffuse and difficult to implement. That’s where the world’s oldest and most effective medicine comes into play.

Introduction to the Placebo Effect & Improving Self Esteem

The placebo effect is the power of our hearts and minds – rather than medical intervention – to issue beneficial change into our lives. Most of us have understood the placebo effect mostly in terms of its ability to heal people of medical problems without intervention. But the reality is that placebos work everywhere – not just in issues of heart failure, performance enhancement, and arthroscopic knee surgery, but also in areas of self esteem.

There are many ways that researchers describe how the placebo effect works – expectation, conditioning, dopamine, frontal cortex activity, etc. For the sake of simplicity, though, the placebo effect works primarily based on our belief. If we imagine  something will feel better – or if we trust others who tell us we will feel better – oftentimes that alone incites our healing. If we ritually take pills or any other substance that reinforces the belief we have, then we can compound the beneficial effects of placebos – even and especially when it comes to issues of low self esteem!

How to Build Self Esteem With Just a Placebo

Using the placebo effect to improve your self esteem requires just a few simple steps. The steps are outlined in broad order below:

Step 1:  Deepen into silence and ask what you need to improve your self esteem.

Despite all the expertise that exists in the world, only you know what you need to improve your self esteem. Some people need a motivating coach, others need a knowing friend, and others need a loving parent. Some people need to actively cultivate increased confidence, others need to find the space to breathe, and still others need something in between. To understand what you need, it’s important to deepen into a space of silence and ask yourself.  You always know what you need… you just need to get quiet first!

Step 2: With your eyes closed, imagine a sacred self esteem building ritual.

Placebo pills don’t work because the substance in the pill does anything – there’s no active substance in the pill. They work because people who take them imagine those pills are functioning in a certain way – and so they function in that way. Once you know what it is you need, it’s time to create a placebo meditation ritual to give it to you. This requires that you close your eyes and allow a ritual to unfold in which you receive whatever guidance, symbol, or interaction you need to build self esteem. This may include listening to advice from a friend, inspiration from a mentor, or taking an imaginary pill. What’s important is that it’s a ritual that works for you.

Step 3: Repeat steps 1 and 2 at least once every day until your confidence is stable.

Repetition is one of the key attributes that makes all placebo rituals powerful. When people are prescribed placebo pills, they take them daily or multiple times a day. This allows the idea of healing to become stronger within their minds and their bodies. How strong? Well, heart failure patients who take placebo pills twice a day have a 40% reduced fatality over those who forget to take their placebo pills. This is because engaging a placebo ritual is extremely powerful – not for the substances we’re putting into our body, but for the intentional change in physiology we are creating. So while you can experience increased self esteem after just a single placebo ritual, it is important to make that ritual part of your life; do it over and over again!

Conclusion: How do You Build Self Esteem with Just a Placebo? You do it One Step at a Time!

What we’ve sought to do in this article is offer some background on the options available for increasing your self esteem, explain how the placebo effect can support you in improving your self esteem, and provide a broad overview of how to engage a placebo ritual that supports higher self esteem.

If you are interested in reading more, you can learn about the placebo effect, get an overview of the Placebo Method that informed this article, or of course just check out the Wikipedia page on self esteem!

The post How to Build Self Esteem With Just a Placebo appeared first on Placebo Effect.

In the United States, 45 million people complain of headaches every year – about 1 in 6 Americans. Our headache epidemic takes an enormous toll on the quality of our lives, and so represents BIG BUSINESS for those peddling solutions. Thus, it’s natural that the alternative medicine and pharmaceutical industries would seek to find cures to such a pervasive malady.

Do you want to know how to cure a headache naturally?

Though new natural and chemical headache cures are always emerging onto pharmacy shelves, there is one natural headache cure that works almost as well as the best medications, is always at your finger tips, has no side effects, and has been around since the beginning of mankind.

Yes, it’s a placebo… and in this article, we’ll reveal the research on placebo headache cures, discuss how placebos work, and perhaps inspire you to use the oldest medicine on earth the next time you have a headache!

Could Placebos Really Be a Natural Headache Cure?

In 2011, Erasmus University did a meta-analysis (i.e. a study comparing lots of studies) on headache studies published in the best clinical journals around the world. They found that in over 100 double blind studies, placebos were more effective than the headache drugs being studied more than 40% of the time… making placebos an incredibly effective natural headache cure!

The head researcher oversee the analysis of the many headache trials tried to make sense of this enormous placebo effect: “Patient expectations appear to have a lot to do with outcomes, Dr. Koes says. “If we understood more about why this placebo effect occurs it could impact both clinical practice and future research.”

So How Do Placebos Naturally Cure Headaches?

So we know placebos can cure headaches better than the medications against which they are tested about 40% of the time – compared to doing nothing about 15% of the time. And we also know from previous studies that between 36% and 41% of people experience significant improvement in their headaches after taking placebos (the variation depends on age and type of headache). We even know that placebos work MUCH BETTER than doing nothing, which results in 15% improvement vs. 36% to 41% for placebos. But if placebos aren’t chemically active, how are they getting such amazing results?

While chemically active medication works with headaches by changing the biochemistry of our bodies, placebos work with headaches by changing our experience of the headache – which in turn works on the biochemistry of our bodies. Placebos work because we believe with our hearts and our minds that the route we’re taking will work. That belief, in the case of headaches, is reinforced by various healing rituals patients engage in: going to a doctor, receiving a pill, and talking to a trusted doctor all reinforce patients’ belief in their own healing potential – and so their headaches go!

Conclusion: Placebos are One of the World’s Most Formidable Headache Cures

What we know based on the research is that placebos can often cure headaches just as well as the best medication – and without side effects. But the big question is how we can put that knowledge to work; how can we use the world’s most formidable natural headache cure next time we’re suffering from a terrible migraine?

The answer: next time you have a headache, go out and find a placebo. It can be chocolate, tic tacs, or anything that works for you. Then, when you take the placebo, remember the research – remember that placebos really do work when you believe, and when you encompass that belief in a meaningful ritual. So make a fun placebo ritual as you take your placebo… and presto… don’t be surprised if that headache goes away!

Resources for Natural Headache Cures or the Placebo Effect

Follow the recommended resources below to access further information on how to cure a headache using a placebo. Being able to naturally cure headaches is an important skill to learn and can is a very practical way to enhance your quality of life:

• Placebo Effect 101 for Beginners
• Erasmus University Study on using placebos as a natural headache cure

The post Quit Spending Money on Headache Cures and Try a Placebo appeared first on Placebo Effect.

When pharmaceutical companies test chemically active drugs against placebos, the assumption is that the placebos they use are “controls” – i.e. they are a blank slate against which chemically active drugs are tested. But what ingredients are actually in placebos? How can we know, for example, that placebo ingredients are really as benign as they are made out to be?

Placebo Ingredients: Not Always So Benign!

In 2010, a UC San Diego research team analyzed data from more than 150 double blind placebo controlled clinical trials. They found that the placebo ingredients were not always as benign as they were chalked up to be.

The study gives an example of the problems ill-constituted placebo ingredients can cause in a placebo study on a cancer drug tested against a placebo control that used lactose. The problem: Many cancer patients have a high risk of lactose intolerance. Thus, the study’s use of lactose as one of its placebo ingredients created side effects in the placebo control group that made the cancer drug look better in comparison!

The lead author of the UC San Diego research team, Beatrice Golomb, concluded: “Failure to describe placebo ingredients breaches basic scientific standards of rigor…because inferences from clinical trials propagate to clinical practice, failure to report placebo composition compromises the foundation on which medical decisions are based, and on which the fate of lives may rest.”

Luckily, the FDA Ensures Compromised Studies Never Get Published… Right?

It is stunning to note, but 100% true: the FDA does not currently have required standards for placebo ingredients in clinical trials. Nor does the FDA even require that placebo ingredients are listed in published clinical trials of drugs. According to the latest data from the Annals of Medicine, just 8% of the 167 clinical trials they reviewed published the ingredients of their placebos!

Conclusion: Placebo Ingredients Need to Monitored & Standardized…Now!

The reality that placebo ingredients are not monitored by the FDA or published in the majority of studies is a major clinical oversight it endangers the objectivity of all pharmaceutical studies!

For the sake of good medicine, standards and oversights need to be created for placebo ingredients across the pharmaceutical industry. It cannot be the job of pharmaceutical companies interested in their own bottom line to ensure the fairness and scientific rigor of placebo-controlled studies. There must be laws and scientific pressure to ensure that clinical trial research happens transparently and… morally!

The post The Truth About Placebo Ingredients is Hard to Swallow appeared first on Placebo Effect.

Erectile dysfunction (ED) is one of the greatest maladies facing men in the 21st century. 18 million men in the United States alone are affected by erectile dysfunction. As stress levels and other societal detriments increase that number is skyrocketing.

It’s no wonder that Pfizer would spend over a billion dollars developing Viagra, and spend hundreds of millions of dollars marketing it. The market for ED pills is HUGE. But the deep question is: how effective are Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs? And how does a simple placebo pill hold up to them?

Placebos: The Miracle Cure for Erectile Dysfunction?

A 2003 study out of the Department of Medical Sciences in Rome, treated 96 patients who reported erectile dysfunction symptoms after being treated with beta blockers. The beta blockers were known to cause erectile dysfunction. These patients were either given a placebo or Sildenafil Citrate (Viagra) – known, of course, to eliminate the experience of ED.

Amazingly, BOTH Viagra and the placebo had equally amazing results: both the medication and the placebo took away the erectile dysfunction entirely in all but one patient! The conclusion of the study was that, ”the knowledge and prejudice about side effects of beta-blockers can produce anxiety, that may cause erectile function.” The researchers failed to mention the obvious: placebos were equally effective in removing the anxiety and accompanying erectile dysfunction as the medication that cost more than $1 billion to develop.

Placebos: Not Just Miraculous for Men; They Work for Women with Sexual Dysfunction Too

A 2007 published out of the University of Texas treated women who suffer from sexual dysfunction problems, including difficulty with arousal and orgasms. In the study, all the women underwent an eight week trial with a placebo.

Not surprisingly, most of the women responded extremely positively  to the placebo. I say not surprisingly because the reality is that this study reflects the findings of a number of other well-received studies. One compelling result in this particular study is that researchers found a heavy correlation between the rate of sexual improvement experienced by women, and tangible factors such as their age, and length of relationship. This suggests that environmental factors many have a strong impact on the effectiveness of placebo treatments.

But What if People with Sexual Dysfunction Know They are Taking a Placebo?

For decades, researchers believed that placebos only work when patients are deceived into believing that a placebo is really a substance for healing. What researchers know today is that there is a growing body of evidence showing placebos don’t require deception to work – even when it comes to sexual or erectile dysfunction!

Here’s an example: In 2009, a study out of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil randomly assigned 123 erectile dysfunction patients into three groups: GROUP 1 was told they’d receive a substance to treat their erectile dysfunction, GROUP 2 was told they may receive a treatment or a placebo, and GROUP 3 was told they were receiving a placebo. In all cases, placebo pills were given to patients to take over a 12 week period.

When patients followed up with researchers, the results were stunning: Erectile dysfunction severity improved in all three groups – 31.7% for the group that was deceived, 36.8% in the group that didn’t know what they were receiving, and 36.8% in the group told they were receiving a placebo. Interestingly, the quality of erection only improved in the latter two groups; only for those who were either told they were taking a placebo or might be taking a placebo!

Conclusion: Erectile Dysfunction can be Healed with an Old-fashioned Placebo

When it comes to a taboo subject like sexual dysfunction or, more specifically, erectile dysfunction, there is a prevailing belief that the only hope is chemically active pills – something outside of us. The reality is, oftentimes, that the healing power can come from within… if we are given the opportunity to use it, and we have the trust in ourselves to take those big steps.

The opportunity with erectile or sexual dysfunction is the same question with any other unwanted malady: When people open themselves up to their true healing potential, miraculous things can – and DO – happen!

The post Erectile Dysfunction: A Placebo Cure appeared first on Placebo Effect.

Shaman healing rituals have been a part of human civilization throughout history. Shamans, or medicine men, don’t come from a single culture – there are shamanic healers that hail from almost all cultures and inhabited parts of the world. Yet shamanic healing rituals, which are still today in all parts of the world, have a lot in common.

In this article, we will overview shaman healing rituals, and demonstrate how such rituals use a Placebo Method framework that sets the stage for seekers to experience the greatest possible placebo effect as a result.

The Elements of Shaman Healing Rituals

While Shaman healing rituals vary across cultures, they tend to have a number of common elements  regardless of where they exist:

• Shamans Play the Role of Healing Archetype: Shamans are experts in making supernatural connections with spirits that play an important role in life on earth. They use those connections with spirits to treat maladies and sicknesses experienced by Seekers.
• Shamans Engage in a Healing Ritual: Shaman healing rituals involves inducing a trance that enables the shaman to make connection with the supernatural and go on a vision quest in which, usually, shamans leaves the body and searches for answers.
• Shamans Deliver to Seekers a Placebo During Healing Ritual: When shamans finds the answers they seek, they relay them to seekers, usually in the company of healing advise, potions, herbs, music, rituals, objects – “placebos” – the  help the seeker to experiences the sought healing or transformation.

Shamanic Healing & Placebo Healing

Placebo research shows that the placebo effect, which can be described as the power of “belief” to influence positive outcomes, can be harnessed or optimized by performing basic rituals, all of which can be found in the traditional elements of a shamanic healing:

• Seeker Finds Trusted Archetype to Aid in Healing: People are much more likely to experience positive change when they meet with a trusted authority figure who they believe can provide the healing they seek (e.g. a doctor, acupuncturist, or shaman).
• Archetype Engages in Healing Ritual: When seekers participate in a healing ritual with a archetype – even a ritual as simple as a caring doctor-patient interaction – they tend to experience amazing healing benefits.
• Archetype Provides Seeker with Transformational Placebo: When trusted archetypes diagnose a patient after a healing ritual and provide a placebo for the patient to take, the simple act of taking the placebo – even when patients know it’s a placebo – oftentimes creates the healing patients seek.

Conclusion: Shaman Healing – A Living Room for Placebo Magic

There is magic in shaman healing rituals, and the purpose of this article is not to take the magic out of what happens between a shaman and a seeker. Rather, its purpose is to show you that there is a sandbox in which shamans play with that magic. In that sandbox, shamans are inviting seekers to participate in a ritual not so structurally dissimilar from ones doctors, acupuncturists, or other healers engage in, so that the seekers man experience positive [placebo] transformation in their lives.

As the American Cancer Society says: “Shamans or medicine men would not have viewed their efforts as placebos. But their healing powers may have worked partly through the patient’s strong belief that the shaman’s treatments would restore health”.

Read More Resources About Shaman Healing & the Placebo Effect

• A PubMed Study about Shamanism and the Placebo Effect

• A Beginner’s Guide to the Placebo Effect

The post Shaman Healing and the Placebo Effect appeared first on Placebo Effect.

For the last few decades, antidepressants such as Prozac and Wellbutrin have collectively been known as happy pills. The reason: It has been believed that the chemical agents in these antidepressants (SSRI‘s) can make people happier! There was good reason to believe this: antidepressants work a majority of the time when prescribed to depressed patients.

There is a big problem with antidepressants (i.e. old fashioned happy pills) though: Most modern research has shown that placebo pills are as effective as antidepressants except for the most severe cases of depression. Our happy pills don’t have to be chemically active!

What Makes a Happy Pill a Happy Pill?

This isn’t a trick question. Rather, it elucidates an important point. A happy pill is a happy pill for one reason only: it makes you happy!  Does it matter how it makes you happy? It does! … because sometimes happiness comes with side effects. For instance, if your happy pill is cocaine then you may feel happy, but you will also experience addictive and life threatening side effects. If your happy pill is an antidepressant, it may also work, but you’ll surely suffer any of the myriad none-too-pleasing side effects. But if, on the other hand, your happy pill is chemical free, then… well, there will be no negative side effects to your happiness. That’s the advantage of placebo happy pills!

How Can Placebo Happy Pills Make Me Happy?

We can try to adjust our body chemistry with chemically active substances to make us happy, or we can adjust our beliefs – which in fact then work on our body chemistry. Placebo happy pills work with beliefs, which work on our body chemistry too, while antidepressants work purely with body chemistry.

In the simplest sense, placebo happy pills work for three reasons: 1. We believe we will be happy when we take the pills, 2. We engage in rituals (i.e. taking the happy pill) to underscore our beliefs in the impending happiness, and 3. We have someone we trust (e.g. a doctor, friend, or caretaker) reinforce our belief that we will be happy. When all of these factors are present, happiness more often than not in clinical studies.

Can Happy Pills Come in Any Other Form?

If it makes you happy, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a pill or a chocolate bar. Happy pills work because we believe, because someone else believes, and because we remember to take them. So if it’s a JOY chocolate bar or a red Tic Tac it will be equally effective.

How Can I Learn More About the Placebo Effect

Start here: A Beginner’s Guide to the Placebo Effect

The post Happy Pills: Lots of Happy, No Side Effects appeared first on Placebo Effect.

Throughout much of the history of western medicine, it was believed that a doctor’s role in a doctor-patient relationship was to detach from the emotional needs of a patient, listen to the maladies, make a diagnosis if needed, and prescribe a solution. Providing emotional support was believed to make a diagnosis harder, as it hindered doctors in making an objective assessment of the patient’s situation.

Doctor-patient relationships have shifted in a positive, enlightening direction over the last four decades. In the 1970′s, a few doctors began to talk about “patient-centered care“, which is the idea of involving the patient in care decisions. Since then, most doctors have finally learned – based on the large quantity of research – that medicine is about treating a person, and not just a malady. The emotional needs of a patient are vital to their recovery, and doctor-patient rituals can have tremendously positive effects on a patient’s healing.

In this article, we will share some research on doctor-patient relationships, explain why strong doctor-patient relationships are critical for creating strong placebo effects, and provide resources for further study.

The Placebo Effect and the Doctor-Patient Relationship

In a 2010 Harvard study, patients with irritable bowel syndrome were asked to participate in a study on the benefits of acupuncture. They either received treatment from a researcher who provided warm, friendly care and ask detailed questions about their lives, or from a researcher who rushed in their treatment and shared no conversation. In either case, patients, received sham acupuncture with fake needles that didn’t even puncture their skin!

Despite the fact that no acupuncture was performed, patients treated by caring researchers experienced the same level of improvement as they would from the most powerful drugs – 62% got better! But those who were treated quickly and without conversation experienced a huge drop in improvement – just 28% improved. A stronger doctor-patient relationship based on care, deep questioning, and interest in patients lives created double the positive effects as the more removed, less caring doctors!

How Does a Doctor-Patient Relationship Have Such a Strong Impact on Patients?

There’s one answer: the placebo effect!

The placebo effect is the power of our hearts and minds – our beliefs – to create positive healing or transformation. While the placebo effect can happen unconsciously, its presence isn’t random. Rather, the placebo effect happens when the conditions are right for people to believe in their own healing or transformation, and when that belief gets reinforced by a ritualized interaction with a caring person.

The doctor-patient relationship is one of the primary factors that influences a patient’s believe that a given therapy will function. When doctors are caring, when they believe in the work they are doing, and when they take interest in a patient, they are creating the conditions for healing to happen. If patients feel strongly that they are receiving the treatment they need, then they will consciously or consciously create a placebo effect that, as demonstrated in the study, can lead to much healing or transformation.

Conclusion

In today’s world, when we understand that treatment is a big determining factor in the health and recovery of patients, it is imperative that we continue to study the dynamics and rituals of the doctor-patient relationship, so that we can ensure doctors are providing patients with the intangible experience they need to get all the benefits of a placebo effect alongside any other treatments they are being provided with. Such treatment could mean the difference between an inspiring healing experience and one that requires unneeded suffering!

Additional Resources

• PubMed Overview of the Importance of doctor-patient relationships

• Beginner’s Guide to the Placebo Effect

• Forbes article overviewing the Harvard Study featured in the article.

The post A Good Doctor-Patient Relationship Creates a Strong Placebo Effect appeared first on Placebo Effect.