When I worked in the pharmaceutical industry, the placebo effect was frequently dismissed as ‘all in the mind’ or ‘psychosomatic’. It wasn’t a real improvement, it was believed, merely that people ‘think’ they’re feeling better. This was conventional wisdom at that time and is still a widely held belief today. When a mother kisses a […]
placebo
Do drugs work better if we believe in them?
It seems to me that they do – broadly speaking. Paying more for a simple painkiller, for example, seems to make it work better. A study of differently packaged aspirin tablets, for example, found that those that were branded to look more expensive worked much better than those that looked plain and generic. In other […]
Can your brain learn to respond to a placebo?
Imagine how much money the NHS or medical insurance companies would save if we could swap some of our drugs for placebos after a few days of taking them? As far as some exciting new research is concerned, it certainly seems to be a possibility. A placebo is an empty pill; that much most people […]
Does a placebo work if you know it’s a placebo?
The answer to that question is Yes! That’s according to new research led by Ted Kaptchuk, from the Program for Placebo Studies at Beth Israel Medical Center in Boston. It involved 97 patients who had chronic back pain. First, they were given a 15-minute explanation of the placebo effect and how it worked. Then they […]
Is expensive Nurofen better than cheap Ibuprofen?
Now, not being a marketing person I’m really not in favour of creating different versions of the same thing and charging more for them. But given the recent news headlines, the question many people have is, ‘Is Nurofen better than Ibuprofen?’… even though they are the same thing. I know people who swear that Ibuprofen […]
Mind Over Matter
I’ve written a lot over the years on the subject of the mind-body connection. The origin of my interest actually goes back to when I was 11 years old and I was in the school library. A book fell of the shelf beside me. It was ‘The Magic Power of Your Mind’ by Walter Germaine. […]
Drugs Work Better if You Know You’re Getting Them
Imagine the scenario: There’s 2 patients. One is connected to a morphine drip while he’s reading a book and the other is being given a morphine injection by the doctor. They’re both given morphine at the exact same time. One is aware of it but the other isn’t. You’d think they’d both need the same […]
Is it the thing, or your belief in the thing?
What would happen if you were to eat something unhealthy but believe it was good for you … or something healthy but believe it was bad for you? It seems that what we believe matters more than we think. Take the large US study that examined the connection between stress and health, for instance. Over […]
The Amazing Power of the Placebo
(Repost) Nearly everyone has experienced a placebo effect! The fact that you take a medicine tells me that on some level you must believe in it or expect it to work, or you believe in the doctor who prescribed it, or even in the improvement you’ve heard about in other people. This belief, or expectation, […]
So how DOES your mind affect your body?
Most people learn from an early age that the mind is just something that we use to think with and that it interprets life events. Any ideas that the mind could somehow affect the body have traditionally, in the West at least, been written off as fantasy or some mysterious and unexplained mind-over-matter effect. Actually, […]