Power of the Brain: The Placebo Effect

Hi everyone. I was debating whether or not to put this thread in the Medical Issues and Conspiracies thread but I decided that this one was more appropriate. If I was wrong, feel free to move it to the proper category.


arthritis.about.com... - A small intro to the term if you have never heard of it


I have come to think that the "placebo effect" is actually MUCH stronger then we think it is, and that the general population doesn't believe in it enough for it to work to it's full potential. I believe this because the placebo effect can work both ways: that is if you don't really think a medication will work for you, it is actually less likely to work. see The Nocebo Effect


I have also witnessed the placebo effect first hand; In grade 10, a friend of mine sold a liquor bottle full of water to a student at our school and said it was vodka. The student who bought the liquor bottle was drinking it at a party later that day, and he got hammered beyond belief. He was vomiting at the end of the night, and I couldn't believe my eyes.

However the most unbelievable study that I have seen was on a documentary I watched from www.topdocumentaryfilms.com (coincidentally also how I stumbled upon ATS) called "Don't Grow Old". I would recommend watching the entire documentary as it is very intriguing to see the different theories for aging. In fact, I would recommend a lot of the documentaries listed on this website. But I'm getting off topic.

Part 5 of the film At about 8 minutes in until the end of part 5. and then:

Part 6 All of part 6. Sorry I don't know how to make the videos appear on the post.

For those who don't want to watch the experiment:
Professor Helen Langer of Harvard University conducted the experiment in 1979. A number of volunteers, all aged over 75, were going to be "sent back in time". They were going to live as if it were actually 1959. This meant nobody would be taking care of them anymore, as they were dependent on caregivers to help feed them and help with other tasks that a younger person could easily do themselves. Living in 1959 meant that they would only watch movies, read newspapers, and talk about things that happened in the 1950s, but they talked about them in present text. I could go into further detail but I can't stress how interesting I found these studies to be and again, I recommend you at least watch the experiment I'm talking about, if not the entire documentary.

The results were very exciting! After only a week a lot of the men were able to cook and do things for themselves, one man no longer needed to use a walking stick.

My thoughts are that maybe it is necessary to go to such extremes to make ourselves think (or rather, trick ourselves) we are younger because we are taught that age is inevitable and that our brain is simply not capable of preforming such feats without the assistance of some man made substance. Kind of a nocebo effect, really.

This has also opened my mind to things like meditation.

I am eager to hear your thoughts on this topic, and thanks for taking the time to read my thread.

alcohol is pretty much all placebo. There's been some great double-blind studies that show that people given alcohol and told its not alcohol won't feel anything, but people, given water and told it's alcohol, will get wasted.
"why do you drink?"
"because it feels good"
That feel good feeling is pretty much all make believe.
Not all drugs are like that, but the placebo effect is a very real phenomenon.

i think the placebo effect proof that we make our own reality. if you act like a young person and never worry about aging then you wont age or you will age slow. i think that way. im twenty but some people think im fifteen ive had a group of middle school girls ask me out. the thing that keeps us from useing this to our full potential is our preconcieved notion of reality and ego. sometimes i think science keeps us from using the full potential of things we call metaphysical

Good idea for a thead.

I've always believed in the placebo and nocebo effect. I've seen and have experience both.

Your vodka story was funny. I did the same to a cousin, yet with nonalcoholic wine. He guzzled the entire bottle then was staggering around drunk. When we told him it wasn't alcoholic he didn't believe us and we had to show him the bottle. I remember him being extremely confused afterward.

I will try to follow up with more contribution to this thread later...

Good job

reply to post by matito


Thanks for your reply and that would be awesome

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Placebo Effect

The placebo effect is the term applied by medical science to describe the healing qualities of inert medicines or a faith healing that offer no explanation to their effectiveness. Placebos work purely by suggestion, meaning that if the person receiving it believes that it will have a certain effect then it generally does. This belief has to be 100% expectancy beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The placebo effect is very similar to the Pygmalion Effect (in psychology):

The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, refers to the phenomenon in which the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform.

The Pygmalion effect is a form of self-fulfilling prophecy, and, in this respect, people with poor expectations internalize their negative label, and those with positive labels succeed accordingly.

Source: en.wikipedia.org...


The Pygmalion Effect is very similar to the Self-fulfilling Prophecy theory.

A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior. Although examples of such prophecies can be found in literature as far back as ancient Greece and ancient India, it is 20th-century sociologist Robert K. Merton who is credited with coining the expression "self-fulfilling prophecy". Merton defines self-fulfilling prophecy in the following terms: e.g. when Roxanna falsely believes her marriage will fail, her fears of such failure actually cause the marriage to fail.

The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour which makes the original false conception come 'true'. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.

Source: en.wikipedia.org...

this is similar to some of the things that happen with multiple personalities. there are documented cases of scars appearing/disappearing as the personalities shift.

the placebo effect only proves the power of mind. If we believe in something so strongly, we will make it happen.

If the placebo effect is so good why is'nt it widely used as a legitimate treament?

reply to post by theshepherd92

You've made a very astute connection. But in your title you use the word "brain" instead of the word "mind" or "being." It's a popular mistake these days. But rest assured, it is a mistake. And your examples amply demonstrate the point!

If a being really depended on body chemistry for its thoughts and emotions, how could drinking water make a kid drunk? It is clear from that example alone that it is something other than the brain, or any other organic part of the body, that is causing the body to experience (re-experience would be more accurate) the reaction of getting terribly drunk. And that is true of so much that we experience.

A living human is an interactive system of body (including brain), mind, and non-physical entities. And any of those components can get confused, get causalities reversed, etc. So it's a complex picture until you decide which component is the most important.

reply to post by bussoboy

If the placebo effect is so good why is'nt it widely used as a legitimate treament?

= $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

(no profit potential)

reply to post by l_e_cox

in your title you use the word "brain" instead of the word "mind" or "being."

The mind may be the initial trigger of the placebo phenomenon, yet the brain must still play a role.
Memory recall and imagination can provoke changes in brain chemistry.
When there is a physical reaction to a mental stimulus then the brain is involved.
Remembering and imagining have been closely linked together in the brain.

The brain sometimes can't perceive the difference between what is real and what is imagined.

I can confirm the alcohol-placebo myth.

My father told me a story from when he was young, where he and his mates gave a person soda, and told him that it was mixed with strong alcohol.

In the end he was in a drunken stupor and started throwing up, all because of drinking soda.

I have also tested the placebo effect myself, but reversed. I have tried to "will" myself sober when being drunk. With pretty good results actually !.

I just read this article and I remembered this thread...

Interesting placebo study..

The University of Wisconsin-Madison study included 719 people ages 12 to 80 who were beginning to feel symptoms of a cold.

they found that people who were given a placebo recovered 2.58 days faster than people who didn't take anything, according to the study.

past studies have shown that patients' conditions seem to improve when they take placebos,

"The placebo effect may be one of the most powerful, uncertain entities in medicine. When you look at any study that's done, with few exceptions, there's always some placebo response,"

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com...