Atheist Ireland Forum

This thread is about the Placebo effect. I just think this is amazing. It’s like mind over body, illness, pain and perception. My other half invests a lot in drug trials that are routinely fucked up by placebo effect. I’d like to see a scientific examination of this very surreal phenomenon. It’s a bit unfortunate that doctors can’t prescribe sugar pills any more – but I suppose they could point people towards homeopathy (I’m reading Ben Goldacre at the moment). Placebo effect rocks (but I don’t know why).

It's something I would be interested in too, but I have to confess that I would not have looked at it in too much depth. A few years back I submitted a research proposal to a medical conference to investigate the possiblity of a negative placebo effect, but unfortunately they didn't think it was worth pursuing, sigh.

Considering the power of the placebo effect, I was curious to know if people who had negative experieces with doctors/drugs in the past, would be less likely to see benefit from normally effective medications, or indeed a higher rate of complications/drug reactions.

Dylan Evans, who is one of our members in Cork, has written a book on the subject http://www.dylan.org.uk/placebo.html
It must be pretty good because Simon Singh quoted it when he wrote Trick or Treatment. I haven't read it yet, although I have read Ben Goldacre's Bad Science. Interestingly, Dr Steve Novella from Skeptics Guide to the Universe fame said one has to be careful not to overstate the power of the placebo effect. There are things it cannot do.

"mind over matter", if you don't mind, it don't matter.......!

Apparently this is the one time that it pays to be credulous and non-skeptical. People who are typically considered to be credulous have a higher success rate with placebos e.g. kids. People with Alzheimer's disease can't/have difficulty to experience the effect (they have no expectations).

I particularly like the fact that some pills work better then others for certain illness depends on what colour they are and that fake injections work better then fake pills and fake operations work even better.

I wonder to what degree, if any, it's about stress. If the patient feels they're getting good treatment they're more relaxed and their bodies get a chance to do what bodies do naturally and heal themselves.

The placebo effect only works up to a point. It is most effective on conditions that are somewhat subjectively reported e.g. pain.
Like God, placebos do not heal amputees.

Unfortunately I don't have a link, but I read a report that stated that 80% of trips to the doctors are for problems that will resolve anyway, so 80% of patients will get better with no treatment. Basically it was a discussion on the effects of the doctors role in providing reassurance. Some of these patients if given a placebo might well swear by their effectivness.

@bipedalhumanoid, you might be on to somthing with stress, I imagine stress reduction could be a factor both in "sugar-pill" placebos and alternative treatments.

Stress like pain is one of those subjective, self-reported conditions. While both are very real, there seems to be a great deal of variance in how much individuals can cope with, and how badly individuals say they are suffering as a consequence.
This is one of the reasons that both are so susceptible to the placebo effect.

As far as spontaneous recovery goes, this is what is called regression to the mean an it happens with many conditions, even some serious one e.g. colds, flu, chickenpox, chronic back pain etc. People can all too easily attribute recovery to an intervention (pills, therapy, voodoo etc) instead of realising that they were going to get better anyway.

Here's a link to a useful summary of the placebo effect and some related studies: http://www.skepdic.com/placebo.html

I don't think you quite caught what I was getting at. I wasn't talking about how the placebo effect can cure stress but rather that stress can make people more succeptable to illness and reduce our capacity to recover from illness.

So if I have an illness that is causing me stress and a person I trust hands me a magic red sugar pill and assures me it will cure me, immediately I feel less stressed due to the belief that I will be cured.

I can't quote any studies, but I know my Dr at least believes that a reduction in stress can help the natural healing process. That's why she gives me time off work when I have ailments such as chest infections as an alternative to prescribing antibiotics.

Bip, you and your doctor are correct. When the body experiences instances of stress (particularly emotional stress) cortisol is produced by the adrenal gland. Cortisol is a glucocorticoid with a chemical structure similar to that of testosterone. The effect of testosterone on the immune system has been well documented both in humans and in zoology. There are also some studies on the effect of cortisol on immunity.

A study of cortisol levels in children in the West Indies has shown that they are much more likely to catch an infection following high cortisol levels.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/7318517443417353/


Stress, testosterone and the immunoredistribution hypothesis

http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/10/3/345.full


Effects of cortisol and stress on the immune system in Atlantic Salmon

http://tinyurl.com/5ungatj

Hope that helps.

Yes, the benefits of relieving stress is a reasonably well understood physiological effect. The body's normal energy reserves can only deal with so many processes. If you are exhausted & stressed then most of your reserves are being used just to keep you going, and fewer resources are available to keep your immune system functioning optimally.



I see what you are getting at & I agree with what you say. However the two examples you talk about here are quite different. Taking a break from work is a sensible thing to do as it frees up resources to be utilised by your immune system. You feel less stressed because you genuinely are less stressed, whereas taking a red pill is a placebo effect - you feel less stressed because you believe you are getting help.

It is possible that both will get good results, but genuine rest is usually going to be better than a red sugar pill for your immune system.

But I wasn't comparing the two. I was suggesting that they may possibly be the same phenomena.

What I'm suggesting is that the person already resting, because they are very ill and lying in a hospital bed, may still be stressed as a direct result of the illness. Give that person a red sugar pill, pat them on the head and they may feel less stressed because they are confident they will be cured... then the body does the rest.

Just an idea.

I actually can relate to the idea of simply 'feeling' better about something due to reassurance. I put feeling in quotations because I usually feel both mentally and physically relieved once I have visited a GP. Very unscientific, I know, but I just can't shake the feeling that the soft science, pop culture perception of the placebo effect is on to something.

Or perhaps believing in the placebo effect makes it work. Or what if you simply believed in the idea of believing in the placebo effect for its possible medical benefits? Could it simply be that any kind of stress relief improves recovery, and by quantifying it and defining it as 'the placebo effect' we essentially create a self-fulfilling stress reliever?