It's your own personalized placebo

by David Brooks | Jul 27, 2023 | Blog, Newsletter | 1 comment

No New Hampshire angle here, but I am fascinated by this study which shows that placebos – fake medicine that patients think is real – work better if they are presented as being tailored specially for the individual.

Our minds are wondrous things.

Check it out: “Presenting a sham treatment as personalized increases the placebo effect in a randomised controlled trial“

Even more amazing is from https://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/03/placebos :

The researchers recruited 80 people with irritable bowel syndrome and gave one group no treatment and the other a regimen of twice-a-day pills that were described as “like sugar pills.” The word “placebo” was also printed on the pill bottles. Kaptchuk says his team was upfront that their “medicine” had no active ingredients.

Over three weeks, the researchers monitored the participants’ reports of symptoms and found that 59 percent of those who received the placebos reported relief from their symptoms compared with 35 percent in the control group.

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And this from https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/science-and-technology/2022/06/why-a-placebo-can-work-even-when-you-know-its-fake :

In the past dozen years, scientists have published multiple studies testing the concept of an honest or open-label placebo, in which subjects are told in advance that the pill or capsule they are taking does not contain therapeutically active ingredients. In Durkin’s case, she was not only told, but the capsule’s bottle also was clearly marked “open-label placebo.” Based on everything scientists once believed about the importance of concealment for placebos to be effective, these honest placebo pills should not reduce pain, fatigue, migraines, or other symptoms.

But in a significant number of cases, they do.

For three days, as part of the trial, Durkin was asked to smell a whiff of cardamom spice and swallow the capsule before taking her opioids. The goal was to train the brain to associate the experience of taking the placebo with the pain relief from the opioids. After the third day, she was given the scent and the capsule—but no opioids. She was told she could request painkillers whenever she needed them, but she never did.

“I did not expect it to work. I knew it was a fake pill, not something active,” Durkin says. “But somehow my brain didn’t know the difference.”

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