Saturday, May 19, 2012

Placebo

You sure have heard that "if you think positively, good things happen".

I'm sure you have also heard that a placebo effect is when someone takes a "faux" drug with no active ingredients, but starts to feel better anyway.

A while ago I was actually told that some patients part of clinical trials, who were given a placebo instead of the actual medicine that is being researched, had stunning improvements in their medical condition.

Today I came to think about that again, read a little on the internet, and I felt the need to share a thought with you.. If a person is actually able to positively influence a disease by just believing a fake pill is a real pill,.. it must be possible to make your day happier by believing it's all up to you. Right?

Why not try today?

4 comments:

Li said...

The issue is: as a researcher I have a very realistic position about that... hahaha!
But I'll try anyway ;)

Kateto said...

:)
But my information was also first-hand and pretty trustworthy.;) People with heart conditions and so on did influence positively themselves just because they thought they were taking a pill for their disease.
I find this pretty awesome.. and somehow like a "morale of the story". :)

Li said...

Yes, yes it is true! It realy work, so long you don't know which treatment you're receiving.
I meant that it wouldn't work to me because I know my effort to be positive it's not real then my disbelief would screw up the placebo effect ;)

martin d said...

:)) cool topic

That's a "placebo talk" by one of my favourite authors (an MIT guy who makes all that boring artciles, loots of fun for my banana mush brain :D ) - http://cast.li/Og


highly recommend his book/s (I donwload the audio version and listen them on the go ) and his blog post on the topic is also fun :) - cast.li/Of :)