*** I wrote this essay last year for a class. I forgot to post it, but here it is. I wrote this essay in under 20 minutes. I recived an A for it. ***
The Ups and Downs of the Placebo Effect
When we were little we would fall down and hurt ourselves, and the only way it would feel better if mommy kissed it. This worked until we got old enough to realize that mommy’s kisses weren’t magic but a type of a placebo effect. This type of practice has been around a very long time. Though it hasn’t been accurately pinpointed when it was started but we still practice this today in a variety of ways. So what really causes the placebo effect?
The placebo effect is used a lot more in medical practices. Many doctors and other health practices use some form of placebo to cause a desired effect on the patient. A placebo effect is positive transformation that can occur in our lives when our observations, interpretations, and actions are aligned to reinforce the change we want. (Danial, 2013) Basically this says that doctors use different types of methods to get the desired effect on the patient.
One of the most notable types of placebo effect accrued during the 1800’s and early 1900’s with traveling so called doctors. These people go from town to town and sell some kind of tonic that is supposed to “cure what ails you.” The stuff in the bottles ended up being a mixture of alcohol, some kind of narcotic drug, and random roots or berries. This mixture would numb the drinker long enough for the man to leave town. But it didn't stop there some folks where so set in that this method works that it killed them from drinking a lot of the stuff.
This type of placebo practice is used today. During late night infomercials there are people who sell all types of stuff that is supposed to cure the person. This type of placebo preys on the elderly. They believe that what the person is selling them will help something that is bothering them whether it magnets to heal there arthritis or cream to get rid of those varicose veins. A lot of the tricks that people have been using for years still work but most of them are placebos.
In 2008, just under 700 American internists and rheumatologists were surveyed about prescribing placebos. Only a small percentage had ever prescribed "pure" placebos like sugar pills or saline solutions. But about 40% reported that they had prescribed over-the-counter pain relievers or vitamins as placebos, not because they believed these compounds would have a direct effect on the person's condition. Even if patients feel better, prescribing pain relievers and vitamins in that way involves some deception.
Given the large placebo effect, we can expect that these treatment, even if unethical, resulted in significant improvements in conditions that those same doctors were unable to treat using conventional methods. Still, it doesn’t feel good to know your doctors have to lie to you to make you feel better, right? Well they might not have to.
The patient is left tricked into believing that the doctor has given them something that will help them with their issues. Hypochondriacs are often prescribed placebos to help fight off all the different types of problems that bothers them. They go to the doctor’s cause of some new flu virus that is going around in another part of the country and the doctor checks them out and then prescribes them a type of sugar pill. Doctors know their patients and knows which ones are hypochondriacs or not.
In the middle ages doctors would use leaches to get rid of the bad blood in the body to cure the person. This method worked in a few different types of cases but most times it didn’t work at all. Though this is a type of medical practice that is still used in small cases today it still is used to “help”. There are some con artists that do a kind of placebo effect on a person. They will find someone dying of cancer and tell them that they can take the cancer out without cutting them open. They will then create this whole set up where it looks like they are taking the cancer out and the person will believe that they are cured and for some time they will feel better. Just like every other face cure it ends up killing them or making them sicker and losing faith.
A new study demonstrates that the placebo and nocebo responses to pain may be activated by subliminal cues, thought to occur outside of a person’s conscious awareness. Both placebo and nocebo have different effects. Placebo has a positive effect and nocebo has a negative effect. Though placebo is the better known effect, there is an opposite reaction, called the nocebo response, where people can feel worse after an intervention that should have no ill effects. Not all placebo effects are good, just like the lesser known nocebo effect, it has the opposite effect in some patients.
By studying placebo and nocebo effects, today we are beginning to understand how medical symbols affect the patient’s brain or, in other words, how positive or negative psychosocial contexts can change the brain and body functioning of the patients. (Hale, 2011) This study could help us better understand how the mind works when a placebo is applied.
Given the large placebo effect, we can expect that these treatments, even if unethical, resulted in significant improvements in conditions that those same doctors were unable to treat using conventional methods. Still, it doesn’t feel good to know your doctors have to lie to you to make you feel better, right? Well they might not have to.
Not all placebo effects have any effect on patients; there have been some cases that the placebo has cured the person. This effect is caused by the mind believe in the cure so much that the body will fight against the problem and win. This is what some people call mind over matter. By believe that this medicine worked the person feels a lot better.
Some doctors are known to just push placebos on patients without properly diagnosing them with the proper illness. For an example give a sugar pill to a person who is a diabetic. This will raise the person’s sugar so high they will eventually die because they didn't get the proper treatment. What does this mean for the doctor? Does he get in trouble for not properly checking the patient or does he walk for not knowing?
The use of a placebo has its ups and downs, but it doesn't just revolve around medicine like I have been talking about so far. In the beginning of this essay I mentioned that when we are younger that it was our mother’s kisses that made a cut or bruise feel better. This is a type of a placebo that we learn at a very early age, but grow out of it pretty fast. When a child gets hurt the mom will tell the child that if she kisses it it would feel better. Well this tricks the child into believing that it worked and then the child will stop crying, but in all reality it really didn't stop hurting.
Another type of this kind of placebo is when a child gets hurt they will need a Band-Aid to make them feel better. When they are younger the parents would put a Band-Aid on their cuts to keep the infection out, but in the mind of the child this makes them feel better. This to the child is a kind of like a shield, something that protects them from the bad that would reach the cut. Or when a parent uses a sucker to get the child from stop crying, doctors use this method with stickers, and suckers when giving the child a shot. This will quiet the child and they will feel much “better”.
There are all types of placebos that are used today. You wouldn't be able to go through your local grocery story or as seen on TV section at your local mall or department story without seeing a type of placebo placed upon that shelf. There are all types of different types of placebos out there. It doesn't just revolve around medications and making someone feel better from something that is causing them to feel sick.
An example of non-medication placebo is when a person will go to a psychic to get closer for losing a loved one. The psychic will tell the person what they want to hear to get that effect of closer that they wanted. This is very similar to what the doctors do to patients.
Placebos are all over the place, you just have to take a closer look at what your surroundings hold. I am not going to get into the debate whether a placebo is good or bad, it all revolves the person that is taking the placebo. It is up to you to decide whether the placebo has a place in this society.
