Historically, placebos have been defined as a sugar pill or inert substance used as a control variable in experimental studies. Placebo effects were considered a nuisance. Researchers and clinicians have paid little attention to the fact that placebos seem to produce their own health impacts.
But in a July 2 New England Journal of Medicine Perspectives piece , Ted Kaptchuk of Harvard Medical School and Franklin G. Miller from the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health, show us that there’s more to placebos than we originally thought.
For example, in a study of patients with irritable bowel syndrome, patients experienced adequate symptom relief when given a placebo, compared to those who didn’t receive a placebo. That’s a common enough finding. But what’s most interesting is that relief was even greater when the placebo was coupled with more engaged positive interactions with a provider, such as attentive listening and thoughtful conversation. In another study, when given morphine directly by a doctor or nurse through a syringe, patients experienced more pain relief than when it was administered through an IV. Seeing it administered increased the effectiveness of the medication.
This evidence leads the authors to argue that placebo effects are not the products of dummy treatments but actually the effects of immersion in a health care environment with all its cues and signals. Continue reading…
