Placebo Effect Mirrors Drug Effectiveness
Stories we tell ourselves affect drugs we are taking. If you think you are taking aspirin, the placebo effect will be different than if you think you are taking morphine. In most cases, the placebo response is 55 to 60 percent as effective as the treatment.
If you are taking aspirin, the placebo effect will be 54 percent as effective as aspirin. If you are taking morphine, the placebo effect will be 56 percent as effective as the morphine. This is amazing, since morphine is many times stronger than aspirin. But your body puts out a placebo effect aligned with the potency of the treatment drug you are taking.
The placebo effect mirrors the effect of the treatment drug. The drug is a chemical substance manufactured by the drug company. The placebo effect is triggered by natural endogenous chemicals produced by your body like opioids and dopamine.
The placebo is being used, but primarily as the gold standard of research studies where one group receives the experimental treatment and a control group does not receive the treatment. To prove the treatment is effective, the treatment effect must be better than the placebo, an inert treatment. If the treatment is not better than the placebo, it fails the test and is considered ineffective.
Color Effects Drug Potency
credit: http://www.pachd.com
But studies have been done exploring possibilities of combining the placebo to enhance the overall effect of the drug or using the placebo to reduce the amount of drug and get an effect equal to the full dose of the drug alone. For example, it has been shown that the color of a pill effects the potency.
Red pills are more effective pain relievers than white, blue, or green . But people fall asleep more quickly after taking a blue pill than an orange or red one.
Price Powers Drug Effectiveness
In a study reported in the January 2015 issue of the journal “Neurology,” Parkinson patients were injected with a subcutaneous (under the top layer of skin) dopamine agonist ( stimulates receptors in nerves in the brain that would normally be stimulated by dopamine). Actually, they were injected with a saline solution. The result was improved motor function, just as if stimulated by dopamine.
Similar studies with placebos and Parkinson patients had been done before. What is different about this study is they were told the injection was cheap or expensive. When they believed the injection was expensive the results were dramatic. Improved motor function approached a level comparable with the administration of levodopa, the drug made famous in the the book by Oliver Sacks and the movie “Awakenings.”
Should We Tap Into the Beliefs of Patients?
We do not control the placebo effect. What we believe and expect controls the placebo effect. Much of the meaning in our lives originates in the stories we tell ourselves. From an early age we construct stories to make sense of our lives. Though we all have emotional and physical pain and suffering, the stories we create determine the degree and characteristic of our suffering.
The brain has the power to generate treatment effects in response to whatever it determines to be true, positive or negative. But how do you get the brain to do this? How do you turn on the placebo effect to heal mind and body.
It is as simple and complex as believing, expecting, and having faith. That is the precise ingredients you need. Yet if you try to believe, expect the best, and have faith, the result may be disastrous. You call upon a placebo and you get the nocebo.
You cannot set out to believe a medication will cure cancer and have it actually cure cancer. Your brain will ensure the placebo healing effect does not happen. The placebo paradox rears its ugly head. The harder you try, the more powerful the nocebo, the anti-placebo effect.
If pharmaceutical companies and doctors can deceive the patient by tapping into their beliefs, do positive results warrant this deception? The Parkinson patients in the study were deceived, but do the positive outcomes for the patients warrant the deception?
Doctors and pharmaceutical companies hold the power to unlock the placebo and heal us. Should we allow them to deceive us in order to heal us?
Self-help books that help:
Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus
The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body
