Placebo Effect Research Paper

The Placebo Effect
“The mind is everything. What you think, you become.” –Buddha
Have you ever wondered why, as a child, a lollipop, or any piece of candy in fact, would make you feel better after an accident? The answer relies on the placebo effect., Also known as the placebo response, the placebo effect is an incredible event in which a placebo, or fake treatment such as substances without medical characteristics for example sugar, distilled water, or saline solution, improves a patient’s condition only because the patient believes that it will be helpful. The most important factor during this process is expectation, since the more a person believes he or she is going to benefit from a treatment, the more chances there are that the patient

The same mind-body power that can heal you, can also harm you; this is where the Nocebo effect takes place. The basis behind these two events is called the “meaning response” and it alludes to the brain’s power to lead to effects in reaction to whatever it considers the truth or, positive or negative. If the substance is seen as beneficial it can heal, but if it’s considered as damaging, it is more likely to produce negative effects. For example, when patients in double-blinded clinical tests are warned about the side effects they may encounter if they’re given the real drug, approximately 25% experience sometimes severe reactions, even when they’re only taking a placebo, such as sugar pills. Some of these symptoms include weakness, puking, lack of muscular strength, colds, ringing in the ears, confusion with their taste recognition, memory loss or disorder, and other symptoms that should not result from these fake medications. While in some cases the side effects some patients experienced were headaches of nausea, in others, patients who were given nothing but saline were told that they had received chemotherapy and they ended throwing up and even lost their hair. This is where the danger that comes with the placebo effect comes in.
In anonymous study, patients who were about to be subjected to surgery were convinced of their approaching death in order to compare them to another bunch in which the patients were slightly concerned about death. While the slightly concerned group turned out pretty good, the ones who were persuaded to think they were going to die usually did pass away. The surgery was performed in the exact same way, but the only difference between the two groups was their