The Amazing power of the Positive Placebo Effect - with SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE!
What is Positive Placebo Effect?
In order to understand what the positive placebo effect, here’s an example on what a placebo is:
A famous experiment was once conducted on the power of suggestion and the effects of alcohol on a group of people. A group of subjects are given measured doses of non-alcoholic drinks, but told that the drinks are alcoholic. Eventually, the group of subjects started ‘experiencing‘ the effects of the ‘alcohol‘ in their bodies, when in reality received none at all! Read more about the experiment here.
However, imagine being able to scientists from several prolific medical institutions have come across evidence that patients are able to improve the healing effects of proper medication through the power of positive thinking.
So how does the power of positive placebos affect medication?
Here’s a great article from Lauran Neergaard from the Associated Press that describes the positive placebo effect.
Your medicine really could work better if your doctor talks it up before handing over the prescription.
Research is showing the power of expectations, that they have physical — not just psychological — effects on your health. Scientists can measure the resulting changes in the brain, from the release of natural painkilling chemicals to alterations in how neurons fire.
Among the most provocative findings: New research suggests that once Alzheimer’s disease robs someone of the ability to expect that a proven painkiller will help them, it doesn’t work nearly as well.
It’s a new spin on the so-called placebo effect — and it begs the question of how to harness this power and thus enhance treatment benefits for patients.
“Your expectations can have profound impacts on your brain and your health,” says Columbia University neuroscientist Tor Wager.
“There is not a single placebo effect, but many placebo effects,” that differ by illness, adds Dr. Fabrizio Benedetti of Italy’s University of Torino Medical School, who is studying those effects in patients with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and pain.
The placebo effect is infamous from studies of new medications: Scientists often given either an experimental drug or a dummy pill to patients and see how they fare. Frequently, those taking the fake feel better, too, for a while, making it more difficult to tease out the medication’s true effects.
Doctors have long thought the placebo effect was psychological.
Now scientists are amassing the first direct evidence that the placebo effect actually is physical, and that expecting benefit can trigger the same neurological pathways of healing as real medication does. Among them:
–University of Michigan scientists injected the jaws of healthy young men with salt water to cause painful pressure, while PET scans measured the impact in their brains. During one scan, the men were told they were getting a pain reliever, actually a placebo.
Their brains immediately released more endorphins — chemicals that act as natural painkillers by blocking the transmission of pain signals between nerve cells — and the men felt better. To return to pre-placebo pain levels, scientists had to increase the salt-water pressure.
“Our brain really is on drugs when we get a placebo,” says co-researcher Christian Stohler, now at the University of Maryland. More remarkable, some especially strong placebo responders suggest “many brains can actually stimulate that (pain-relief) system more.”
Italy’s Benedetti gave Parkinson’s patients a placebo and measured the electrical activity of individual nerve cells in a movement-controlling part of the brain. Those neurons quieted down, a decrease in firing of about 40 percent that correlated with a reduction in patients’ muscle rigidity — they moved more easily.
To further prove the power of belief, Benedetti hooked pain patients to a computerized morphine injection system. Sometimes the computer administered a dose without them knowing it; sometimes a nurse pretended to give it. The morphine was up to 50 percent more effective when patients knew it was coming. (Read the Full Article Here)
Here’s a video from the Mythbusters demonstrating how positivity and suggestion can be used to treat seasickness, pay attention to Grant, one of the subjects, and the effects of a placebo on him:
Is the power of the positive placebo effect related to the the Law of Attraction and Manifestation?
Interested in finding out more on how positivity and the power of self-suggestion can attract well being into your life? Check out our article on the origins of the Law of Attraction, and see how the power of positivity can help guide your life in more than how well your medication can work!