So let me get this straight, a placebo does nothin to the person who takes it-no effect at all? then...?

Question

what's the point of taking it?

Answer 1

No, your impression is incorrect. Many people attribute to a certain medication effects that are more imagined than real. A placebo has no active ingredient. If a person ingests it and feels better, his relief is due to a "placebo effect" not the actual ingredient.

Let's say that medication x is developed to cure migraine headaches, but only 20% of the volunteers who take it experience relief. In a parallel study, an identical number of migraine sufferers take a placebo, and 19% experience relief. You would conclude that the medication x was not very effective except for its placebo effect.

There are many variations of this type of clinical trial.

Answer 2

It has been demonstrated that the placebo effect is about 18%. That is if it is taken by a group, then 18% of the group will experience a postitive outcome. Thereby any new drug when tested against placebo, must be better than 18% effective.

In practice this means not many drugs are tested in this way they are tested against the most common drug for that problem.

So it is not true that a placebo does nothing.... It has no pharmacological action but the mind/body can give a result if the mind thinks its an active drug. Fun eh?

But doctors practicing medicine in this way would not be ethically correct...despite it being in the best interests of the patient in some circumstances.

Answer 3

Placebo medications are typically used in clinical trials - to see if a real medicine works, or has side effects.

It doesn't tell you much if you just give a group of people a drug. Say 10% of them get headaches. Did the drug cause the headaches? If you give a similar group of people a placebo, and 10% of THEM get headaches, then the drug was unlikely to cause it. If 2% of them get headaches, it's more likely that the drug has the side effect of causing headaches.

The same thing goes for drug efficacy. Researchers have to compare a new drug to something else. Most good studies are "double blinded" - the people volunteering for the research don't know whether they have drug or placebo, and the doctors who evaluate them don't know either. Once the data is collected, the "code" is broken, and the researchers find out who had the drug and who had placebo. Double blinding a study helps prevent bias on the part of either the researcher or the patient/volunteer.

That's the REAL use of placebos. It's not like doctors routinely prescribe sugar pills.

Answer 4

I read about this in science classes during college. I can tell you that it primarily has an effect when a person is not aware that the placebo is a placebo. Therefore, it becomes someting that works simply because the mind believes it to work, thereby it is used usually in experiments to illustrate the power of suggestion or mind over matter. Here's an excerpt from an article on wikipedia about it:

"Placebo effect is the term applied by medical science to the therapeutical and healing effects of inert medicines and/or ritualistic or faith healing manipulations.[1] [2]. When referring to medicines, placebo is a preparation which is pharmacologically inert but which may have a therapeutical effect based solely on the power of suggestion. It may be administered in any of the ways in which pharmaceutical products are administered.[3]

Sometimes known as non-specific effects or subject-expectancy effects, a so-called placebo effect occurs when a patient's symptoms are altered in some way (i.e., alleviated or exacerbated) by an otherwise inert treatment, due to the individual expecting or believing that it will work. Some people consider this to be a remarkable aspect of human physiology; others consider it to be an illusion arising from the way medical experiments are conducted.

The placebo effect occurs when a patient takes an inert substance (a "sugar pill") in conjunction with the suggestion from an authority figure that the pill will aid in healing and the patient’s condition improves. This effect has been known for years."

Answer 5

Placebos have no active ingredient. That isn't to say they have no effect. In the European theater in World War II, casualties with obvious painful injuries, including limbs being blown off by artillery and that sort of thing, had adequate pain relief from placebo in a surprisingly high number of cases (I can't recall the source or specifics, but I want to say it was along the lines of 30%). Also, in double-blind, placebo-controlled trials, the placebo is needed in order to maintain the blinding.

Answer 6

Placebos work through the power of suggestion. The patient is given a pill / remedy that they are TOLD will help them.

Given that the patient believes they will get better their own 'healing powers' are what cures / improves them. The placebo can be thought of a 'focus' for the mind of the person to work through.

It has to be completely inert so that there can be no possibility of a bad reaction

Answer 7

This "placebo effect" has been estimated to be up to 30% - meaning that 30% of people can recover just by thinking they were taking a proper treatment.
That's why witch doctors and other charlatans can be so successful. Up to 30 % of their patients will get better anyway, the rest die, so they have a loyal contingent of true believers to sing their praises.
Pretty neat, huh?

Answer 8

yes a placebo is in the mind. i did this as part of a uni experiment we got 10 people to use nicorette patches for 2 weeks and 10 to use another brand- which in fact was a placebo, and see how many gave up! it was amazing nearly the same amount of people gave up smoking with the placebo as the real patches. just goes to show we have more will power than we think!

Answer 9

Yes. A placebo is essentially a sugar pill, used in research to show changes and contstants.

Answer 10

Exact mechanism of action of placebo is still not known but it in case of pain it is known that they help in secretion of the endogenous opioid:
Three families of endogenous opioid peptides have been described in detail: the endorphins, the pentapeptides methionine-enkephalin (met-enkephalin) and leucine-enkephalin (leu-enkephalin), and the dynorphins. The endogenous opioid peptides are derived from three precursor proteins: prepro-opiomelanocortin (POMC), preproenkephalin (proenkephalin A), and preprodynorphin (proenkephalin B). POMC contains the met-enkephalin sequence, b-endorphin, and several nonopioid peptides, including adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), b-lipotropin, and melanocyte-stimulating hormone. Preproenkephalin contains six copies of met-enkephalin and one copy of leu-enkephalin. Leu- and met-enkephalin have slightly higher affinity for the d (delta) than for the u opioid receptor .Preprodynorphin yields several active opioid peptides that contain the leu-enkephalin sequence
Both the endogenous opioid precursor molecules and the endomorphins are present at CNS sites that have been implicated in pain modulation. Evidence suggests that they can be released during stressful conditions such as pain or the anticipation of pain to diminish the sensation of noxious stimuli.