The Power of Belief and the Placebo Effect
The
belief that you are getting help, such as a treatment for depression or
cancer, can actually cause your condition to improve. It might be
easier to see how placebos influence depression with its more direct
connection to thoughts, but it is also true that thoughts have an effect
on something as concrete as the growth of
cancer cells or
blood pressure. A review of relevant literature by Straus and von Ammon Cavanaugh (
1996) show how placebo effects are widespread, known in medication, psychotherapy and even surgery!
Interestingly,
it is not only the patient’s but also of the physician’s belief that
effects how well a treatment works. For instance, patients on placebo in
the Coronary Drug Project (
1980) with good relationships with their physician, (and who presumably believed in them), showed lower mortality rates
. Also, as discussed by Suedfeld (
1984), a doctor with a pessimistic attitude may block the effects of real medication .
Are Alternative Remedies Just Placebos?
I
have heard others criticize so called alternative remedies like
acupuncture, stating that anyone who found any benefit was merely
experiencing a placebo. I think many who make such statements do not
fully appreciate what a placebo is. In medical and psychiatric journals
they may refer to it as “non-specific effects” which is just a fancy way
of saying “something worked but we don’t know what and we don’t know
how.” Thus with no means to explain how acupuncture works within the
framework of western medicine, any effects are attributed to placebo.
In
the West, people are conditioned to believe that pills work, and as the
placebo effect demonstrates, whether or not the pills are actual
medicine, they do. Interestingly, there is growing mistrust in
mainstream medicine and more and more people in the West are looking to
traditional Eastern methodologies. The recent interest in medicinal
practices like ancient Chinese medicine, acupuncture and Ayurveda as
well as their reported effectiveness may be related to the doubts people
hold in mainstream medicine and a growing faith in ancient wisdom to be
more effective. For these people, alternative methods are as (and
sometimes more) effective than mainstream westernized medicine.
So what is a placebo? Put simply, it is belief or
the power of thought.
Harnessing the Power of Thought
The
placebo effect should not be discounted, it is demonstrated proof our
thoughts and beliefs have real measurable effects on our ability to heal
ourselves. If placebos work when the person is essentially tricked, imagine how powerful the conscious application of thoughts and beliefs could be for healing and realizing our full potential. If we could learn to harness this potent energy, our potential may be limitless.
References:
Coronary Drug Project Group (1980).
The New England Journal of Medicine 303, 1038–104.
Straus, J.L., von Ammon Cavanaugh, S. (1996). Placebo effects: Issues for clinical practice in psychiatry and medicine.
Psychosomatics 37, 315-326.
Suedfeld,
P. (1984). The subtractive expectancy placebo procedure: a measure of
nonspecific factors in behavioural interventions.
Behaviour Research and Therapy 22, 159–164.
