[Neurons] 2023 Neurons #9 EXPERIENCES AND THE PLACEBO EFFECT

Mon Feb 20 01:24:48 EST 2023

From: L. Michael Hall

2023 Neurons #9

February 20, 2023

Experience Series #6

EXPERIENCES

AND THE PLACEBO EFFECT

There's several things which are incredibly amazing about the placebo
effect-first and most obvious is that a true cure can be substituted by a
non-cure.  Take a sugar pill which has no active ingredient in it and
associate it in a sufficient way to some medicine, and 30 to 70 percent of
the time, the neutral sugar pill will create the same results as the
medicine.  Amazing!  How does that work?  It works through the power of
association and the power of belief-two foundational psychological
processes.  Create an association so that you think and you believe that the
pill you're taking is the medicine, and more often than not, it will have
that effect. 

The same placebo effect has been discover with "shame surgeries."  In
double-blind studies, some patients were submitted to a surgery that never
happened.  The doctor made a slit in the skin, stitched it up so it
certainly gives evidence that there was a surgery, yet in reality, nothing
more was done.  And sure enough, 65% of the patients experienced relief from
their symptoms and recover.

The negative backside of the placebo effect is the no-placebo effect.
Similarly if you think and believe that something is a curse, a hex, a
forecast of doom and gloom-so it is to you.  This was first reported in
scientific journals with the "voodoo deaths" in Hatti.  Medical researchers
who went there and re-examined the bodies of those who died, did autopsies,
and discovered that they could not discover the cause of death.  Something
else was going on.  What was going on began to become clearer when they
discovered that those who died were those who believed in the hex.
Conversely, those who did not believe, those who were outsiders to that
culture, did not.

What amazes us regarding the placebo effect is that it shouts aloud that
there is a mind-body connection.  That merely thinking and believing
something is real is enough to have actual physical effects in the body, in
one's neurology, in one's immune system, etc.  Today there are hundreds, if
not thousands, of studies being conducted on this mind-body relationship.
We know that, in general, yes the mind influences the body.  And we can
postulate where in brain anatomy we construct certain kinds of thoughts and
how those thoughts send signals to the body about how to respond.

What we still do not know or have is a dependable process that we can offer
someone to gain relief and to trigger the body's self-healing powers.  Yes
we have a few patterns like the Allergy Cure pattern that works about half
the time.  And there are hypnotic patterns that Erickson developed that can
often work with patients for pain control.  Yet all such patterns depend on
a variety of variables-the patient's state of mind, background experience
and knowledge, relation to the healer, the healer's knowledge and skill, the
set-up for the process, and a hundred other factors.  There are just a lot
of unknown variables and relationships which explains why if placebos work
30 to70 percent of the time, then they also do not work 30 to 70 percent of
the time.

More recent studies have brought to light another, in my opinion, even more
fascinating and amazing facet about placebos.   You can know that a pill is
a placebo and it can still work.  Now how crazy is that?  Prior to this,
researchers always hid the fact that a pill might not be the real thing, but
a placebo.  We then considered the effective factor to be the belief that it
is real.  But now with studies wherein the experimenters told people, "This
is a placebo pill; there's no active ingredient in it.  Take it two times a
day with water and it will do X and Y."  Then an absolutely amazing thing
happened-in spite of knowing what they knew, people experience a relief of
symptoms.  The placebo works even when they knew it was not real.

Normally we would think that knowing it is not real, a person's mind-body
system that can  active self-healing would not be activated.  Yet it was.
One's self-reflexive consciousness does not inevitably turn off or reject
the placebo effect, but most somehow allow it, maybe even facilitate it.
Knowing whatever you know is not an innocent thing-it is neuro-semantically
alive and dynamic.  And even knowing that you know doesn't discredit it.
Human consciousness -what a mystery!

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

ISNS Executive Director

P.O. Box 8

Clifton Colorado 81520 USA

(970) 523-7877

drhall at acsol.net  

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