The Placebo Effect

Continued from Nocebo and the Placebo Effect

Mind healing is such a natural, powerful part of who we are and how the mind body connection works.

Placebo means "I will please". When you accept a suggestion and completely believe it to be true, your subconscious mind acts to make it a reality. Because we are programmed to believe what authority figures tell us, healing may occur even if our treatment was bogus.

To account for the ability of the mind to heal the body during drug studies, control groups receive placebos instead of a real drug, treatment or surgery. Common placebos are sugar pills and saline solution.

A huge bonus of these spontaneous healings is that there are no negative drug side effects. The body is encouraged to heal naturally instead of altering how it's supposed to work to suppress symptoms.

Subconscious mind healing accounts for approximately one-third of all improvements noted in these studies.

A few fascinating studies have even shown the positive effects of realistic, but fake surgeries.

One well-known placebo surgery study was conducted in Houston in 2002.

Researchers at the Houston VA Medical Center and Baylor College of Medicine found that a common type of knee surgery was no more beneficial than the placebo effect. Watch as Dr. Bruce Moseley of Methodist Hospital in Houston describes his experiences with these surgeries and his amazing results.

A recent study showed that people treated correctly with acupuncture had just as much back pain relief as those who were treated with needles placed randomly.

Listen to drug commercial advertisements and you hear about the percentage of people who healed themselves. I remember marveling when a drug advertiser announced that the placebo effect accounted for 50% of all improvements in their urinary incontinence study.

Modern medicine is not alone when it comes to the placebos.

A similar effect happens when people under deep hypnosis accept the suggestion that they have a rash, so a rash develops right before their eyes. Then it instantly vanishes with another suggestion.

Shamans use elaborate rituals to build up belief and the emotional state of patients before a healing. The same holds true of faith healing.

This is not always the case, of course. I've witnessed and experience spontaneous and natural healing when there was no evident emotion or belief involved by either the healer or healee.