Been thinking about this for no particular reason, specifically like sugar pills. Do doctors just prescribe you a medication but they’re actually lying to you? Is that legal? Or are you made aware they’re placebos and they still work? Is that possible? Are they only for people who have a legal guardian that can keep the secret? I feel like it should be obvious but I really don’t know.
(also sorry if flair is wrong, i don’t really know where medicine would fall here)
In: Chemistry
Placebos work because your brain has more power on your overall health than you think…believing a medicine will help can actually help even if the medicine itself doesn’t chemically do anything.
It is *not* legal for a doctor to give you a placebo when they tell you you’re getting a medication.
Placebos are only (legally & ethically) used during medical studies when they’re trying to find out if a medicine actually works. If you’re participating in a study like that you’ll know that it’s *possible* you’re getting a placebo but not if you actually are. The best study design is called “double blind”, you don’t know if you’re getting the placebo or not and neither does the doctor (they label the bottles with numbers so the researchers know who got what).
Weirdly, placebos can still work even if you know they’re placebos but the effect is generally less pronounced.
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