how does placebo work when people know it is a placebo?
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No one knows yet. One possibility is that the ritual of taking medicine itself might induce the body to produce endorphins that relieve pain, even if it’s a known placebo, but that’s just a theory at this point.
[https://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/03/placebos](https://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/03/placebos)
The relationship between the mind and pain is fascinating. I know someone who lost a limb and still feels pain in the missing limb, a common phenomenon. On the one hand, it’s all in her mind, but the pain is still very real, not at all imaginary, and treated with drugs. Some people also find relief through psychological exercises like massaging the good leg and pretending it’s the missing leg — kind of a physical placebo — but other people can’t fool themselves sufficiently.
Knowing that you will feel better because placebo, relives stress. This helpes the healing process.
Generally people don’t know it’s a placebo, if they did they would presumably stop taking it. Most evidence around placebos comes from randomised control trials where no participants know if they are taking the real drug or the placebo.
We don’t know. If we did, it wouldn’t really be a placebo effect anymore, it’d just be science.
The trick here: is why does placebo work in the first place?
While we don’t know the mechanical workings of the answer, we know that, at a minimum, it has to do with belief. That is, the recipient must believe the intervention works.
Now, we’ve come far enough with science education that many people know about the placebo effect. So people know (and therefore believe) that placebos can be effective (even if it’s not as strong as “the real thing”).
Voila! You *believe* it’s effective, even if you know it’s a placebo, which kinda makes it a meta-placebo.
A lot of people are saying we don’t know how placebos work, which is wrong.
We do know: they reduce stress through the patient believing they are receiving proper medication, thus making the immune system and other restorative processes in the body work like they should.
Stress messes up the effectiveness of your healing, removing it has the opposite effect.
If a placebo works on you even if you, the patient, know it’s a placebo, congratulations, you’ve tricked yourself into thinking the medication works, thus achieving the placebo effect of reduced stress.
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