If the placebo effect works by tricking the brain, why does it need to be tricked if it’s apparently able to solve the issue on its own?
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Because it doesn’t know that it can. Your brain focuses on the thing that’s the most important, and ignores everything else. You can see that when you’re riding in the car – you might remember some highlights of the drive, but you won’t remember every detail. If pressed, your brain might even fill in fake details, based on best guesses and context clues.
The placebo effect works because the brain is filling in information based on context clues – it knows that medicine makes whatever is causing the pain to go away, and you took medicine. Therefore the pain is no longer needed. The second you become aware that it’s a placebo, though, then the brain will correct for that new information – you didn’t really take medicine, so the pain is still needed until you solve the problem.
The thing is, the brain _can_ turn off the pain signals whenever it wants. It sends those signals because they’re important at the time. Sometimes when the pain is overwhelming, or something else seems more important (or even just more interesting), the brain will turn off the pain signals anyway. But as long as your brain thinks that the pain signals are important, they will be noticable.
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