What the ‘placebo affect’ is and how it affects our bodies/minds
In: Biology
“Positive thoughts” help a surprising amount when it comes to your own body. If you think you’re taking medicine that will help, your body simply works harder or does better at making you healthy. The body releases hormones, immune system commands, lymph nodes, and orders various bodily functions around in such a way that you get better.
This makes studying medicine difficult, as you can give someone a pill that most assuredly does nothing… but they’ll get better faster than someone who you didn’t give pills to.
It also the reason there were (are) a lot of snake-oil salesmen. They’re selling fake products. They don’t work. But if they can convince people it works…. it really will have a positive effect. They end up fooling themselves into believing they have medicine that works. They could be giving people plain-jane unaltered water. But the lie has an effect. These days though, we can’t lie to patients and fool them into thinking we have magical cures. Because actual cures have effects that are larger than the placebo effect (by definition).
Latest Answers