Strongly suggesting the placebo fooled their body into releasing it’s own endogenous opiates.
I don’t get it. Why would they assume that? You’re given a placebo pain reliever and it relieves pain. Then you’re given a nalaxone, which you, the patient, knows blocks opioids. In both cases, it could just be the placebo effect. You could be given water and told it’s nalaxone, and it could have the same effect.
Were they not told they were being given nalaxone? Were there four cohorts? Were some of the people who got placebo painkillers also given placebo nalaxone where it didn’t block the pain relief?
I can’t read the paywalled article.
Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Wait, if the researchers don’t know who got the pal ebo but placebos can cause actual effects how do they know which effects are from the medication and which are from the placebo? If someone got a placebo and experienced headaches but no one on the medication did do they still have to warn that the medication may cause headaches?
webpack@ani.social 3 weeks ago
the study is setup so that the person taking the pill and the person giving it to the participant who is recording the results both don’t know whether the pill is a placebo, but some other person knows or it’s written somewhere else what the person got so in the end they can know if the result was from placebo. the important part is the researcher at the time of recording/interpreting doesn’t know, because if they know they may be bias in favor or against the placebo.
Malgas@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
The people interacting with patients don’t know which is which, but somebody does.
The whole point is seeing if the drug is better than a placebo, so you definitely need that information when it’s time to analyze data.