Is Placebo A Treatment For All Disease?

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨squashkin@wolfballs.com⁩ to ⁨covidhoax@wolfballs.com⁩

I've seen a study where people were taking a placebo and they even knew it was a placebo and it helped them recover from various illnesses: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/placebo-can-work-even-know-placebo-201607079926

A placebo is "a pill or substance that is given to a patient like a drug but that has no physical effect on the patient."

This is the power of the mind, so to me the "vaccines" and ivermectin, if nothing else are acting as placebo for a lot of people on each side. But couldn't you literally just take a sugar pill or something inert and tell yourself it's healing you and have some kind of effect from it? I've been doing this and, well, it's not hurting me.

Couldn't placebos be used more widely for any disease, including "covid"?

source

Comments

Sort:hotnew top

Scruffy_Nerfherder@wolfballs.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
This is where our research money needs to be going.

source
Spotted_Lady@wolfballs.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
"Ask your doctor if Placebo is right for you."

Interestingly, this has been done. Some doctors would write Obecalp on the prescription. That was sugar pills.

source
Spotted_Lady@wolfballs.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
I imagine that is more useful for physical diseases and short-term conditions.

Chronic mental health conditions seem to be a different story. In that case, the placebo effect can complicate self-help "research" in that no matter what you try, you start out thinking it is working. So it doesn't matter if you are taking sugar pills, analgesics, or crack, you might think you are "cured" when you have a small remission. And that can be frustrating in that you think you found lasting results when you end up realizing you have only a short-lived placebo effect or a new addiction.

An exception to what I just said are conditions that involve traumatic memories. A placebo technique may be enough to tap into those memories and allow them to be explored or dismantled. For instance, take the EFT "Tapping" technique. While the whole concept of "meridians" and "energy zones" might be pseudoscience, EFT might still work as a distraction technique and a placebo. When tapping, you are focusing your attention on those areas of the body while holding the condition in your mind. Dividing your attention like that might allow you to use "shallower bites" to go deeper. The physical activity aspect may increase the feelings of emotional safety as you reach any distressing buried material. So you might have lasting improvement since you did the work yourself, and the technique just made you more likely to do the work due to making it seem less painful.

Sometimes, the placebo effect works in the context of self-help and life coaching. For instance, you can use gimmicks to motivate someone. If you have a kid who keeps striking out, you could loan them a "magical bat" and "prescribe" 2-4 hours of practice per day. They would be eager to see the gains that this "special" bat gives and work hard to find the gains. Of course, there comes a time to take the "magical" item back and let them know it was BS. This type of motivational gimmick should only be used on a short-term basis to minimize dependency or social complications. For instance, if you keep using a "special baseball bat," bullies might take it from you and any success gained might be lost if they give up and quit the sport over the incident. So a wise coach/trainer might try gimmicks to motivate certain players and then wean them off of the gimmicks. In that sense, it is much like a teddy bear or other comfort object. When kids are learning that their parents can't always be immediately by their side, they use things like stuff animals to help them cope. And as they get older, the stuffed animal, mini blanket, or whatever naturally has less of a role in their lives.

Sometimes things thought to be inert do exert a tad more benefit than a placebo. And sometimes one isn't looking for the effects. For instance, let's say you have Athlete's Foot, but you also get a hankering for more dairy items. So you eat cream cheese, yogurt, etc. Then in several weeks, you notice the itching and burning are less and might not even make a dietary connection. In that example, the bacteria in the dairy is competing with the foot fungus. That's not as effective as prescription antifungals, but it does help some and is much easier on the liver. Similar can be said about ulcers. While antibiotics are more effective in clearing up ulcers, probiotics may be good to use as a preventative. And if you have to go to pharmaceuticals, then you'd likely want to take the probiotics after you finish the course of meds.

source
- squashkin@wolfballs.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
  well yeah I guess people should keep a few things in mind: placebos won't always work, some diseases have no treatment, and our bodies simply are destined for the grave eventually (I think it's maybe a wrong attitude to think there's always a cure to disease) - but I think this is an overlooked tool that could have surprising effects for certain people in small doses I guess
  
  as you mention psychiatry (not by name), it would be nice to me for people to take a placebo antidepressant versus harmful antidepressants in mild to moderate cases where apparently they can have not much effect.
  
  While the whole concept of “meridians” and “energy zones” might be pseudoscience
  
  yeah, I acknowledge that to me things like "reiki healing" and whatever may not actually be effective in themselves, but the belief in them is having an effect. I think perhaps we need to try to take that effect and then take the "pseudoscience" out of it, like by consciously taking a pill that you know is placebo and inert and telling yourself it can heal you. I'd like to see more progress made on studying how this could be done.
  
  a weight loss pill might be another one, weight loss pills often seem useless to me, but a placebo one wouldn't hurt you anyway.
  
  “special baseball bat,”
  
  yeah I wonder if there is a way to humanize placebos and make them "fun", like people use "lucky" objects. From a Christian / religious standpoint, I want to avoid magic and superstition, but I think there might be a way to go about it that doesn't do that. The object doesn't have to be "lucky" but just "special", and that still could possibly boost performance.
  
  Sometimes things thought to be inert do exert a tad more benefit than a placebo
  
  or to the opposite case, sometimes things thought to be helpful might be more harmful than a placebo which is inert! ("vaccines", perhaps?!)
  
  source
  - Spotted_Lady@wolfballs.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago
    Good points.
    
    I do think energy healing can be effective in some cases if there is an actual "energy disturbance." Not every pain comes directly from Satan/Demons, for instance. I mentioned dowsing/muscle-testing elsewhere, and it is interesting that you can ask a question, get a stable answer, do a spiritual intervention, and then get a different stable result. I had a pain in an arm for a year, contacted an energy healer about something else, and she claimed there was some bad energy in my arm even though I never mentioned it. So she cleared it and the pain/cramp went away.
    
    Of course, there can be other explanations for the arm pain example. For instance, such a pain could be poor circulation and over the year, I could have grown more blood vessels in that area. There is a mechanism for clogged arteries/veins to signal they are in trouble and cause the body to grow more in that general area. The problem with that mechanism is that it doesn't always work. I mean, whatever enzyme/hormone involved would have to find target sites. If plaques are severe, these chemical messages are being sent, but there is nothing able to receive the messages. That gives a clue as to how exercise works. Physical stress releases the low circulation signals, so you grow more vessels to deal with the increased demands on the body. However, exercise doesn't necessarily remove plaques in and of itself.
    
    And yes, your last paragraph reminds me of the term, Iatrogenic. That is something caused by medical interventions. At one point in time, there was an epidemic of pediatric blindness. Researchers started designing strong antioxidants since they concluded the eyes were getting too much oxygen in infants. But such drugs might have not made it to the market, but I don't remember. Doctors started re-examining their practices and concluded that maybe routinely using high oxygen supplementation for all newborns was a bad idea. Yes, oxygen is good for the body, but you need the right amount.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments