Does the Placebo Effect Really Work?

“Does the placebo effect really work?”

We’ve all been there, sitting in the waiting room surrounded by people coughing a spluttering all over you, surely making you worse rather than better. Then, half an hour after your appointment time, your name is called and you reach the safe (sanitary) haven of the doctor’s office. After a poke and a prod, and a rather uncomfortable “Aaaaahh!” with an ice-lolly stick half way down your throat and a light shone down the dark cavern of your oesophagus, finally! A diagnosis! A prescription is written with the promises of improved health within a week; so off you go to the chemist to pick up whatever anti-biotic someone’s whipped up in a laboratory, or at least that’s what you’re lead to believe. What if that magic remedy isn’t actually magic, not really medication, but made of something as simple as sugar?

What is the placebo effect?

Due to moral conduct, the doctor is not actually allowed to do this however some people believe that no matter what you’re treated with; real medication or a sugar pill; the results should be the same. This is known as “the placebo effect”. It is defined by Oxford dictionary as “a medicine or procedure prescribed for the psychological benefit to the patient rather than for any physiological effect” and is frequently described as the power of the mind over the body. As well as sugar pills, studies have shown that injections of salt water and even false operations have shown placebo effect results. A placebo is most commonly explained using it as a medical example however it is the explanation to many other phenomenon such as hypnosis and pseudocyesis (phantom pregnancy) and even in weight loss.

Doctors and psychologists are not one hundred percent sure what actual...

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...toms of their IBS. Automatically, the patients all agreed that they would not work as it was not a real medication. The results show different however as 60% of the participants said that either all or many of their IBS symptoms went away. So despite being told that the pills may have no effect, they worked anyway. (David Gorski. (2014))

Once the experiment was over, patients were no longer supplied with sugar pills and many said that their symptoms returned. They asked experiment coordinators for more but they were unable to supply them as they are not viewed as an official medication. (Kawotsatutlaka144000. (2014))

It has been argued in recent years that placebo pills and treatments should be available as medication though many disagree saying that doctors are abusing their authority by giving out sham medication. However, is it really sham medication if it works?