The Importance Of Placebos

Placebos have been a very prominent thing in our society for years now, and have helped many people with sicknesses and the like, but lately people have been arguing that placebos don’t help because they don’t contain anything to help the body get better and thus don’t heal or change anything. Although that may be true to an extent, there is still proof that they do help the body, depending on the reasoning you need the pills/placebos. They have been known to help the body by having the brain release the chemicals needed at the time of taking the placebo, and with reassurance from doctors and medical professionals, have been known to help an immense amount with sick people and people with mental illnesses.

In an article by David B. Elliot entitled

“The researchers believe that what many doctors call a placebo effect may be simply a natural tendency for a certain percentage of patients to get better on their own over time. This study is very useful for reminding clinicians that patients can experience spontaneous positive changes which have nothing to do with any type of treatment at all, states Dr. Louis Lasagna, chair of The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development and an authority on the placebo effect. Lasagna also points out that not everyone is equally susceptible to the placebo effect, Patients with a positive orientation to medicine and who are more optimistic will be more likely to benefit from a placebo than patients with less hopeful attitudes” Malick wrote. Placebos may not work with something as terrible as a long term sickness such as tuberculosis or cancer, but people have still explained like with small illnesses and mental issues that placebos did

In fact, they were often the only thing that a doctor could offer to relieve suffering, other than his or her attention and support. Some researchers believe that placebos simply evoke a psychological response. The act of taking them gives you an improved sense of well-being. However, recent research indicates that placebos may also bring about a physical response. In light of this, some people don't see anything wrong with a doctor prescribing a placebo.” The worst harm that taking a placebo do is ending up not working and the brain not sending out the chemicals that the brain were to if it were to take the actual pill. This probably just means that the brain just wouldn’t be able to work with placebos unless a doctor were to heavily convince you and help try to get them to work. So there is no right or wrong as to whether placebos do work or not, but it just depends on how your body works and how your body reacts to taking something that’s supposed to imitate a solution instead of taking the actual solution to the diagnosed problem. Placebos would cost less, this is true, but if your body can’t physically work taking placebos, then sadly you may just have to take the original drug, unless you had a doctor with some heavy