The Power of Placebo: A Surprising Remedy
Do you that Placebo has been scientifically proven to cure a whole lot of things including pain, headache, fatigue, boredom, blurred vision, receding hairline, acid reflux, teeth decay, chronic back pain and a whole host of common ailments.
Let's go back to the North African Battlefield of WW2 where there were a lot of wounded soldiers with no more Morphine to give the soldiers to help with their pains. There was need to operate on wounded soldiers and doctor Henry Beecher had no drugs to help them with pain, so a nurse decided to inject the soldier with salt and water to help relieve the pain and it did the jobs as the soldiers miraculously had reduction in pain. When doctor Henry Beecher got back to Harvard University, he realized that lots of ailments from common cold to wounds from gunshots could be treated using fake medicine.
Image:Spektrum
This is known as the Placebo Effect meaning I Shall Please in Latin. Placebos are drugs that do not contain the active ingredient of a real drug. These drugs can have ingredients such as sugar (sugar pills), corn starch, yeast, cellulose from plant, and other ingredients that make the drug stick together as well as break down in the stomach but unless what a placebo is made off is mentioned in trials, we do not know exactly what they contain.
A research study titled "What's in placebos: Who Knows? Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials", over 150 trials were studied from 4 medical journals and only about 8% of the trials from the journals disclosed what was in their placebo. So it is very different to tell the ingredient of a placebo from another and there is a possibility their their ingredients are a reason for why some are more effective than others. It is believed that Injection placebos work better than Capsule placebos which work better than tablet placebos and placebo machines work better than all of them.
Image: Picryl
Something interesting about placebos is that having a great talk with the doctor because taking it can increase the rate at which it works. Other things that are amazing with placebos is that taking two placebos is better than taking one (just like two heads are better than one), also just like people believe that expensive branded antibiotics work better than generic ones, so does expensive branded placebos work better than generic ones or putting them in fancy packs and nice names make them more effective when used. Other things like color also play a role in how well a placebo works for instance, sleeping pills work well when they are blue.
So we can say that placebos are effective base on perception of the pill effectiveness but they cannot be referred to as fake because they can stimulate certain changes in the body such as stimulating the brain to release its pain killing chemicals thereby causing the placebo to work for pain relief. they can also be effective in improving the symptoms in Parkinson's disease patients as they cause the release of dopamine.
Image ccnull
While these pills have shown great result in some areas especially with common illnesses, the pills cannot cure cancer, shrink tumors, or cure infections. When companies are about to create medications, they test it against placebo to see the effect on people. They then subtract the placebo group from the real group and they are left with the real effect. In recent times, drugs are failing to pass the placebo test as it looks like the effect of placebo is getting stronger and the growing placebo effect on humans make it difficult to identify which drug really works and which doesn't help with treatment.
In a study, patients were told they were getting placebo and it still gave a positive effect possibly because they have been told placebos have healing effects and it now looks like the active ingredient that makes it work effectively is the expectation that the patient have in mind before taking the medication.
The placebo effect is a fascinating and powerful phenomenon that demonstrates the incredible influence of perception and the expectation on our health as individuals even when the medication isn't working properly. While placebos cannot cure severe diseases, they can provide significant relief for various common ailments through psychological and physiological mechanisms and sometimes, could lead to a possible cure in cases of minor diseases. Understanding and harnessing the placebo effect can offer valuable insights into patient care and the development of new treatments.
Read More
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/placebo-effect-a-cure-in-the-mind/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2814126/pdf/nihms168943.pdf
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199828340/obo-9780199828340-0196.xml
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/21677026211009799
https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/sage/placebo-effects-a-new-theory-mNIRnVg32L?key=sage
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2832199/
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18511
Hello.
There is reasonable evidence that this article is machine-generated.
We would appreciate it if you could avoid publishing AI-generated content (full or partial texts, art, etc.).
Thank you.
Guide: AI-Generated Content = Not Original Content
If you believe this comment is in error, please contact us in #appeals in Discord.
Hello, good morning... I was at outside when I saw this pop-up and it got me worried because this content was made after a personal study of placebo and the placebo effect. You would see that I added personal torches from the writing after studying and understanding the topic. I will do well to contact you on discord as well as reply you on your discord now. Thanks.
The content was AI-generated with edits to avoid detection.
How do we identify an AI generated post?
Please I would appreciate if you can explain how this post is AI generated, I sent a message on Discord
Hello Hivewatchers, thank you for the reply. According to the previous image which I guess you deleted or edited, you made certain points that is still a concern when it has to do with Artificial intelligence and Science related contents like this.
Your analysis mentioned a few things and I will like to pick them one after the other.
Your first point mentioned the post being well organized and then I ask myself if my comment on this post isn't well organized or does it mean it is an AI generated comment? I am writing about Placebo and I was going to explain to my readers who might have not heard the word before and so it would be wrong for me to not explain to them what they need to know. The first point also mentions that I cited my work and it is surprising that you used this criteria to judge a stemsocial post where one of our criteria to make a post is to cite references for whatever post we make.
The second point mentioned technical points and I ask myself if there is a way to discuss HIV or any other scientific term without using technical points? Even when I have never used placebo before, at least it isn't given in the hospitals as pills because of ethics, I tried my best to ensure that the post was as personalized as possible.
For the third point which was mentioned on referencing, I guess I have answered it already in the first point but so I respond to it, It is mandatory to reference whatever you are posting on stemsocial
The next point mentioned fluidity and transitioning, I guess I have been able to transition well on this comment to see that even humans can transition and not AIs alone.
The final opinion is very funny because saying I stock to fact just meant I wrote on the topic at hand. I used words like We, let's, and even added words like "Two heads are better than one". So I am trying to understand how this implies that I posted AI generated words?
The conclusion used the word Highly likely and not Certainly or For Sure. This said, I would like to call your attention to a few things in the post including minor typographical errors, my intonations such as words like (Do you that Placebo has been scientifically proven to cure a whole lot of things) which I just realized is a repetition of word because the Whole shouldn't be there. Also, going through the post now, I realized that there were places I forgot to add punctuation which I am certain that an AI would not make such mistake.
I am glad you called my attention to this, but then we are still in the early age of commercial use of AI, and we are still trying to find our feet with it. I will work on making my post more personalized although this cannot be an every time thing because there are a few things I might want to write which I do not have a first hand experience of such as when I want to write a post on HIV, Evolution, Poison, and so on.
On a final note, I hope you see that even when this comment that doesn't cost me 10 minutes to write compared to posts I make that require hours or even days sometime to complete research, write post, and edit, you would still see that it has an Introduction, Body, and Ending, even when I did not mention it. I hope we are able to get a good understanding on AIs and I hope this AI machines start to leave footprints so people who use AI related posts can be identified because not all post that are properly organized are AI generated posts.
Thank you very much for bringing this up, I hope we get better tools to catch people who use AI generated post.
Thanks.
Congratulations @merrymercy! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain And have been rewarded with New badge(s)
Your next target is to reach 300 comments.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPCongratulations, you received an ecency upvote through the curator @ahmedhayat. Keep spreading love through ecency
Thanks for your contribution to the STEMsocial community. Feel free to join us on discord to get to know the rest of us!
Please consider delegating to the @stemsocial account (85% of the curation rewards are returned).
Thanks for including @stemsocial as a beneficiary, which gives you stronger support.