Placebo Society

Our expectations change how we experience things. This may sound trivial when stated just like a fact, not important or profound at all. But appereance deceives: this pacebo effect could have a profound effect on our health. And not just in a good way...

_{Image by Patrik Nygren - source: Flickr}

Research shows time after time again that we hold immense power over our own experiences. This goes a lot further that having a classical "the glass if half full" versus "the glass is half empty" general attitude toward life. The real power of anticipation, the huge and real effects expectation can have on our lifes become apparent when thinking about something like the placebo effect. A placebo is commonly known as a substance or treatment that has no therapeutic value whatsoever. The placebo effect is described as follows:

a beneficial effect produced by a placebo drug or treatment, which cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient's belief in that treatment.

We make real what we believe in. "Seeing is believing" is as true as "believing is seeing". We make our own expectations come true, or at least our minds do, without letting us in on the deal; the effect depends on us NOT knowing that the medicine is no medicine at all. There have been all sorts of research done on this mostly unexplained phenomenon; expensive placebo's work better than cheap ones and more elaborate treatments yield better results than simple ones. A big pill works better than a small pill and an injection works better than a pill.

What I think is funny, is how the placebo effect is used in the pharmaceutical industry; a medicine is deemed ineffective when the results, the rate of healing, is better with a placebo than with the medicine. It's only used as a measure of how effective official drugs are; it's baffling to me that they don't spend more time on studying the miracle of self-healing. Or actually, it's not surprising at all; this industry needs people to keep getting sick or they won't make money anymore...

Keep in mind that the video below is mostly speculation: the placebo effect isn't understood properly yet as far as I know. If I'm wrong about that, please let me know in the comments. Also, the source is questionable, as this channel, Gaia, deals with many unproven alternative theories, explanations and medicine. It's still worth watching though, because it holds a kernel of truth about our society and how it influences our expectations.

The best explanation for this effect that I've heard uses Pavlov's dog. Pavlov conditioned his dog by ringing a bell and feeding him after that; seeing the food made the dog salivate. After a while, the dog began salivating after hearing the bell only; the meat wasn't needed anymore for the physiological reaction of salivating. Only the expectation of food, triggered by the bell, was enough. In the same way we are conditioned to expect a beneficial effect from medicine. This expectation makes our bodies prepare for the beneficial effect and starts releasing it's own countermeasures. I've even heard one scientist suggest that this was the reason so many people suddenly start to feel better on the way to the doctor...

Placebo is not the only way to show how powerful expectations can be. In one study people were given two glasses of beer and they had to tell which one tasted better. The test-subjects were unaware of the fact that a little vinegar was added to one of the glasses. The outcome was that a majority of tasters preferred the beer with the added vinegar. When the same experiment was repeated on a new test-group, they informed the participants in advance of the added vinegar, and guess what... Now the majority thought the beer with vinegar tasted awful; our expectations bend our reality in a very real way.

Why I like to bring this up, is not just for the sake of the subject itself, however interesting and mysterious it is, but for us all to think about the following: if our expectations, our deep anticipation of future events really do create the reality we eventually experience, what does that mean with regards to the constant fear-mongering we're now experiencing in almost all public communications about the future? There's this constant fear of war, terrorism, climate change, school shootings, growing depression, financial meltdown and the likes in the news, and commerce isn't much better with their ultimate goal being to keep us all hungry for more, to make us feel not satisfied. If our expectations create our reality, can that also be true for the society as a whole, and if yes, could this become some ugly form of a self-fulfilling prophecy? Or is it already? Okay, that's a heavy note to close on... So please, watch this lighthearted, funny yet educational speech on placebo:

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