Quote:
Originally Posted by seeker33
Research of placebo. How to use placebo to improve health without taking medication. The ability of the body to heal itself. It frustrates me how placebo is seen as something weird, that doesn't even belong to medicine. I know it's used in research when testing actual medication but I've never heard of a study OF placebo itself and how to use the effect for positive benefit of patients.
I know I'm too naive and there's never going to be research in this area. (sing) Money, money, money.
|
@
seeker33
The ethics of using placebos has to be considered. For randomized controlled trials, sure, it's fine and ethical. For "lying" to patients purposely to see if there is a reaction of the sugar pill itself, and of the manipulative suggestion from physicians in a position of power, who assert, "Take this and you'll feel better," is probably considered unethical.
I don't know much about medicinal research, but as a patient, I'd be pissed if I were handed a sugar pill. The confound would then be the physician's suggestion, not necessarily the pill. If the physician is convincing, appealing, believable, etc., then I'd say that would influence the interpretation that the patient has on the pill, not the pill's influence alone.
It would, indeed, be interesting to see research done on placebo itself, not just the placebo effect, but how could it be done ethically? Hmm...
It would be interesting if the placebo could be used in conjunction with some other tool, such as self-hypnosis. Maybe believing in a sugar pill, or the act of taking a sugar pill, would be beneficial if we had something to go along with it, like some cognition. But that is precisely what self-hypnosis and mindfulness treatments aim to do; it's not always true or honest, but it gets the job done to alleviate pain, change the way to think about pain, or subdue pain - even in emotional form, and even at the expense of avoiding the grieving process. Some people do well with such treatments, whereas others do not.
In certain special ops in the military, they train their personnel with "dissociation," or a form of self-hypnosis, so that they can withstand pain, torture, etc. Some have even tested themselves with such tools by visiting a dentist's office and not taking any pain meds, to see if those approaches help to alleviate the pain involved in deep periodontal cleaning. For them, it's a conscious effort, for those with dissociative disorders, it may be an unconscious effort, but either way, it doesn't negate the real pain that is going on. Maybe a placebo could work the same, but who would be doing the lying - the physician prescribing or the patient self-hypnotizing?
Interesting research proposal, indeed! Hmm...