NewScientist’s (12 March 2016, paywall) Shannon Fischer reports on using placebos on the placebo-aware:
LINDA BUONANNO had been sick with irritable bowel syndrome for 15 years when she saw a TV advertisement recruiting participants for a new study. Desperate for help, she signed on, even after learning that the potential treatments she would be offered consisted of either nothing – or pills filled with nothing.
When the experiment ended, she begged the researchers to let her keep the pills. “I felt fantastic,” Buonanno says. “I felt almost like I was before I got sick with IBS. It was the best three weeks of my life.”
She has been trying to get her hands on more ever since. A replication study will start later this spring, and Buonanno is desperately hoping she gets in.
This is the placebo effect in action, and it may come as a surprise to learn that it works even when people know they are being given a sham treatment. That finding has brought with it the possibility of using placebos as therapy. The vision is of a future in which clinicians cajole the mind into healing itself and the body – without the drugs that can be nearly as much of a problem as those they purport to solve.
Fascinating stuff. The researchers are trying to understand this using a psychosociological model as the trigger for the body’s self-healing efforts, such as ordering the pills be taken on a tight schedule. I’ve never experienced a placebo effect myself, not having been seriously ill – unless they’re handing out sugar pills for Lyme’s Disease. The implications for our mental stability are not really explored, but are equally fascinating.
