Placebo—The True Healer?
The placebo effect works in a similar way. Placebo is a Latin word, which translates as, “I shall
please.” If something pleases you, it automatically triggers the release of pleasure hormones in your body,
which means that in the event of an illness, you are likely to experience a healing response. In the field of
medicine, the placebo effect is a phenomenon described as a measure for testing the efficacy of new drugs
or therapies. Note: Shutting down or suppressing a symptom of disease has nothing to do with healing it.
There are three possible explanations why and how healing takes place.
- A particular non-suppressive treatment triggers a curative response by the body.
- The healing power of nature is at work. This includes especially the immune system's natural
response to stop and eliminate disease-causing factors. While this principle (of the body healing itself)
applies to the majority of all medical cures, this “secret ally” of all doctors is hardly ever introduced to
patients. The human organism rarely receives praise for the extraordinary abilities it displays when
dealing with infections and physical injury. The body's own remarkable healing ability is behind every
success in the healing profession. In many instances, healing occurs despite the side effects that so often
arise from the use of medical drugs or invasive procedures. If the body’s healing response remains absent,
not even the most advanced medical technology or expertise will have any value. - The placebo effect triggers the healing response.
Orthodox medicine originally defined the placebo as an inert substance that, for psychological
reasons only, is administered to satisfy or please a patient. However, this definition is no longer
considered accurate or sufficient. The placebo effect can occur as a result of administering substances that
are not inert, just as much as it can be triggered by procedures or pills that do not include medication. The
placebo effect implies that the patient's belief in a “drug,” which may just be a sugar pill or snake oil, has
the power to stop pain and even cure a disease. A basic feeling of trust in a particular treatment or even
the doctor can also act like a placebo. A research study is not considered valid or scientific unless it
includes a placebo that is applied to a control group.
When the success rate of the drug or treatment is higher than the success rate of the placebo, then the
drug has passed the test for effectiveness. In the past, the placebo has even been used to study coronary
bypass techniques and cancer radiation treatments. In the case of a number of coronary bypass studies, the
surgeons opened the chests of the heart patients in the placebo group and immediately stitched them back
up again, without actually performing a bypass operation. After surgery, all the patients were informed
that their operation had been a success. Some of the placebo group patients confirmed that they
experienced relief of chest pain. A number of the heart patients who received the actual bypass surgery
also reported relief of pain. If the “success” rate in the bypass group is higher than in the placebo group,
then the bypass operation is considered to be an effective method to relieve chest pain.
An early carefully controlled study with patients suffering from angina pectoris showed that 5 out of
8 patients who had genuine surgery and 5 out of 9 patients who only received a sham operation, felt much
better afterward. Two of the patients with sham operations even experienced a remarkable increase in
physical stamina and endurance. A group of highly skeptical researchers repeated the same experiment
with another group of 18 patients. Neither the patients nor the examining cardiologist knew who had
actually received the surgery. The results were that 10 out 13 patients with real surgery and 5 out of 5
patients with the sham operation had improved significantly. This experiment demonstrated that the