How placebos trick your brain

FEW psychological influencers are more well-known than the placebo effect: the mere thought of receiving a helpful pill, actually helps, even if there are no active substances in the pill at all. Most placebo medicines are made up of sugar and have the curing power equivalent to a peppermint.

The placebo effect shows the strong impact that something purely mental can have on our physical health. In fact, you will most likely have used many placebos – and find them quite helpful – without even realizing it, as all homeopathy products fall under the placebo effect. Placebos can help against depression and can even get you inebriated.

The largest application of placebo is in medicine, where it is not the exception, but the rule. About one third of patients show signs of the placebo effect. In order to account for the placebo effect when testing experimental drugs, patients are usually divided in three groups: one group gets no medicine, one group gets a placebo and one group gets the experimental medicine. 

Of course the patients that receive a pill are not told whether it is a fake pill or not. In order to show healing powers, a medicine needs to show not only an improvement versus the group that did not receive the pill, but also an improvement beyond the group that received the placebo.

The placebo effect is caused by the expectations that it sets, not its ingredients: if you believe, hope and expect the placebo pill works, it will. However, if you don’t believe it works, it won’t. The effect can even be further targeted by size, shape and colour of the placebo. 

A red, yellow or orange placebo pill will set the patient’s expectation that it will stimulate him, while a blue or green pill should give a soothing effect. Americans react better to placebos that are injected with a needle, while for Europeans pills suffice. Even the extreme form of placebo surgery has been shown to work!

Hence, you could say the active ingredient in a placebo is information. As you ingest the placebo, the thoughts about how it will help triggers your brain to release endorphins, which will have an actual impact on how you feel. That means that paradoxically, two people with opposing views about the benefits of placebos can both be right!

For parents of young children, band-aids can be a great placebo and help out whenever their little one is hurt, either visibly or not. Your child will stop crying as he or she believes the band-aid helps.

Strangely enough, a placebo can even have side-effects: it can make you nauseous, give you a stomach ache and even turn you in an addict! 

Stranger still: even when people are told their medicine is a placebo, it continues to have effect, which makes no sense at all! That is why ‘expectation management’ is so important. 

Moral of the story: never underestimate the power of thought!

Mark Reijman is co-founder and managing director of http://www.comparehero.my/ dedicated to increasing financial literacy and to help you save time and money by comparing all credit cards, loans and broadband plans in Malaysia.