Placebo without cheating

Placebo works even if the patient is aware
The patient's knowledge that the pill does not contain medication does not interfere with recovery
Alexey Tymoshenko, GZT.ruAn interesting effect was discovered by scientists who studied the effectiveness of placebo in a somewhat non-standard experiment.

Patients who were directly told that they would take a placebo still felt better than those who did not receive any pills at all!

The placebo effect has long been known to doctors: a patient who is given a pill, which he considers a medicine, in some cases recovers faster than someone who does not receive anything. The very fact of taking pills, even if there are no substances in them that can affect the biochemical reactions of the body, triggers the processes of autosuggestion that have not yet been fully studied.

Placebo is used in any clinical trial in order to weed out virtually useless drugs that could work solely because of the patients' faith in them. In such cases, the main requirement for research is to keep the secret to the end: with the correct organization of clinical trials, even doctors do not know what they are giving to their patients. Tablets or ampoules with the drug and placebo are made exactly the same, marked with faceless numbers, and only at the end of the study its authors look at what was in box No. 34, which acted (or did not act) on the patient.

A group of doctors from Harvard Medical School and the University of Hull found out that even if you mark the medications given to patients as "placebo" (with a detailed explanation of what it is), pills will still have a significant effect in the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome. (Ted J. Kaptchuk et al., Placebos without Deception: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Irritable Bowel Syndrome // PLoS Hub for Clinical Trials, Dec 22, 2010.)

Irritable bowel syndrome is a disorder in which doctors do not find any pathological changes in the gastrointestinal tract, but the patient still experiences abdominal pain, and sometimes nausea or stool frequency disorders.

It is important to note that placebo is not omnipotent and doctors would not test its effectiveness in the case of life-threatening diseases (from pneumonia to cancer) in this way in any case.

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24.12.2010