110
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
110 points (63.1% liked)
Ask Lemmy
26765 readers
819 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Sometimes, people just get better. Your mood affects your heart rate, your blood sugar, your mobility even. Thinking you are getting better helps you get better. This isn't controversial, the placebo effect has long been understood and accounted for in experimental design.
What I don't understand then is why we don't try to take advantage of this effect more often. If I have a small chance of making people feel better with a sugar pill, why not give out sugar pills and claim they have miracle effects all the time?
We do, I remember my friends mom had pills labeled placebo, and she said they where making her feel better, me and my friend looked at eachother and said nothing in front of her mom. When we where alone together we laughed a little and agreed that we shouldn't say anything since her mom was doing better.
One of the remarkable things is that a placebo still works even if you know it's a placebo.
Because you expect it to work to some degree because you know about the placebo effect.
We do. But if you were aware of it, it wouldn't work.
But placebos do still work when you know they're placebos.
Sometimes but not in all people. It's worth keeping it low key just for that.
They also work better if they're an injection as opposed to a pill
Then do injections, which are more effective placebos than pills are.
Because we've decided it's nonethical for healthcare professionals. Any doctor knowingly prescribing placebo and lying about it could get in some major trouble. Like a couple decades ago I heard a psychiatrist mourn the loss of disulfiram (antabuse) implants from their treatment arsenal; it worked very well as a placebo but research didn't show a clear improvement over placebo, so they could no longer use it.
I am kind of glad that non-license-needing wellness consultants can still use the placebo effect for good, even if it is sometimes predatory and sometimes outright dangerous.