The placebo and nocebo effect: The healing power of your mind
Your mind packs powerful medicine — it can ease pain, promote immune strength and speed healing. Tuning into your body, dispelling stress and channeling positive thoughts toward ailing body parts can have a major positive effect.
Taking a sugar pill and believing that it’s medicine can ease symptom, or your perception of symptoms, especially for pain, insomnia, depression, anxiety, functional bowel disorders and functional urinary disorders. That’s what’s called the placebo effect, and we have documented proof that it works.
The Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School runs a research center called Program in Placebo Studies & Therapeutic Encounter (PiPS) that looks into the biology of placebo and its clinical effects. One study of folks with irritable bowel syndrome found that 44 percent of those treated with a placebo (sham acupuncture) said they got relief from their IBS problems. And when the sham acupuncture was combined with increased care and kindness from the acupuncturist, the placebo effect kicked in for 62 percent of participants.
So, what’s going on in the brain?