What is Placebo Effect?
A placebo is any treatment prescribed for a condition for which it is physically ineffective. Pain relief, coping strategies, emotional well-being, and cognition are only a few examples of subjectively experienced factors where the placebo effect has been successfully and consistently demonstrated.
Most of the time, placebos are used to test brand-new drugs. The treatment group is given the actual medicine being studied, whereas the control group is given a placebo or medicine with no therapeutic advantages. This helps researchers to identify the effectiveness of new medicine to target groups.
The placebo effect is being reassessed even though it is a strong psychological concept. It might be more significant than previously believed. The definition of the placebo effect has been updated as part of this reassessment.
According to the experts, we must distinguish between an active placebo (a substance that causes physiological changes in a patient but has no beneficial effect on the condition being treated) and an inactive placebo (a substance that causes no physiological changes in a patient).
This distinction is not sufficiently obvious. Certain kinds of placebos may occasionally have a beneficial impact on physiological changes. This implies that a patient’s potential to enjoy greater health may be influenced by their beliefs, anxieties, hopes, and other psychological traits.
The placebo effect suggests that psychological factors may raise the likelihood that therapy would be effective. The level of freedom is influenced by patient psychology in addition to drug therapy.
The placebo effect is strong and can occur in a variety of ways, but it is also in some ways still debatable, and the debate surrounding the placebo is best understood in the context of culture and history.
Using Placebo Effect
Researchers employ placebos to better understand how a new medication or other treatment may affect a particular disease.
For example, some study participants might receive new cholesterol-lowering medication and others would get a placebo. The trial participants won’t be aware of the real treatment or placebo.
Participants after the medication and placebo treatments are compared by researchers to find out the result of the study. They can then assess the new drug’s efficacy and look for any negative effects.
Factors Affecting Placebo Effect
Stages Of Illness
The typical course of sickness and the chances of eventual recovery should be taken into account as a first consideration. Some or all patients may recover even without receiving any treatment, depending on the nature of the sickness and the patients.
Most people are able to recover from common colds on their own. Commonly prescribed cold drugs reduce pain, but the healing process would still be the same without them. You must identify recovery from experimental and placebo treatments and see it as a normal element of the healing process.
Think of a person who has a cold and is randomly assigned to one of two groups. The control group is given an experimental drug, while the experimental group is given a placebo. Even if both groups recover after two weeks, the placebo may still be just as effective as the experimental medicine.
Because it ignores the disease’s normal progression, this conclusion would be false. Our research plan should include a “no treatment” or placebo group in order to ascertain the normal rate of recovery.
Such a judgment, though, would be false because we haven’t taken the illness’ natural course into consideration. This suggests that in order to determine the natural healing rate, the research design should include a “no treatment, no placebo” group as well.
Behavioral Changes
When given a placebo, patients may start to think that it has improved their health, leading them to alter their behavior and present themselves as healthy rather than sick. In certain circumstances, the patient’s condition may persist, but the patient’s behavior may suggest that their health has improved.
On the other hand, it could be claimed that in some situations and for patients with specific conditions, portraying oneself as healthy will cause others to treat one as healthy and may even lead to improved health.
In other words, one’s self-presentation might have a self-fulfilling prophecy-like effect. People who are perceived as healthy by others may start to believe that they are healthy and start eating normally, exercising outside, and generally leading a healthier lifestyle.
As a result, their health might even get better. On the other hand, people who are given the label “sick” by others are more inclined to behave like sick people.
The placebo effect, according to critics, may not genuinely exist but may be falsely believed to exist as a result of two circumstances.
The patient’s behavior is either recovering naturally or in an imagined way. Critics claim that additional studies should be conducted with both a control and placebo condition. It’s crucial to have at least one “no intervention” condition, though.
The no-intervention group of patients would experience the typical progression of the illness, with their rate of recovery acting as a standard for comparisons. This recommendation should be taken into account by researchers, but the notion that there is no placebo effect is misleading.
Ethics and the Placebo Effect
The testing of new medications must meet two requirements. One is a control condition where patients receive a placebo, while the other is an experimental condition where patients receive the medicine.
In this research, patients are randomized to various circumstances. A potentially life-saving medication might be offered to one set of patients while a placebo is given to the other.
The new drug’s manufacturers anticipated that its effectiveness would result in improved health and longer life spans. One could argue that by arbitrarily selecting one set of patients to live longer or better lives and then condemning the other group to illness and death, researchers have been playing the lottery with patients’ lives.
Researchers agree that using placebos in research creates ethical issues, but when viewed in the context of the human interest as a whole, it isn’t always unethical.
Researchers can find more efficient medications that can help people live longer and enhance their health by incorporating placebos into their studies. It is thought that if people stopped using placebos in the future, their health would deteriorate.
However, not everyone agrees with this point of view. There are additional approaches to creating drug testing studies without using placebos. By simply altering the dosages and plotting the dose-response curves, it is simple to compare the efficacy of various medications.
The “non-placebo” alternative test design is nevertheless subject to ethical criticism because not all patients will benefit equally from medication therapy. Drug dosages might be contrasted with one another. These alternative research techniques, according to supporters of placebos, are not as unethical as conventional designs that also include placebos.
Negative Aspect of Placebos Effects
Strong supporters of the placebo raise a separate ethical issue: Why shouldn’t doctors embrace the placebo effect as another weapon in their fight against illness and health given that it has been demonstrated to be effective and beneficial in some situations and for some patients?
It makes no difference whether a patient receives a placebo or an actual medication; as long as their health improves, it does not matter.
Although this logic may seem fair, it has some weaknesses. Patients who regularly take placebos risk developing an addiction. Additionally, they might be dependent on additional “wonder medications” like sugar pills and treatments that are quackery-like.
Some patients may develop superstitions and develop routines for eating or going to bed. This is due to their reliance on placebos. This may result in dishonesty and “healer” techniques that do more harm than good.
Animals, and the Placebo Effect
Animals are frequently used in medication development studies. This brings up the intriguing question: Do animals experience the placebo effect? Animal behavior exhibits the placebo effect, according to several research.
This challenges the theory that placebos depend on ascribed meaning. Is it possible to believe that animals assign meaning to drugs or that scientists administer the drugs to them? Can animals understand human linguistic systems?
This difficult challenge might have an impact on placebos used in human experiments. In a placebo control condition, animals gain benefits but not from the placebo. They attract the most interest.
They benefit from doing this. No matter whether they are kept in experimental or control settings, animals who are chosen to take part in a study require special care.
The animals are handled frequently and attentively observed. They are frequently given extra attention to make sure they eat and drink consistently. The stimulus and attention they receive will be beneficial to their health. These advantages exist without regard to placebo and medication effects.
A similar case may be made for placebos and human behavior as well. The health of patients receiving placebos in a control condition improves, but not as a result of the placebo effect. Instead, individuals gain by getting more attention since they are a part of a study.
Conclusion
The placebo effect is powerful and frequently has a positive impact on health. The placebo effect has been scientifically proven to have physiological effects that promote health, including better Parkinson’s disease results.
The placebo effect has not been fully utilized, despite being a strong and well-established psychological concept. In some health situations, it would be preferable to openly use the placebo effect as opposed to ignoring it and trying to get rid of it.