The Placebo Effect

I was amazed when I read this article in Neurology.

Doctors and scientists used to believe that a placebo, sometimes called a sugar pill, had the ability to change the perception of the patient but had no real healing effect. In other words, it had no medicine therefore it changed nothing physically within the patient.

Now they have learned that a placebo can have a physical effect on a patient. PET scans have now confirmed that some patients get better just because they expect to. This particular article refers to patients with Parkinson's, depression, and pain. Patients who received a medication and patients who received a placebo had the SAME changes in their brain on PET scans. WOW!

"It seems that the expectation of benefit activates the same natural pathways in the brain as medications. If we could harness these same mechanisms in the clinic, patients could help themselves without the side effects of medications."

That's pretty amazing, although I should not be surprised -- God created us and and in so many ways, our physical bodies are a wonderful and complicated mystery.

Here is the link if you want to read the full article.

I just started reading another article about red-heads and physical pain. I hope to post conclusions from that one soon.