The funny thing is that the “extra strength” placebos likely have a better chance of working. The more elaborate and involved the placebo is, the greater the chance of it actually working even if you know it is a placebo. Our minds are weird. As always, I’m too lazy to look up the actual study so I don’t know if it was a quality study or not.
This reminded me of an episode of Mind Field, which shows significant improvent in cases of ADHD, Migraines, and a skin picking disorder in kids just through the placebo effect.
They use elaborate set ups and suggestions like a turned off MRI machine, fake nurses and doctors in lab coats, etc. And the kids are actually told, that it’s their brain doing the healing, not the machine.
Yeah, I heard that the placebo effect for pain meds is stronger in the US (than in Europe?) because there’s more advertisment for it in the US (how they made sure this is causation and not correlation I have no idea, though …)
It’s been a while since I looked at this, but different color pills “work” better for different ailments. Also the size and numbers of pills effect results as well. Two pills are “stronger” than one, bigger pills over smaller as well.
The funny thing is that the “extra strength” placebos likely have a better chance of working. The more elaborate and involved the placebo is, the greater the chance of it actually working even if you know it is a placebo. Our minds are weird. As always, I’m too lazy to look up the actual study so I don’t know if it was a quality study or not.
This reminded me of an episode of Mind Field, which shows significant improvent in cases of ADHD, Migraines, and a skin picking disorder in kids just through the placebo effect.
They use elaborate set ups and suggestions like a turned off MRI machine, fake nurses and doctors in lab coats, etc. And the kids are actually told, that it’s their brain doing the healing, not the machine.
But you also might get more nocebos where you get negative effects from the placebo
Yeah, I heard that the placebo effect for pain meds is stronger in the US (than in Europe?) because there’s more advertisment for it in the US (how they made sure this is causation and not correlation I have no idea, though …)
I believe it’s red placebos that are better at helping with pain.
The brain is a fucky old thing.
It’s been a while since I looked at this, but different color pills “work” better for different ailments. Also the size and numbers of pills effect results as well. Two pills are “stronger” than one, bigger pills over smaller as well.