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Topic: Placebo effect

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Placebo

Nocebo Effect

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	Placebo effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		The recipients of the inert substance may nullify the placebo effect intended by simply having a negative attitude towards the effectiveness of the substance prescribed, which often leads to a nocebo effect, which is not caused by the substance itself, but more the patient's mentality towards her or his ability to get well.
		When patients who claimed to experience pain relief after receiving a placebo were injected with naloxone (a drug that blocks the effects of opiates), their pain returned, suggesting that the placebo effect may be partly due to the release of natural opiates.
		The placebo effect is an active area of research and discussion and it is possible that a clear consensus regarding the use of placebos in medical practice will emerge in the future.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Placebo_effect (2339 words)

	Placebo Effect: Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine
		A placebo effect occurs when a treatment or medication with no therapeutic value (a placebo) is administered to a patient and the patient's symptoms improve.
		The placebo effect is usually positive by its nature, because it indicates that a patient believes in the therapy, and the therapy is having some sort of a beneficial effect.
		The placebo effect is a well-known phenomena in the scientific community, and clinical trials and other scientific studies are built around the theory.
	health.enotes.com /alternative-medicine-encyclopedia/placebo-effect (1339 words)

	Placebo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		A placebo, from the Latin for "I will please", is an inactive substance (pill, liquid, etc.), which is administered as if it were a therapy, but which has no therapeutic value other than the placebo effect.
		Originally, a placebo was a substance that a well-meaning doctor would give to a patient, telling him that it was a powerful drug (e.g., a painkiller), when in fact it was nothing more than a sugar pill.
		Appropriate use of a placebo in a clinical trial often requires or at least benefits from a double-blind study design, which means that neither the experimenters nor the subjects know which subjects are in the "test group" and which are in the "control group".
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Placebo (772 words)

	Placebo Effect
		The "placebo effect is an improvement in health due not to any treatment but only to the patient's belief that he or she will improve (as by taking a dummy pill that is thought to be a cure).
		The placebo effect is the measurable or observable effect on a person or group that has been given a placebo treatment.
		A placebo is an inert substance, or "fake" surgery or therapy, used as a control in an experiment or given to a patient for its possible or probable beneficial effect.
	www.angelfire.com /hi/TheSeer/placebo.html (1621 words)

	placebo effect
		The placebo effect is the measurable, observable, or felt improvement in health not attributable to treatment.
		The placebo effect may be a measurement of changed behavior affected by a belief in the treatment.
		Whether the placebo effect is mainly psychological, misunderstood spontaneous healing, due to showing care and attention, or due to some combination of all three may not be known with complete confidence.
	skepdic.com /placebo.html (2424 words)

	The Placebo Effect
		The placebo effect is largely ignored or ridiculed by both the medical profession and the general public, who think that it only happens to weak-minded individuals or that it is simply due to relaxation and the reduction in stress.
		The placebo effect may therefore be a combination of a number of different effects that have the overall result of normalising the HPA axis and sympathetic nervous system, and therefore reversing a suppressed or abnormal immune system response that was caused by an imbalance in these hormones.
		The placebo effect can be thought of as the normal functioning of the body's built-in healing power, and is almost certainly the same as the Chinese chi, or energy, which is thought to be present throughout the body and provide health and vitality.
	www.mind-body-health.net /placebo.html (2714 words)

	The Placebo Effect (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-22)
		Placebos are putatively inactive substances tested in controlled studies for comparison with presumed active drugs or prescribed for relief of symptoms or to meet a patient's demands.
		If a placebo has been taken before spontaneous improvement, it may be given credit for the result; conversely, if someone spontaneously develops a headache or a rash after taking a placebo, the latter may be blamed.
		This is not surprising, since some investigators call a "placebo reactor" one who gets benefit from placebos, and others use the term for people who report side effects from placebos It seems unlikely that the same personality traits would predispose to such different responses.
	home.comcast.net /~bkrentzman/meds/placebo.html (895 words)

	More on the Placebo Effect by Jeremy Donovan
		Placebo effects are influenced by patient-healer interpersonal relationships and are increased in pleasant, nonthreatening, efficient clinical settings with doctors who are perceived by patients as warm, likable, and interested in them.
		The nocebo effect is the causation of sickness by expectations of sickness and by associated emotional states.
		So the placebo effect may be tied somehow to emotion, and somehow it is expectancy which seems to be the key.
	www.sustainedaction.org /Explorations/more_on_the_placebo_effect.htm (3061 words)

	The Health Report: 12 April 2004 - The Placebo Effect
		The placebo effect is where a dummy preparation, which the person believes to be the active treatment, achieves the same or similar effects.
		The debate with antidepressants is that placebo controlled trials of these medications have shown a growing placebo effect over the years, to the extent that some argue there is sometimes little difference between the pretend tablets and the real thing.
		But I think that there’s always been the feeling that somehow placebo is some kind of poor man’s psychotherapy, that it’s just the interaction, it’s just the laying on of hands action and that somehow would then have not conceived that the brain changes would somehow have been the same with the medication.
	www.abc.net.au /rn/talks/8.30/helthrpt/stories/s1083259.htm (3889 words)

	Spontaneous Remission and the Placebo Effect
		In medicine the effect of suggestion is referred to as the "placebo effect." The Latin word placebo means "I shall please." A placebo effect is a beneficial response to a substance, device, or procedure that cannot be accounted for on the basis of pharmacologic or other direct physical action.
		This design cannot distinguish an effect of placebo from the natural course of the disease, regression to the mean (the tendency for random increases or decreases to be followed by observations closer to the average), or the effects of other factors.
		The placebo effect in healthy volunteers: Influence of experimental conditions on the adverse events profile during phase I studies.
	www.quackwatch.org /04ConsumerEducation/placebo.html (1811 words)

	The Mysterious Placebo (Skeptical Inquirer January 1997)
		Skeptics often use the placebo effect-a response to the act of being treated, not to the treatment itself-as an answer, but usually to no avail.
		Spontaneous remission and the placebo effect, which are known as nonspecific effects, are significant phenomena that have great impact on consumers and health-care professionals.
		The quack who relies on a placebo effect is also pretending he knows what he is doing-that he can tell what is wrong with you and that he has effective treatment for just about everything.
	www.csicop.org /si/9701/placebo.html (1141 words)

	Placebo Effect: The Power of the Sugar Pill
		In these trials a placebo is obligatorily administered to a control group of patients, and later the results of this group are compared with those obtained in the group that receives the active medicine, whose action one intends to demonstrate.
		We could then define placebo effect as the therapeutically positive (or negative) result of expectations implanted in the nervous system of the patients, through conditioning, consequent to the prior use of medicines, contacts with doctors, and information obtained by means of reading and remarks of other people.
		To conclude, we remind that some authors consider that the placebo effect has a dark side, because the cures due to it favor the perpetuation of the use of ineffective and irrational medicinal therapeutic procedures, as those used in the so-called "alternative medicine".
	www.cerebromente.org.br /n09/mente/placebo1_i.htm (2166 words)

	MDD July/August 1999: The Mysterious Placebo Effect
		Researchers still may be inclined to view placebo effects as a nuisance or as a background noise that complicates clinical trial design.
		Placebo effects can result simply from contact with doctors or other health care providers, perhaps a diagnosis or simple attention from a respected professional alleviates anxiety.
		One alternative is a “putative placebo trial”, in which the new drug is compared with a standard thrombolytic; in that case, the difference between the two is compared with that 2% or 2.5%.
	www.pubs.acs.org /hotartcl/mdd/99/aug/mysterious.html (2508 words)

	Placebo Effects Prove the Value of Suggestion
		A placebo, as used in research, is an inactive substance or procedure used as a control in an experiment.
		A placebo effect occurs when the placebo, which cannot on its own merit have any affect, does in fact have the same or similar affect as the experimental substance or procedure.
		The placebo effect has been reported in just about every research situation in which placebos were used, and in many circumstances where the use of placebos was not intended but the effect was the same anyway.
	www.bcx.net /hypnosis/placebo.htm (1638 words)

	The placebo effect
		The controversy arises when the placebo effect is used to explain patients' improvements in clinical practice.
		Though they are rarely considered placebos, the healing relationships between patients and their providers often have profound symbolic significance.
		Objective effects are those that can easily be measured, such as blood pressure, while subjective effects depend entirely on a person's description (e.g., level of stress).
	www.al-hikmah.org /placebo-effect.asp (963 words)

	Place for placebo effect?
		Context determines expectations, and expectations are the root of the placebo effect.
		Because the placebo effect could explain why such alternative approaches as energy healing or prayer can work -- without a doctor touching a patient or giving a single drug -- the research is part of the new interest in studying complementary and alternative medicine.
		And because opiate antagonists reduce the placebo effect, it seems that the placebo effect occurs when the brain -- expecting pain relief -- causes the body to produce endogenous opioids -- natural painkillers.
	whyfiles.org /150alt_med2/3.html (570 words)

	The Straight Dope Mailbag: The Straight Dope Mailbag: Is there an "anti- placebo" effect?
		The placebo effect is likely the main reason people believe in all sorts of wacky medical claims, from homeopathy to therapeutic touch.
		Like the placebo effect, the nocebo effect is usually generated by "beliefs, attitudes and cultural factors" (http://quinion.com/words/turnsofphr ase/tp-noc1.htm).
		If they do nothing and their effect is completely attributable to the placebo effect, and you don't believe they do anything but take them anyway, you probably won't see the same effect as those who believe.
	www.straightdope.com /mailbag/mnocebo.html (1001 words)

	AUTCOM: The Placebo Effect (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-22)
		Placebo, Latin for "I shall please," refers to the positive result we get when our will to believe is combined with a treatment that alone does nothing.
		Experts agree that it is not "magic." Placebos seem to help patients turn on their own pain relief mechanisms, called endorphins, or simply to summon a more positive sense of themselves and their ability to take charge of their bodies.
		The real story of the placebo effect may be the story of our failure to see where the power really lies.
	www.autcom.org /placebo.html (618 words)

	Placebos trigger an opioid hit in the brain - health - 23 August 2005 - New Scientist (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-22)
		Placebos are treatments that use substances which have no active ingredient.
		For example, when a placebo was secretly mixed with a drug that blocks endorphins — the body’s natural painkillers — there was no placebo effect, showing that endorphins are involved in the placebo painkiller process (New Scientist print edition, 26 May 2001, p 34).
		The young men, who acted as their own controls, were scanned three times: before the experiment began, when they were in pain but had not yet been given the placebo, and after they had been given the placebo.
	www.newscientist.com /article.ns?id=dn7892 (532 words)

	Consciousness and the Placebo Effect
		The placebo effect occurs when the placebo, which can not on its own merit have any affect, does in fact have the same or similar affect as the experimental substance or procedure (1).
		The power of the placebo is more readily explained as a function of the individual because the placebo effect can rely on the amount of faith an individual has for a given treatment.
		In the end, the placebo effect is a struggle in maintaining a co-habitative environment for the mind's prior experiences and the body's desire to reach beyond its present state.
	serendip.brynmawr.edu /bb/neuro/neuro99/web3/Lord.html (1745 words)

	Placebo Effect Links
		In clinical drug trials, the response of the trial drug is often tested against the inactive placebo.
		as the difference between The placebo effect is the measurable or observable effect on a person or group that has been given a placebo rather than an active substance.
		It is likely that much of the response to homeopathic medicines is attributable to the placebo effect.
	altmed.creighton.edu /Homeopathy/placebo_effect.htm (212 words)

	Glucosamine Placebo Effect
		Other wise known as “sugar pills,” placebo drugs are used to test the effectiveness of drugs against an inactive standard.
		By testing a known substance against an inactive agent (a placebo), if one groups starts to feel better (and the designers can later verify with statistics which group was on the placebo and which wasn’t on the placebo) then effects of bias can be filtered out.
		Generally speaking, the only placebo effect you will get from glucosamine is from manufacturers who do not give you high quality glucosamine and do not give you the amount actually specified on the label.
	www.flexicose.com /glucosamine/glucosamine-placebo.html (689 words)

	ScienceDaily: Placebo Effect: Harnessing Your Mind's Power To Heal
		Research studies and theories hold important clues to solve the mystery behind the placebo effect, but more research is needed to examine how these factors interplay to produce this healing force.
		Placebo Study Indicates Lower Doses May Effectively Treat ADHD (May 6, 2003) -- A significant percentage of children with attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder did just as well when harmless placebos, pills without any specific effect, replaced some of their medications, a...
		Placebo effect -- The placebo effect is the phenomenon that a patient's symptoms can be alleviated by an otherwise ineffective treatment, since the individual expects or believes that it will work.
	www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2003/12/031231084101.htm (1525 words)

	Dylan Evans' Homepage
		Placebo: The Belief Effect was chosen as book of the month by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in April 2003.
		Yet placebos only work if you believe they work, so the medical confidence in the power of the placebo effect has provided scientific legitimacy to popular claims about the healing power of the mind.
		In this intriguing exploration, Dylan Evans exposes the flaws in the scientific research into the placebo effect and reveals the limits of what can and cannot be cured by thought alone.
	www.dylan.org.uk /placebo.html (610 words)

	13 things that do not make sense - space - 19 March 2005 - New Scientist Space (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-22)
		This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing can be very powerful.
		Doctors have known about the placebo effect for decades, and the naloxone result seems to show that the placebo effect is somehow biochemical.
		She railed against its claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample was unlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yet still have a healing effect.
	www.newscientistspace.com /article.ns?id=mg18524911.600 (4187 words)

	Placebo effect causes a natural high \| The Register
		All groups recorded their experience of pain every 15 seconds over the course of the 20 minute procedure, while their brains were scanned with the PET (positron emission tomography) machine.
		Explanatory note: The placebo effect is defined very nicely (here), as "a beneficial effect in a patient following a particular treatment that arises from the patient's expectations concerning the treatment rather than from the treatment itself".
		It follows, then, that a placebo is a non-active 'medication' that a patient believes to be a drug of some kind.
	www.theregister.co.uk /2005/08/24/placebo_natural_high (461 words)

	Cogprints - Great Expectations: The Evolutionary Psychology of Faith-Healing and the Placebo Effect (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-22)
		The placebo response: Recent research and implications for family medicine.
		In Anne Harrington (ED.), The Placebo Effect, (pp.
		The placebo effect is the healing force of nature.
	cogprints.org /3386 (429 words)

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