Placebo's power goes beyond the mind
PJfanFORlife
Posts: 138
By Linda Carroll
MSNBC contributor
Updated: 5:22 p.m. ET Aug 21, 2006
Even though medical researchers told Chuck Park that he might be getting a sugar pill, the 30-year-old software producer was pretty sure he was getting the real thing. Just a few weeks into the clinical trial, Park’s depression started to lift. He began to feel less anxious and sad.
So when Park learned he’d been taking a placebo all along, it was a surprise.
“I was fully expecting to receive the real drug even though I knew that the placebo was a possibility,” remembers Park of Culver City, Calif. “I guess I wanted it to work — and in a way, it did.
For years, scientists have looked at the placebo effect as just a figment of overactive patient imaginations. Sure, dummy medications seemed to curb epileptic seizures, lower blood pressure, soothe migraines and smooth out jerky movements in Parkinson's — but these people weren't really better. Or so scientists thought.
Now, using PET scanners and MRIs to peer into the heads of patients who respond to sugar pills, researchers have discovered that the placebo effect is not "all in patients' heads" but rather, in their brains. New research shows that belief in a dummy treatment leads to changes in brain chemistry.
"There have always been people who have said that we could make ourselves better by positive thinking,” says Dr. Michael Selzer, professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. “After pooh-poohing this for years, here are studies that show that our thoughts may actually interact with the brain in a physical way."
New insights into how placebos work may even help scientists figure out how to harness the effect and teach people to train their own brains to help with healing.
Mind over brain matter
Recent reports show that anticipation of relief from a placebo can lead to an actual easing of aches, when the brain makes more of its own pain-dousing opiates. Brain scans of Parkinson’s patients show increases in a chemical messenger called dopamine, which leads to an improvement in symptoms when patients think — mistakenly — that they are receiving real therapy.
‘Pain is not in the muscles or the arm that may be injured. The pain is in our brains.’
— Dr. Sean Mackey
Stanford University
And studies in depressed patients like Park have found that almost as many are helped by placebo treatments as by actual medications. In fact, as it turns out, a person’s response to placebo treatment may offer clues as to whether “real” treatments with antidepressants are likely to work.
Researchers are just starting to appreciate the power that the mind can have over the body, says Tor Wager, an assistant professor of psychology at Columbia University.
“An emerging idea right now is that belief in a placebo taps into processes in your brain that produce physical results that really shape how your body responds to things,” he says. “The brain has much more control over the body than we can voluntarily exert.”
INTERACTIVE
• The brain
An interactive road map to the mind
As an example of this, Wager points to the body’s response to perceived threats.
“Say it’s late at night and everything is quiet and then suddenly you see someone outside, near a window,” he explains. “Your body starts to respond. Your pupils dilate. Your heart rate goes up. You start to sweat.”
The belief that something threatening is out there produces a host of physical responses that you have little control over. If you were told to calm down and turn off these sensations, you couldn’t, Wager says. “But if the belief changes — say, it turns out that it’s just your husband coming home — the physical response changes.”
The question, now, is how to tap into these powerful, unconscious responses, Wager says.
MSNBC contributor
Updated: 5:22 p.m. ET Aug 21, 2006
Even though medical researchers told Chuck Park that he might be getting a sugar pill, the 30-year-old software producer was pretty sure he was getting the real thing. Just a few weeks into the clinical trial, Park’s depression started to lift. He began to feel less anxious and sad.
So when Park learned he’d been taking a placebo all along, it was a surprise.
“I was fully expecting to receive the real drug even though I knew that the placebo was a possibility,” remembers Park of Culver City, Calif. “I guess I wanted it to work — and in a way, it did.
For years, scientists have looked at the placebo effect as just a figment of overactive patient imaginations. Sure, dummy medications seemed to curb epileptic seizures, lower blood pressure, soothe migraines and smooth out jerky movements in Parkinson's — but these people weren't really better. Or so scientists thought.
Now, using PET scanners and MRIs to peer into the heads of patients who respond to sugar pills, researchers have discovered that the placebo effect is not "all in patients' heads" but rather, in their brains. New research shows that belief in a dummy treatment leads to changes in brain chemistry.
"There have always been people who have said that we could make ourselves better by positive thinking,” says Dr. Michael Selzer, professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. “After pooh-poohing this for years, here are studies that show that our thoughts may actually interact with the brain in a physical way."
New insights into how placebos work may even help scientists figure out how to harness the effect and teach people to train their own brains to help with healing.
Mind over brain matter
Recent reports show that anticipation of relief from a placebo can lead to an actual easing of aches, when the brain makes more of its own pain-dousing opiates. Brain scans of Parkinson’s patients show increases in a chemical messenger called dopamine, which leads to an improvement in symptoms when patients think — mistakenly — that they are receiving real therapy.
‘Pain is not in the muscles or the arm that may be injured. The pain is in our brains.’
— Dr. Sean Mackey
Stanford University
And studies in depressed patients like Park have found that almost as many are helped by placebo treatments as by actual medications. In fact, as it turns out, a person’s response to placebo treatment may offer clues as to whether “real” treatments with antidepressants are likely to work.
Researchers are just starting to appreciate the power that the mind can have over the body, says Tor Wager, an assistant professor of psychology at Columbia University.
“An emerging idea right now is that belief in a placebo taps into processes in your brain that produce physical results that really shape how your body responds to things,” he says. “The brain has much more control over the body than we can voluntarily exert.”
INTERACTIVE
• The brain
An interactive road map to the mind
As an example of this, Wager points to the body’s response to perceived threats.
“Say it’s late at night and everything is quiet and then suddenly you see someone outside, near a window,” he explains. “Your body starts to respond. Your pupils dilate. Your heart rate goes up. You start to sweat.”
The belief that something threatening is out there produces a host of physical responses that you have little control over. If you were told to calm down and turn off these sensations, you couldn’t, Wager says. “But if the belief changes — say, it turns out that it’s just your husband coming home — the physical response changes.”
The question, now, is how to tap into these powerful, unconscious responses, Wager says.
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Comments
I had this one friend who took anti-depressants...sure while on them she was obviously more cheery but once off them the circle just completed itself and she once again faced the demon that led to her "depression" and needed more drugs and the cycle still continues....my advice is deal with what makes you depressed.....not sedate yourself into a false sense of happiness....
See to me anti-depressants offer a false road to help.....I believe you need to combat the issue in your sober mind.....its like getting repeadly hammered when your g/f dumps you to deal with the sadness....until you stop drinking and confront the problem the saddness will remain...
The mind is one area of the human body that is so interesting and has so many question marks? But from your education you undoubtly already believe that?
I agree with you to some extent, but in the course of my work I've met many really good people battling a terrible illness, and these people placed all their stock in a medication treatment. Agree with them or no, if they believe that this is what they must do to get better, then they must do it. Antidepressants do absolutely nothing for some, but save the lives of others ... Some people don't buy into psychological or lifestyle treatments, and with these folks, you have to work within the treatment model they are comfortable with. The alternative is to let them continue to suffer.
I guess I agree with what you are saying...to believe that there is only solution would be pretty naive (for the big picture)....but for me I tend to deal with things more quickly and efficiently in my sober mind.....but I guess different strokes for different folks....
Absolutely, I agree with you 100% here. They aren't the only option, and no evidence suggests that they are the best option.
Is it possible that extensive and long treatments of psychotherapies can permentaly alter brain chemistry to create a permanent state of disillusion?
In all honestly, I would think so, although it hasn't been tested. By disillusion, do you mean a distorted sense of reality? Psychotherapies do indeed alter brain chemistry as well as other biological processes such as metabolism ...
Yeah as I was getting at earlier that these drugs will pave a false road of mental security (ie. damn I'm not depressed anymore) until they go off them and face their problems again...but yeah with the extended and extensive treatment could it be possible that this false paved road somewhat becomes permenant and they are I guess over their depression but only because they changed their brain chemisry...which to me is creating a false sense of security...I guess distorted sense of reality would be applicable because they are over a problem not naturally but artifically.....but then again if they are over their depression I guess it worked...but for me it does not seem right....seems like we are deceiving the mind into accepting a false reality (one with no depression) instead of having the mind learn and heal properly from dealing with the source of the depression itself...meaning the mind learns nothing from the ordeal because it was inherently changed to go around the source instead of through-it.....sorry kinda of jumbled thoughts into one....
You've hit on a key distinction, I think ... Treating symptoms versus effecting deeper changes in one's life or personality or what have you. Some people are more concerned with the former, but I agree with you, in that the latter is ultimately a ... I don't know ... More worthy goal, in the long run?
The exact reason I will never go on these types of drugs...too many unknowns....but like I said I tend to handle everything on my own and do well at it....for me though I would be more concerned with the latter.....