Placebo: The Miracle Cure

On a heavy rainy day, the watchman called me at night, complaining about pain and motions. He couldn’t walk, the pain was severe. He could barely move, a first aid kit was there in the office, I told him to search for the regular medication for motion and abdominal pain but he couldn’t find any. I knew very well that he will not be able to hold up for the whole night in that pain and the factory is located in a remote area hence finding the medicine at the night is both risky and troublesome for him. I took a few moments to decide, he told me the name of the medication which is there in the box. It was vitamin C, I told him to take the medication and told him to call me back in one hour. After one hour he did give me a call and his words were, “the medicine was too good it just cured everything in one hour”. The data is too small to comment on anything at all, but what it does point out is unavoidable. It points out the effects of Placebo in the real world. The placebo; Prof. Jeffery Mogil from McGill University calls it the “most interesting effect in medical science”. Research at various levels of clinical trials has proven that the placebos at times perform as well as the medicinal drug would do. So many scientists have given considerable time of their life in figuring out the usage of a placebo, nocebo, and sham treatments. A study conducted in the year 2012 to find out the efficacy of albuterol showed that the patients who were given a placebo or sham treatment reported equal relief in breathing as compared to the effects of albuterol. However, when the quantitative measurement of the FEV1 value was taken, it was found that albuterol was performing 3x better than the placebo and sham treatment.

In the deeper finding, we have concluded that it is just not only the drug that cures the patient. The following factors are equally helpful in cure:

1.?????Expectation: When the drug or the placebo is administered, the brain expects the cure. Hence in return, it starts synthesizing the chemical which may help in cure.

2.?????Conditioning: Our body is conditioned in such a way that we start producing healing agents as soon as we are given a pill. It has been found that even if the patients were told that they have been given the placebo. Still, they showed equally good recovery than that of the real drug.

3.?????Drama: It has happened to us various times that we do not find a doctor or his setup impressive enough for the treatment and in return, it does not cure us at all. We go to another doctor who gives us the same medication and we show the sign of improvement in just one day.

4.?????The Stats: The body is always in the mode of repair and recovery, it tries its best, a placebo or no placebo the body will show a sign of improvement. But, at times stats do not do justice and we are unable to conclude that it is the body’s response against the disease.

Not only a placebo, but a good explanation about the treatment has also shown accelerated pain relief and recovery in patients. In a study, a small automatic infusion pump was hidden for administering a pain killer for one group, and for the other group, the doctor shared the information about the drug while administering the drug. It was found that the automatic infusion pump had to give double the dose of the doctor to produce the same levels of pain relief. The part of the brain waits for the information and correlates it with the provided treatment and produces better results stated by Ted Kaptchuk at Harvard University. In recent years the double-blinded studies for painkillers have shown very few good results and very few drugs have been found worthy enough of prescription. We accept it or reject it but we can not deny the effects of a placebo as said by an NIH surgeon. He has been doing fake surgeries on the patient where there is any idiopathic pain or malfunctioning of the organ. The data suggests that 75% of the fake surgeries showed equally good results.

The effects of a placebo can be found in pain-relieving, rehabilitation, etc. The most surprising effect of a placebo was found on the immune system of our body. In a study conducted in the year 2012 the participants were given sweet water and a corticosteroid pill, whenever the participants were given the corticosteroid pills, they showed a low immune response. Later, the corticosteroid pill was replaced with a Calcium pill still the production of the IL6 was lesser whenever they were given the calcium pill.

There are instances where it has been found that in augmenting conditioning the brain relieved the body from the symptoms with the help of the placebos. Dr. Kaptchuk says that we don’t completely understand how the brain processes pain and what pain means to someone.

A similar postulate has also been found applicable in the cases where there is no drug treatment like Reiki, Acupuncture, Cosmic Healing, etc. However, still, these parallel medication methodologies have been found equally helpful in curing and elevating the quality of life. Few doctors have also started to advocate for the prescription of placebo in case of pain in the US to avoid an opioid crisis. There are more than 100mn people in the US alone who are suffering from some of the other kinds of chronic pain. More than twenty thousand people die from an overdose of pain-relieving opioids every year in the US. To avoid the crisis the Obama Administration has allocated 1Bn USD for research and development of parallel methods for relieving the pain. The NIH and other national bodies think that it is too early to comment on the prescription of placebos.

Irrespective of its actual usage as a medication, the Placebo remains an important actor in the medical industry. Research and testing will unfold whether it deserved the status of prescription or not.