The Magical & Mysterious Placebo Effect

What does it mean to "believe" in something, and what does this have to do with something actually happening? According to one of my mom's cheesy Hallmark movies, simply believing in the spirit of Christmas will get you a soulmate, a job promotion, and will help you save some small quaint town from greedy city businesspeople. Now, I wouldn't say this is the most realistic example of how believing can manifest results, but there is a small kernel of truth in the absurdity. This real-life magic trick has the fitting name of "the placebo effect," and lucky for you, I am a magician who keeps no secrets. Let me explain to you how it works.

PLACEBO POWER

A placebo is anything that seems like a real treatment or solution, but is actually useless and should (theoretically) have zero impact on you. Placebos can take many forms, such as a fake pill, shot, or any other type of "treatment." Despite the lack of any active substance or impactful component in a placebo, they can still sometimes have a noticeable effect on people who take them and believe them to be real treatments (known as the placebo effect). Weirdly enough, sometimes the group of people who take a placebo end up having better results than the group who took the actual medication!

As you could guess, the use of a control group with placebo treatment is a great element to have in many studies and can help establish credible proof that a medication is clinically significant (meaning it actually makes a sizeable difference in the patients' lives instead of just turning out good numbers on paper). Placebos have been shown to have a positive effects on conditions such as depression, pain, sleep disorders, irritable bowl syndrome, menopause, and more. The placebo effects also take the form of negative effects, so if you were told to expect undesirable side effects like nausea, headaches, or drowsiness, then you will probably experience them (even though all you took was a pill made of sugar).

In my humble opinion, one of the most fascinating things about placebos how even the smallest details like the color, shape, taste, and name of a pill can change what a person experiences. Studies have shown specific tastes to be attributed to certain colors (like pink pills tasting sweeter than red pills and yellow ones tasting salty, despite all the ingredients being the same), and these preferences may even be linked to a person's gender and/or age.

Here is a short 4-minute video about an experiment using decaf-coffee as a placebo to see if it would have the same effect on coordination as caffeine would have:

WHAT'S THE SECRET?

I'm sad to admit that the placebo effect isn't real magic or witchcraft or anything cool like that. The actual reason a placebo works is because of the relationship between our minds and physical bodies. As I've discussed in previous articles on this blog, our minds (such as perceptions of the world and cultural beliefs) can have a true impact on the way we experience things physically. So while it is true that we do not perfectly understand why they work, we do know that placebos can indeed lead to a neurobiological reaction including everything from increases in neurotransmitters associated with feeling good to increased activity in brain regions linked to moods, self awareness, and emotional reactions.

To translate: your brain basically tells your body to feel better (or worse), and your body listens to it!

Although many times placebos are taken by people who genuinely believe them to be real, some research indicates that this "belief" isn't even that necessary. Turns out, the ritual of seeing a doctor and taking medication (even when you know it to be a placebo) is enough to stir the body into taking action.

DAILY DOSES OF PLACEBO

Even if you are never asked to take a placebo for a research study, you have likely experienced the placebo effect in some form or another! Here are a few examples of some every-day placebo examples that people swear by:

"Walk" buttons at pedestrian crosswalks - although they once were functional, most modern push-to-walk buttons do nothing to alter how soon the lights change, pushing them just makes it feel like the lights are changing faster for you to go.
Oxygen masks in airplanes - they don't contain oxygen, but rather a combination of chemicals that mimic breathable oxygen when combined. Airlines do this to minimize the amount of combustible elements on board.
"Close Door" buttons on elevators - similar to the crosswalk buttons, it's mostly a dummy button that has no effect for typical passengers (however, they can be activated by certain workers and emergency personnel).
Office thermostats - big companies don't want to let employees messing with the heat as they please (because that would mean dishing out extra cash), but they also don't want their employees to complain about being locked out of the thermostat. So they install thermostats that look realistic enough but do absolutely nothing.
Product advertisements - surprise, surprise, commercials tell lies. Although sometimes new products actually do back up the results or improvements they promise, other times they trust the label to be enough to convince the consumer of it's authenticity.
Manifestation/Thinking positive thoughts - although from the psychological perspective, manifestation is less about speaking things into the universe and more about letting positive mindsets lead to positive physical effects, the fact remains that it works! So the next time you are thinking negative thoughts or expecting to fail at something, try to switch up the attitude and you will likely have better luck with whatever you are dealing with!

So, now you know the truth about the placebo effect! And since it can still work even if you don't believe in the magic of it, you can use it in your every-day life. Or at the very least, you can sound smart around your friends when you burst their bubbles about crosswalk and elevator buttons.