The Placebo Effect - Is it real or just imagined?

The placebo effect is a huge phenomenon in which patient’s symptoms are alleviated by a non-existent treatment, since the patient believes that they will get better and that the treatment will work. It is almost like healing your body with your mind because you get better since your brain really thinks you are better thanks to the treatment. In H.K Beecher’s study he concluded that 55% of the patients that took the placebo had improvement in their conditions. But when the Institute for Applied Theory and Methodologies in Health Care, in Frieburg, Germany decided to reedo the study done by Beecher they discovered that 66.7 percent of patients conditions inproved naturally and had nothing to do with the placebo, also patients that had the placebo had improvement in their conditions after six days, but they would recover after six days even if they were not given any placebo. Also they found that Beecher stated that patients improved after they were switched form the real medicine to the placebo, but reaserchers found that this was due to the fact that patients were experiencing side effects to the medication. And Beecher did not report the large number of people whos condition worsened due to the placebo, instead he only reported the people whos condition it improved. So in reality there was not evidence of a of the plavebo effect. Some problems experienced with these studies are psychosomatic problems, stress induced and conditioned responses. Although through some studies have concluded that the placebo effect is imaginary, I do believe that it is real. I do think that if in your mind you believe that you are going to get better you will because your mind has the power to influence the rest of your body. After the many videos we watched in class i do believe that there is a lot of evidence to prove that the placebo effect is real. I also believe that religious miracles have more to do with placebos and the power of your mind to heal you than the fact that it is a "miracle".



Sources:
http://www.chiro.org/nutrition/FULL/Debunking_the_Placebo.shtml
http://www.skepdic.com/placebo.html