The placebo effect is something that I feel is commonly heard of, and I believe it is one of most powerful examples of just how influential the mind is. Whenever people say “it’s just in your head” or “it’s all about attitude” when approaching a new situation, I personally believe there is some truth to it. It also ties into the idea that “hope” is a commonality shared by successful psychotherapies (as well as a protected setting and therapeutic alliance, as discussed in Lecture 19). Just having some kind of hope or faith in something is all one needs for an outcome to be better. It is also why, even though I do not consider myself as a religious individual, I believe in the power of religion, the idea of a belief system, and the importance of a spiritual lifestyle.
Anyways, the placebo effect is essentially when the expectations can strongly influence one’s behavior. I stumbled into a perfect example only a couple days ago on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGDMXvdwN5c.
In this video, Dove takes a sample of women and gives them a “patch” that is supposed to make them more beautiful. Throughout the course of a month, each woman is given an assignment to do a daily video blog while on the patch. By the end of the trial, each woman felt more beautiful than when they originally came in. When they find out that the patch did absolutely nothing chemically or biologically to them, they all realized that it was their attitude all along that made them more confident in how they looked. This confidence and self-esteem was all that was required for them to be happy about themselves. The patch acted as a placebo for this confidence and self-esteem.
After coming to college, I noticed that I had been sick more often than I had ever been in high school. Of course, most people’s reactions were because I was living in a stuffy dorm, or I was just not washing my hands enough or something (which is completely false). But another huge factor that kept coming up was stress – a completely environmental factor that was nowhere but IN MY HEAD. So, as stupid as this sounds, when someone sneezes too close to my face or I start to get the early symptoms of a cold, I tell myself that I am confident in my immune system and I have been through enough sicknesses throughout my life that my body can fight this off. It is not my body’s problem so much as my head’s problem of how to perceive a mild, sore throat. Do I blow it out of proportion or do I just let the symptoms pass? So yes, some sicknesses are genuine and I cannot stop them because I just say so, but when I truly believe that I will not get sick, I generally don’t! In conclusion, the mind is a truly powerful thing and can be seen through examples like the placebo effect.
The Placebo effect has always fascinated me. I’ve also used it for my own selfish purposes. For instance, whenever I get sick I simply try to convince myself that I’m not sick and I start to feel better. The same works the other way, however. If I really want to be sick then I’ll start thinking I am sick and begin to feel worse. The mind is a powerful thing and can sometimes be a real jerk about it when it comes to influencing your current state of well-being.
Just before learning about the placebo effect in class I cam across and interesting article on placebo buttons. It’s weird to think that people create fake buttons or ones that don’t work just to satisfy us because we think we are making a difference. This article isn’t about medicine but shows the placebo effect none the less. I never knew elevator buttons didn’t actually work and some thermostats didn’t actually control the heat but were put there so we think we are making a difference of changing something by hitting the button but it actual does nothing, yet we believe it does and our mind is satisfied. Shows there’s always more under the surface of everything, or nothing is there at all in this case. Can’t trust anything though ya know. Even buttons have us fooled. Here’s a link the article in case you’re interested. Courtesy of stumbleupon.com
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2QkHks/youarenotsosmart.com/2010/02/10/placebo-buttons/
The placebo effect had a huge impact on my life. Especially on my allergy reaction when its allergy season. At some point while I’m thinking about this, I would know for sure that I’ll get sick and I have to deal it. Even though I always try to be more careful in those seasons by taking vitamins and stuff, but it did not help at all. However, when I go back home I rarely get sick. I couldn’t understand this before, but after knowing the placebo effect and how it works on us, it definitly explained a lot to me.
After reading your post, I found it very interesting what happened in the Dove commercial. I never realized how much the placebo effect actually worked on people. I find it so interesting after watching that video how much our brains can trick us into believing something! It really is so crazy, same with all the medications that we can take that are placebos that trick our brains such as the placebo pills for birth control.
Also when you talked about getting sick in college and stuff, I completely understand what you are saying! My room mate had bronchitis for a while and I was determined that I was not going to get sick so I just kept taking my vitamins and vitamin C pills, I was positive that was going to keep me from getting sick, which is silly because I do not believe that just doing those would prevent me from actually catching what she had. But somehow I did not catch what she had even when she had bronchitis untreated for two weeks, and strep. So crazy that our brains can trick us to keep ourselves healthy!
I’ve noticed that recently, I think the concept of seasonal allergies has been partly skewed (at least for my allergies!) and I think they are a lot worse than they might be. When I came to college I had seasonal allergies that I had to take OTC medication for every once in a while on heavy pollen days. My roommate throughout these four years has gotten sick constantly, often blaming her allergies. Mine have progressively gotten worse, but this spring- an exceptionally bad year for seasonal allergies- I have minor symptoms. I don’t see my roommate a lot, as she is at an internship rather than the school, and I think that her constant sickness always made me feel sick- very similar to what everyone else is saying! It seems so strange that something like sickness can occur just because you think it is going to! The placebo effect really is a strong thing.
I completely agree with the post. I never truly learned what the Placebo effect was until this year. All throughout my childhood, if i thought something hurt, I was sick, or simply that something was wrong in general my dad would always tell me it was “in my head.” I never believed him because how could a physical pain or problem be simply in my head. I think it is insane how one’s mind can have so much control over physical things. I guess that is why the saying is “mind over matter.” I find it so interesting that you say when you feel yourself getting a cold you will tell yourself you can fight it. Similarly, I have found myself doing the same thing. I have found myself getting sick more often in college, and I have oddly found myself saying in my head things like no you’re not getting sick or you are really fine its all in your head.
Wow. That video was extremely inspiring and it made me happy to see that all those women were able to believe in their inner beauty all on their own through an experiment using the placebo effect; it actually amazing how one simple thought can affect the outcome of something. I can also relate to your sickness that you believed was coming from your mind. I was the same way, if someone would cough really loud near me I would be so nervous that I would get sick, as well as with my roommate because she gets sick A LOT and sometimes I think it is all in her head.
One week I decided to try something out with her unaware of the fact that I was planning my own placebo effect experiment. She came home from a party and told me she drank off of someone who was really sick. The next morning she was 100 percent sure she was already sick, so I offered to buy her some “medicine” (crushed up candy that had a common medicine-like taste, which I let soak in water so the water would taste like medicine). Sure enough when I gave her the “medicine” and she was able to sleep on the “sickness”, she felt a lot better the next day. Just the thought of having medicine that could prevent her from getting sick was enough to “cure” her. When I told her that the medicine was not actually medicine, we enjoyed a good laugh and I told her that she needed to stop assuming she is always sick or going to get sick.
I really enjoyed this post. Dove is known for doing campaigns to inspire women to believe in their inner beauty. It also really is an excellent example of the placebo effect. It really is crazy how our influential our minds are on our bodies and emotions. I did a little research of the placebo effect and a huge part of it seems to be expectations and conditioning. People expect placebo drugs to function like real drugs, so their brains produce more dopamine which is associated with pleasure and reward. Then, people begin to associate the placebo with the pleasure and easing of their symptoms through the process of classical conditioning.1 The placebo effect once again demonstrates how influential our minds are over our whole health.
1 http://www.brainfacts.org/sensing-thinking-behaving/mood/articles/2012/the-power-of-the-placebo/
This is very interesting how they reacted throughout the month. I am more surprised that Dove went along with this idea, given that they are a beauty care company. Relating to your coughing story. Are you sure it may just be a coincidence that you just happen notice. I’ve thought about that before, but after observing in classes through different seasons, I’ve seen that at least a couple people have the cough at some point of the class.
I never thought about applying the placebo effect in my own life. I live in supplemental and when one of my five roommates got sick, I immediately loaded up on cold medicine because I figured I would get sick as well, and soon enough, I did. However, normally, at home, I rarely got sick even with just the common cold. I took all of those emergen-C packets and honestly, I didn’t get sick. Granted it could’ve been just luck, but I was convinced my emergen-C was protecting me. In hind sight, it was probably just the placebo effect.
I never thought about applying the placebo effect in my own life. It probably explains why I felt sick all the time during this winter. I live in supplemental and when one of my five roommates got sick, I immediately loaded up on cold medicine because I figured I would get sick as well, and soon enough, I did. However, normally, at home, I rarely got sick even with just the common cold, so I definitely am now thinking it was because of the placebo effect.
I was lucky enough to stay relatively healthy when living in the dorms, but I got sick a few times when I lived in my fraternity house. We all ate the same food, used the same bathrooms and were around each other constantly. Whenever one person got sick everyone got nervous and thought the sickness would spread. I think this was mainly due to the placebo effect. After one person got a cough, 6 other people would have a cough the next day. I told myself that a disease was not spreading and was not worried about catching the sickness. In most cases I was right and would not get sick. There was one instance when our cook severed us undercooked chicken though. When I threw up that night in my bed and went down stairs to find 4 other people throwing up I knew it wasn’t just the placebo effect!