Does this sound like new age talk or pop psychology?

It’s not new at all and the medical establishment has been proving it for over 50 years, it’s called the placebo effect.

While some may shrug the placebo effect off as just nuisance in medical studies, think again.

The placebo effect is positive proof that the mind can heal the body. We are fully equipped with natural self healing mechanisms, we have all the right biological and neurological machinery to repair protein breaks, fight off heart disease, kill cancer cells, fight infections, retard ageing and balance our body weight.

Why is it you can give a person a sugar pill, a saline injection or perform a fake surgery and a certain percentage of those people will experience healing just like those who received the real drug, or real surgery?

The placebo effect is all in the mind

Scientific evidence on the placebo effect show that people are healed through thought alone. The belief that they were taking real medication but were actually taking placebo, caused changes in their brain to the degree that it looked like they were taking the real drug.

A 2001 study showed the powerful effects of placebo medication in treating Parkinson’s disease. The placebo induced the brain to produce more dopamine, known treatment for Parkinson’s, which was similar to that of real medication. 

So even though it’s in the mind, there are measurable and physiological changes occurring in the body.

Stories to make you believe in the power of the mind

A mock surgery was performed by Dr Bruce Moseley, an Orthopaedic surgeon, who set out to prove the effectiveness of his knee surgery. One group of patients underwent knee surgery. The second group were not surgically treated but were told they received knee surgery. They were sedated, had three incisions made and were sewn back up, but no actual surgical treatment was performed. As a result, the second (placebo) group of patients felt that their knee recovered as much as the first group of patients, however, the first group experienced more pain due to post-surgery recovery.

Randomised trial of women with polycystic ovarian syndrome found that 15% got pregnant while taking placebo compared to 22% who actually received the drug. Other studies have shown pregnancy rates as high as 40% in placebo groups.

A woman suffering severe nausea was offered a potent new drug and promised it would cure her nausea. Within a few minutes her nausea vanished and stomach contractions settled back to normal. Only what the doctors gave her was strong substance known to induce vomiting.

In another study, nearly half of asthmatic patients received symptom relief from a fake inhaler or sham acupuncture. Almost 40% of people with headaches and more than half of patients with ulcer pain received relief with placebo treatment. When compared to morphine, placebos given to patients in place of morphine were almost equally effective at treating pain.

The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) complied a database from the Spontaneous Remissions project, with 3500 case studies of miraculous healings with the placebo effect, showing seemingly incurable conditions, being cured. Diseases ranging from patients with stage 4 cancer who were cured spontaneously, HIV positive patient that became HIV negative, thyroid disease that healed without treatment, aneurysms, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune conditions and many more.

In the USA, 50% of doctors admit to using placebo in clinical practice, and 97% of doctors in the UK have also prescribed placebo medication.

So what is actually happening in the placebo response?

Professor of Physiology and Neuroscience at the University of Turin Medical School, Fabrizio Benedetti MD, lectures medical students and doctors about the placebo effect and adds that if a placebo is inert, it cannot cause an effect.

Professor Benedetti believes the placebo is made up of words, expectations, beliefs, mind-body relationship, rituals and meanings.

In a fascinating study performed by Harvard professor of Medicine, Ted Kaptchuk, he conducted a placebo study whereby the patients were actually told they were receiving an inert substance, a placebo. They still got better! He concluded that the nurturing care and support of the healthcare practitioner was actually facilitating the self-healing process in placebo studies, not just the ritual of taking medication.

There are different theories as to how we can change our bodies as a result of changes in thought, feelings and beliefs. Thinking positively about getting well stimulates your body’s natural endorphins, releases feel good hormones, which relieves symptoms, lifts moods and decreases pain.

Furthermore, believing you’ll get better and being nurtured by caring healthcare practitioners may also relieve stress by stimulating your relaxation responses, which is known to activate our self-healing systems.

If you missed my last post on the stress triggers, you can read it here

Change your mind, change your body! In my work I remind my patients about the possibility of healing, I challenge your current beliefs about self-healing and I help you find your own way to healing.

What are your beliefs about healing? How might you shift your beliefs to open the possibility of healing yourself? Leave comments below.

Look at for the next blog where I’ll discuss ways you can reduce the stress response in your body, stimulate the relaxation response and activate your self-healing systems.

Note: most background information on the placebo effect is taken from Fabrizio Benedetti’s book, Placebo effects: understanding the mechanisms in health and disease (Oxford University Press, 2009); Dr Lissa Rankins book Mind over medicine: scientific proof that you can heal yourself (Hayhouse, 2013) and, Dr Bernie Siegel’s book Love, Medicine and Miracles (Rider, 1999)