The Placebo Effect

After browsing the radio lab website for a few minutes my eyes stopped at the title "Placebo". The reason this interests me is because I swear I have been prescribed every drug in the pharmacy and I am sure I have taken a placebo before. The placebo effect is when you think you are being healed but the treatment given to you is actually a lie. Although the treatment whether it a drug or hypnosis isn't truthful, it still works a lot of the time. It is like when you were a child and had a boo boo and you would run to your mom and ask her to kiss it. Immediately the pain would go away and you would continue playing in the sandbox. I remember always thinking I was going to throw up because I had a huge fear of vomit. I would run into my parents room and my dad would give me an "exam". He would poke my tummy and look inside my mouth with a flashlight and say I was fine. After the exam I could go to bed. The hosts tell many stories about the times the placebo effect worked on patients. One man apprenticed for some Shamans and learned their secretive ways to trick patients into thinking they were cured. It is not always the patients who are effected it is also the doctors. One man cured a boy with an incurable skin disease that covered all of his arms by using hypnosis. After showing off his achievement a notable doctor told him it was impossible because the disease was INCURABLE. After that day he tried many times to cure many other patients with the same disease. It didn't work. Why didn't it work? The word "incurable" stuck in the doctor's head so when he went to hypnotize patients he was lacking confidence. Patients come to doctors for that reassurance and confidence. 

A life without drugs would be fabulous. I was excited to learn that the human brain already contains all the components of every drug in the world, even opium to relieve pain, so we don't even need to take in more. Placebos can help ween people off of drugs they are addicted to so they won't have as many withdrawals. I become dependent on my prescribed drugs because they make me feel safe since I have been on different ones since 5th grade. I don't think the drugs are good for me or work at all. I believe that it is the comfort of a doctor telling you that the medicine will make you better that can trick your mind into feeling better.