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Sheer Brilliance: The Placebo Effect
Posted:
Thu Jan 24, 2013 8:35 amby DoomYoshi
http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/01/the-placebo-phenomenonFor those who don't want to click the link, here is the opening paragraph:
Two weeks into Ted Kaptchuk’s first randomized clinical drug trial, nearly a third of his 270 subjects complained of awful side effects. All the patients had joined the study hoping to alleviate severe arm pain: carpal tunnel, tendinitis, chronic pain in the elbow, shoulder, wrist. In one part of the study, half the subjects received pain-reducing pills; the others were offered acupuncture treatments. And in both cases, people began to call in, saying they couldn’t get out of bed. The pills were making them sluggish, the needles caused swelling and redness; some patients’ pain ballooned to nightmarish levels. “The side effects were simply amazing,” Kaptchuk explains; curiously, they were exactly what patients had been warned their treatment might produce. But even more astounding, most of the other patients reported real relief, and those who received acupuncture felt even better than those on the anti-pain pill. These were exceptional findings: no one had ever proven that acupuncture worked better than painkillers. But Kaptchuk’s study didn’t prove it, either. The pills his team had given patients were actually made of cornstarch; the “acupuncture” needles were retractable shams that never pierced the skin. The study wasn’t aimed at comparing two treatments. It was designed to compare two fakes.
Re: Sheer Brilliance: The Placebo Effect
Posted:
Sat Jan 26, 2013 2:30 amby nietzsche
The power of belief is nothing new.
Blisters on hypnotized persons who are told they are being touched with a burning cigarette when they are in fact being touched with a finger, no blister on those who are told they're being touched with a finger when they are actually being burned with a cigarette.
Re: Sheer Brilliance: The Placebo Effect
Posted:
Sat Jan 26, 2013 3:39 amby Gillipig
Another thing I find interesting is that when you're depressed your body lowers it's immune system, thus opening up to get sick. Just think of that in evolutionary terms, how did it ever become successful (or not detrimental enough to pose a risk to your survival.) to purposely lower your immune system? It's an interesting line of thinking and I can think of quite many different theories.
(this is not posed as an argument against the validity of evolution)
Re: Sheer Brilliance: The Placebo Effect
Posted:
Sat Jan 26, 2013 3:47 amby BigBallinStalin
Gillipig wrote:Another thing I find interesting is that when you're depressed your body lowers it's immune system, thus opening up to get sick. Just think of that in evolutionary terms, how did it ever become successful (or not detrimental enough to pose a risk to your survival.) to purposely lower your immune system? It's an interesting line of thinking and I can think of quite many different theories.
(this is not posed as an argument against the validity of evolution)
Does prolonged stress cause the immune system to become less effective, or does being depressed do so?
Re: Sheer Brilliance: The Placebo Effect
Posted:
Sat Jan 26, 2013 5:06 amby aage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_(House)
Give people a reason to complain and they will. Give them no reason and they will find one anyway.
Another thing I find interesting is that when you're depressed your body lowers it's immune system, thus opening up to get sick. Just think of that in evolutionary terms, how did it ever become successful (or not detrimental enough to pose a risk to your survival.) to purposely lower your immune system? It's an interesting line of thinking and I can think of quite many different theories.
Around the time they started giving people vaccines.
Also, I would argue that this is a pro-evolutionary argument and modern society simply beat the system.
Re: Sheer Brilliance: The Placebo Effect
Posted:
Sat Jan 26, 2013 9:27 amby kentington
When a male mandrill is the dominant male he produces more color and testosterone. If he is defeated he will lose testosterone and produce less color.
I wonder if we don't make that job interview or we get made fun of, if our hormone levels change similarly.
Re: Sheer Brilliance: The Placebo Effect
Posted:
Sat Jan 26, 2013 2:13 pmby Gillipig
aage wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_(House)
Give people a reason to complain and they will. Give them no reason and they will find one anyway.
Another thing I find interesting is that when you're depressed your body lowers it's immune system, thus opening up to get sick. Just think of that in evolutionary terms, how did it ever become successful (or not detrimental enough to pose a risk to your survival.) to purposely lower your immune system? It's an interesting line of thinking and I can think of quite many different theories.
Around the time they started giving people vaccines.
Also, I would argue that this is a pro-evolutionary argument and modern society simply beat the system.
Evolution works in much greater durations of time. The human genome has not changed almost anything over the last few hundred years. Whatever the reason it will have it's origin in prehistoric time.
Re: Sheer Brilliance: The Placebo Effect
Posted:
Sat Jan 26, 2013 6:26 pmby TA1LGUNN3R
iirc your immune system is suppressed by stress because the hormonal reactions to stress are part of the sympathetic nervous response (for example the famous adrenaline "fright, fight, or flight"); the sympathetic nervous response serves to "prioritize" functions needed for immediate response. Under continual activation (like stress or depression), it leads to problems with your immune system and ulcers and such (example of SNS slowing down gastric function by retarding alkaline production which counters the HCl of the stomach).
I don't think it's an actual evolutionary benefit, just a by-product of how modern life doesn't mesh well with our more primal history.
-TG