Memory isn’t the most reliable thing in the world. But with unwarranted confidence, I just know that a classmate told me this unsettling story as a kid.
They were giving an example of their supposedly dramatic younger sibling. Allegedly, one day, this child swore they were sick and needed to stay home from school. I don’t remember the specific reason why, but I’m guessing some sort of ache – tummy, head, etc.
The mom, not trusting their little manipulator, gave them something inert and told them it was medicine. When the mother asked the younger sibling if the “medicine” worked, they said yes and thanked her for it.
That was a mistake.
The jig was up. The child was caught faking an illness, or at least exaggerating a minor one. The fake medicine trick was clear evidence for it, and my classmate was proud of their mother for being such a clever plaintiff.
Now, I’m not one to get uptight about lying to children. When I substitute taught at an elementary school, I heard plenty of useful lies. My personal favorite was when teachers told students they should be on their best behavior since the cameras in the school kept track of them. In reality, the kids weren’t under much surveillance. A rumba with a tripod would’ve covered more ground.
But as a kid, when I gave a chuckle of approval to this story, I was secretly uncomfortable. This was mostly because I sympathized with the storyteller’s younger sibling. I would also, on occasion, treat a stomach ache like it was a stomach flu. And the thought that my mom may try such a trick on me was paranoia-inducing. I didn’t want to be outed for my exaggerations and duped into attending school!
What is the Placebo Effect?
As an adult who knows a little more, this story troubles me for a different reason: This mom may have made their kid feel guilty for lying, when really they just experienced a common phenomenon known as the placebo effect.
Recently, I listened to a podcast where a psychiatrist mentioned some studies from Harvard on the placebo effect. I was intrigued, so I went down a deep rabbit hole researching it. My motivation was twofold: I was fascinated by what I was learning and I wanted to figure out if this kid was really a liar.
Now that I’ve resurfaced, the way I think about the placebo effect has changed completely. It’s more powerful, common, and useful than I assumed it to be.
The placebo effect occurs when someone feels better after receiving a placebo, which is a treatment that has no effect on the body. Placebos can vary, but one simple and common example is sugar pills. For some reason, people can feel better after taking them despite the fact that, physically, they’re about as effective as an earnail.
Why Do Placebos Work?
But because of their psychological effect, placebos make people feel better. In a TedTalk, Ted Kaptchuk, Harvard’s director of placebo studies (and a recurring name in this post), suggested a reason why. At TedMed, Ted said that the brain can function as a prediction machine. This means that just like we can see a shadow at night and react as if it’s an animal, we can receive a sugar pill and react as if it’s medicine.
In his TedTalk, Kaptchuk explains further that the placebo effect involves everything that surrounds a pharmaceutical. Meaning, the prescription the doctor gives a patient isn’t the only valuable service the doctor provides. Care from a trusted expert, attention from someone who wants to help us, and anything else we associate with getting better contributes to our improvement. In fact, a 2008 study by Kaptchuk and other researchers suggested that surrounding factors, like care and attention, can be effective without medicine.
That being said, don’t count on placebos to cure diseases. They can make people feel better, but they don’t impact the sources of disease within the body. According to an article from Harvard Medical School, placebos “have been most effective for conditions like pain management, stress-related insomnia, and cancer treatment side effects like fatigue and nausea.” The common thread between these conditions: they’re controlled by the brain.
To impact sources of disease within the body, treatments need to target them. This often means they need active ingredients. For example, penicillin functions as an antibiotic by attaching itself to bacterial cell walls and breaking them down.
Placebos, on the other hand, don’t function well as antibiotics. If they did, medieval doctors would’ve had much more success against The Bubonic Plague with things like bloodletting and induced urination.
The Placebo Effect Needs Better Public Relations
If the placebo effect somehow had a public relations firm, that firm would work night and day to convince the public that the placebo effect doesn’t have to involve a trick. I imagine such a campaign would involve serious reassurance, not unlike when Dominos established that employees shoving cheese up their own nostrils before serving it to customers was below company standards.
In 2010, a study led by Ted Kaptchuk demonstrated exactly what that firm would need.
In this study, people suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome were separated into two groups. One group received what’s called an open placebo. They were essentially told “this is a placebo, but placebos can make you feel better.” The other group received nothing. On average, the study participants who knowingly took a placebo got better than those who took nothing.
Studies like this, and there are more of them, are a complete game-changer. They prove that not all ways of “doing nothing” are equal.
(They also suggest that the alleged lying child from the story at the beginning of this post had an appropriate reaction to a placebo. Their response to fake medicine doesn’t prove they were faking an illness. However, that’s assuming they really had an illness to be treated for in the first place… this case is unsolvable. I digress.)
From the pharmacists’ perspective, placebos do nothing. But from the patient’s perspective, they alleviate symptoms. Of course, medicine is more effective than placebos. But research has shown the gap between medicine and placebos to be smaller than we may expect.
You Can Use the Placebo Effect
Because of research showing the effectiveness of open placebos, experts talk about placebos a little differently than the public. For example, in the Harvard Medical article mentioned above, there’s a section called “give yourself a placebo.”
The section title may sound confusing without knowledge of open-placebos and their effectiveness. But with such knowledge, it’s more enticing than a TV salesperson’s offer of a free meat thermometer with the purchase of a non-stick pan.
In that section, habits like healthy eating, meditation, yoga, and more are listed as ways we can leverage the placebo effect for ourselves. These habits do not entirely derive their benefits from the placebo effect. But according to the article, the attention and support we give ourselves while performing them makes them even better for us.
The Extra Benefit of Self-Care
Take yoga as an example. If I do yoga each morning, I will gain flexibility and strength. These benefits come from stretching, twisting, and challenging different parts of the body. The placebo effect has little to do with these results. But I may also experience psychological benefits from yoga, like optimism and confidence. We know exercise helps the brain, but the placebo effect may deserve some recognition for this too.
The major reason why is that I am setting aside time to take care of myself. By doing this, I’m resembling what Kaptchuk and colleagues tested in 2008, but receiving care from myself instead of a medical professional. Additionally, I’m paying a great deal of attention to myself as I try to enjoy the benefits of warrior pose without stumbling into my furniture and waking my downstairs neighbors.
The result of this care and attention will be that after finishing a yoga session, I feel supported and consequently uplifted. This outcome follows many self-care activities. Beyond their measurable effects – strength from weightlifting, healthier skin from a face mask, laughter from sitcom reruns – self-care activities provide us with evidence that we care about ourselves.
Evidence that someone cares, whether it’s a medical professional, a loved one, or ourselves, encourages us and enhances our lives. Therefore, it’s only logical that I accidentally wake my neighbors each morning until my unsuccessful headstands become successful.