This is Cynthia Sue Larson
with RealityShifters.com. I'm also the author of this book,
"Quantum Jumps: An Extraordinary Science of Happiness and Prosperity."
Today I'm here to talk to you about how you can flourish with the placebo effect.
If you think back to a time when you were a child and your mom
or your parent or caregiver kissed a "boo-boo" better--
maybe you had skinned your knee, or fallen down or something--then that was probably one of
your earliest experiences with the placebo effect.
The word 'placebo' comes from Latin, which means 'I shall please.'
In the Middle Ages, this word was used to refer to
hired professional mourners. When someone passed away,
they would be hired to come and grieve as if
that was their own loved one who had passed away. So
this idea of placebo has this fake sense to it,
however that's been changing recently, as
a great deal research is coming forward to show that there is something
called 'the placebo effect,' and that effect can have a positive
impact on your life.
The first time that this was originally utilized in the field
of medicine goes back to a time right after World War II,
when a doctor named Henry Beecher was working with
injured soldiers after World War II--in the midst of
World War Ii, rather--and they needed to get morphine, but there was no morphine
to give them.
They were short on supply, as a lot of things were rationed in
those times. So with the rations being so short, Henry Beecher's nurse
applied saline solution, which is basically salt, and
Henry Beecher watched as this soldier
basically was able to go through surgery as
if he'd received morphine. He was not going into shock, he was not feeling the
pain
like one would expect someone to do. So he then
continued to notice after the war that this effect is pretty powerful,
giving saline injections to people
and telling them that they should now start feeling better. So that placebo
effect
has been noticed not just with saline injections, but also with things like sugar
pills, which you might have heard of,
and this this placebo effect has become
more and more powerful over time. In fact,
Arthur Barsky, Director of psychiatric research at Brigham and Women's Hospital
in Boston
notes that the placebo response was about twice as powerful
as it was in the 1980s. So what's causing something that was originally envisioned
as a way to
compare efficacy of real medical treatments like surgery,
saline injections--that's not medicine-- but morphine for example,
or pills into something that's working
somewhere between 35 to 75 percent of the time?
That's a great question. But the effect is not going
unnoticed by doctors, because another survey recently showed that 97 percent
of Family Physicians
have definitely given and prescribed
placebos to at least one of their patients.
Looking into some of the research into what's going on? Why is this happening?
It has to do with your belief. Belief is a big, powerful thing. It's not what you
think--it's what you believe.
It's something deeper than thought itself. “Your belief that
you’re going to get better, your attitude, does influence how you feel."
These are the words of Randi McCabe, director of the Anxiety
Treatment and Research Center at St. Joseph’s Healthcare
in Ontario. I'd love to tell you about surgery too, because it also works
for arthroscopic knee surgery. Dr. Moseley, back in 1994,
who's the team physician for the Houston Rockets, observed
much to his surprise--because he was not expecting this result--that
people who were first initially given arthroscopic knee surgery
in placebo form--in other words even he didn't now
which of these military veterans were going to be getting
the "just scrub it up, knock them out so
they were given an anesthetic so the patient was
under the effect of anesthesia, then
there was an incision made, the knee was sort of cleaned out, possibly.
Things were done, so it looked like something happened, but there was nothing
of any medical impact performed.
Amazingly, a lot of these people got better. And those improvements lasted for
years,
so people could play basketball with their grandchildren and so forth.
This has also been noticed
for another kind of surgery, and that would be for Parkinson's disease.
So placebo surgery is extremely powerful for both of
those two conditions. And if placebos are so powerful,
then what do we know about how they work? This is where
it gets into some research being done at the Harvard-affiliated Program In
Placebo Studies
and the Therapeutic Encounter--it's called PIPS--
in Boston Massachusetts. Millions of dollars are now being spent to find out
what's behind this amazing placebo effect
where people are told and are given verbal instructions sometimes--
for example for test takers--
that they will be seeing the correct answer flashing on the screen
in between the multiple choice questions that they are receiving. So they can
therefore get a little bit of an edge. So when people were told that, their scores
improved,
again by something like forty percent.
These are facts that I cover in great detail in my book, "Quantum Jumps," because I
get into the
possible explanation for what is going on? How could we explain something
like this placebo effect that is getting stronger and stronger
even when you tell people that they're being given a placebo?
Which is amazing. So I'd like you to think about how you can
make use of this. I talk a little bit more about that in the book, "Quantum Jumps,"
which is full of dozens of different laboratory-tested,
scientifically proven ways you can
utilize the power of a lot of this research that is showing
that your beliefs can really change the world. I'd like you think about that and
keep asking, "How good can it get?" Until next time,
this is Cynthia Sue Larson with RealityShifters.com
Thanks!