The Placebo Effect

By: B. Schwartzman Lucio

The ‘Placebo Effect’ is when a person’s physical or mental health seems to improve after taking a placebo (an inert) treatment. For example, a person might take pills for a headache, and with time, that person may begin to associate pain relief with those pills. The phenomenon predicts that if this person receives a similar pill, but that contains no medication, they will likely report decreased pain, due to this association.  The Placebo Effect illustrates how powerful the human mind is. 
A quote by Wayne Dyer can illustrate: “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change”.  In the case mentioned above, if you perceive the headache pill as being a pain killer, eventually, your mind will associate the pill with relief, and even if it does not have the medical power to cease pain, your mind may do the job in decreasing the headache pain.  
For several years, the Placebo Effect was considered a failure in medical studies. However, researchers have been recently considering the potential of the Placebo Effect as a remedy itself. What happens is that the brain anticipates the outcome and can promote the body’s well-being regardless of the medications contained in the appropriate pills. In this process, the human body can magically create natural chemical reactions.  
Nowadays, many people are dependent on strong prescription medication such as Zolpidem, which is an addictive sleep medication. Many people feel that they cannot sleep without these strong medications. Although this might be true at first, many times, being able to sleep becomes associated with the pill. These pills are especially destructive and addictive in the long-term, being able to cause memory loss, impaired coordination and alter synaptic activity. Other side effects may include anxiety and depression. 
As many begin to discover the side effects of sleep medication and attempt to cease their use, they find it hard as their brains associate quality sleep with the consumption of sleep pills. Scientists now experiment and investigate whether the Placebo Effect and the use of placebo medication can substitute sleep medication and still provide users with quality sleep. 
Still, whilst the real efficacy of placebo medications remains unknown, it is known that our mind is our most powerful tool, being to help us, but trick us, whether it is for good, or for bad.   ​