Placebos were first given to patients who were thought to be malingering. When they seemed to improve on sugar pills, the doctor was then sure of it. Well, medical doctors hold a different view now. In some studies placebos deliver as much relief to decidedly ill patients as does standard medical treatment. It has only one explanation. The brain is able to think the body out of pain and illness.

The power of thought has been known since 1978, when scientists began studying placebo effects positively. Now the brain process has been mapped that underlies the action. When people expect pain to diminish, because a doctor tells them a pill or another type of treatment will do it, the expectation produces activity on the prefrontal cortex. That is the site of all our higher brain function. “From there other regions are activated to release the brain’s own opoids.” says Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin Medical School, a pioneer in placebo research.

Scientists have learned that it is not just a placebo but in the plural, with different mechanisms, each showing how high level mental functions control the actions of the lower level brain processes. For instance injecting an inert solution has relieved the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease. The doctor giving the patient an expectation of good results seems to change the activity of neurons in specific brain areas. It doesn’t work on everyone, just as standard treatments doesn’t work on everyone.

Strangely, placebo effects also occur through pathways that have nothing to do with expectations. Instead they work because the brain has learned that a certain experience brings about a certain response. In one study after patients received several doses of morphine for pain, placebos were then given and produced the same result as the morphine. The brain had learned that morphine relieved pain and produced slow shallow breathing. and responded accordingly even to the placebo.

“The result is completely unconscious.” says Benedetti. When he and colleagues gave volunteers a cortisol lowering drug twice, then a placebo, the placebo acted effectively regardless of what the patient expected. So what it seems to boil down to is our brain is more powerful than we have previously thought. If we can learn how to nudge the prefrontal cortex in the right direction we might be able to heal ourselves someday without benefit of surgery or medication.

http://healthmad.com/medicine/medical-choices/

http://healthmad.com/healthcare-industry/making-a-diagnosis/

http://healthmad.com/medicine/food-and-drugs-that-don’t-mix/

http://healthmad.com/weight-loss/weight-loss-drugs/

http://healthmad.com/conditions-and-diseases/heart-failure/

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