Dana Blankenhorn

Rethinking Healthcare

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Placebo effect not all in your head

By Dana Blankenhorn | Oct 16, 2009 |

A team under Falk Eippert in Hamburg, Germany reports they have direct evidence that the placebo effect starts in the spine.

The paper (in English) is in Science.

(Picture from Brain & Mind, a Brazilian journal on neuroscience.)

The German experiment consisted of giving subjects two “treatments” to prevent pain, one said to be a lidocaine cream and the other a control. Those given what they believed to be lidocaine experienced less pain, but in fact both creams were identical.

This means the “placebo effect” is real. It causes distinct physiological changes that can be measured.

The mind is still very much involved. Those who believed a treatment would work showed a much greater placebo effect than those who did not believe or were unsure.

The research does more than validate possible new treatments. It also illustrates how many sham treatments, in the present and the past, could provide real relief to patients, by triggering this physiological effect.

There is a second implication in all this, the nocebo effect. Whether doctors expect something to work or not telling the patient it definitely will work can impact the result. Telling someone an experimental treatment may not work may reduce its chances of providing relief.

 
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  •  
    1

    LaughingDog

    10/19/09 | Report as spam

    RE: Placebo effect not all in your head

    Just confirms what we read in the Bible. Jesus said, "Thy FAITH has
    made thee whole..."

  •  
    2

    steve_jonesuk@...

    10/20/09 | Report as spam

    RE: Placebo effect not all in your head

    All this article says is that placebos have a real effect - something
    which I thought was long well-established. Do we have to read the
    original paper to find anything to back up your first sentence about
    starting in the spine?

  •  
    3

    dhawktx@...

    10/20/09 | Report as spam

    RE: Placebo effect not all in your head

    Steve Jones has a point. Only the summary is available without a subscription, and the summary states there is "...direct evidence for spinal inhibition as one mechanism of placebo analgesia..."

    The summary also states that "...placebo analgesia results in a reduction of nociceptive processing in the spinal cord..." so I'd say this is a result, not the beginning. The brain is still the originating organ.

  •  
    4

    dhawktx@...

    10/20/09 | Report as spam

    RE: Placebo effect not all in your head

    Here's a link to supporting info from the test.

    http://www.scienceonline.org/cgi/data/326/5951/404/DC1/1

  •  
    5

    zackers

    10/20/09 | Report as spam

    Bad overview by Dana Blankenhorn

    I'm afraid Dana Blankenhorn did not do a good job of saying what the paper was all about. The scientists involved used MRIs of the spine after giving patients the treatment to see if there was any change in the spine after using one of the two creams. One cream was a placebo, but it still caused a measurable reaction in the spine. This means the brain must have caused some physiological change in the spine since nothing else was done to it. Up to this point, all placebo effects were assumed to be confined to the brain only.

  •  
    6

    FiOS-Dave

    10/20/09 | Report as spam

    RE: Placebo effect not all in your head

    I wonder if there is a reverse Placebo effect?
    Would telling someone that a particular medicine does absolutely nothing cause it to work less efficiently?

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Dana Blankenhorn

Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for nearly 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the Interactive Age Daily for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age's "NetMarketing" supplement, and dozens of other publications over the years.

Dana Blankenhorn

Dana Blankenhorn has been a technology reporter since 1982, a business reporter since 1978, and a writer for as long as he can remember. His Schwab IRA has a few tech stocks in it, most notably some Intel and Applied Materials bought over 10 years ago. But the vast majority of his tiny fortune (emphasis on the word tiny) is invested in mutual funds. He presently writes for no one else but ZDNet, SmartPlanet and himself. But if you've got an opportunity let him know. If he takes the gig he"ll first add it to this disclosure page.
Rethinking Healthcare examines innovation in the health care industry covering topics such as electronic and personal health records, treatment, privacy, regulation and using information technology to manage and monitor chronic conditions.

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