We have all heard of the word ‘Placebo’. Placebos are used in medicine to determine if a drug is viable before it is brought to market.
In medical trials they normally divide patients into 3 groups:-
Group 1 -Has the drug with the active ingredient designed to treat their condition.
Group 2 -Has a pretend pill or placebo usually made from sugar but designed to look like the real thing.
Group 3 -They give nothing to.
The placebo Effect
Doctors want to work out how much better the drug works in comparison to a fake version of itself, or indeed no treatment at all.
Prozac the world’s most widely prescribed anti-depressant was invented in 1987 and brought to market in 1998, it has helped millions of people world-wide. According to ‘Statistica’ the USA spent almost 9 billion on anti-depressants between 2011-2012, today it is significantly more as the cases of depression continue to rise. You may be surprised to know that the placebo for Prozac is 78% as effective as the actual drug with none of the side effects! One of the things that people often notice when they take Prozac is a slight tingling sensation, on some level they know that is working and relax into it, this sensation is also experienced when taking the placebo. Believing it is enough.
Placebo Experiments
Derren Brown did some fascinating research into placebos in his documentary ‘Fear and Faith’, he wanted to see if he could help people with anxiety simply by using multi-layering placebos. Derren invited participants to the offices of ‘Cicero Pharmaceutical Solutions’ to show them the new wonder drug ‘Rumyodin’ which incidentally is an anagram of ‘your mind’. The drug had allegedly been used previously in the Gulf War by soldiers, alleviating their fear which can make them freeze in a battle situation, and obviously cost lives. This was the first time they were trialing it on civilians before eventually taking it to market. The participants were shown around plush offices by a doctor in a white lab coat, the offices unbeknown to the participants had been rented for the day. They went to the laboratory where the pills were being made, walked past busy office workers, and were shown a video of the soldiers. They were then given a saline injection posing as Rumyodin and asked to take Rumyodin pills which were blue for calming 4 times a day. Derren worked out this was the most effective way to layer the placebo. One of the participants with a crippling fear of heights after receiving the injection was immediately able to stand on a high balcony, his phobia cured. They monitored the other participants who were only taking sugar pills posed as medicine and they all had great improvements. Derren used the same set up for other drug trials, one for skin conditions, someone’s psoriasis, which is said to be incurable cleared almost over-night. They did one to stop people smoking, and to increase intelligence. They all worked incredibly well.
This study shows that the belief that something will work is equally or even more important than the drug itself. There are countless medical stories about spontaneous remissions, believing that cancer is gone and that becoming the reality.
Placebo and self healing
There was a study where they took people who needed knee surgery. On some they did the surgery and others they made some superficial incisions to make it look like surgery had happened but nothing more. Amazingly after rehab and scans the knees repaired themselves after the fake surgery.
Bruce Lipton talks about the biology of belief, how our thoughts manifest our reality. Louise Hays has a fascinating index on which thoughts manifest which disease. This is the opposite of placebo, the nocebo effect. Placebo believing something positive will happen and manifesting that reality, the nocebo is the opposite, expecting a negative outcome and that appearing, more on the nocebo effect in next week’s blog.
It is amazing how powerful our minds are, our thoughts affecting our health, we just have to believe we are taking Prozac to have the effects of it. Unfortunately the placebo effect has been under-researched as big pharmaceutical companies are obviously anti it, as it could potentially destroy their multi-billion dollar industry. In fact they are working hard to have placebos removed from medical trials altogether. Placebo falls more into the realms of healing and quantum physics. The mind is far more extraordinary than we currently understand. Thoughts become reality, so please be careful what you obsess about and therefore wish for.
Thanks for reading. For more info check out www.divineempowerment.co.uk.
Be well, be happy
Antonia