Placebo Effect Breakthrough: It's Not Just in the Mind.

The placebo effect had confounded doctors and frustrated pharmaceutical testing for decades. A new study shows that the placebo effect is not all in the mind. Using fMRI imaging, a group of researches were able to determine that placebos actually create an effect in a part of the spine, helping to reduce pain.

(Reuters) - It's not all in the mind -- the so-called placebo effect is real and reaches right down to the spine, German scientists said on Thursday.

The finding may help in the hunt for better ways to tackle pain and other disorders.

Using modern imaging technology the researchers found that simply believing a pain treatment is effective actually dampens pain signaling in a region of the spinal cord called the dorsal horn, suggesting a powerful biological mechanism is at work.

"It is deeply rooted in very, very early areas of the central nervous system. That definitely speaks for a strong effect," lead researcher Falk Eippert of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf told Reuters.

Eippert and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to study changes in spinal cord activity.

They applied painful heat to the arms of 15 healthy men and compared the spinal cord responses when they thought they had been treated with either an anesthetic cream or a placebo.

Both creams, in fact, were inactive but the fMRI scans showed nerve activity was reduced significantly when subjects believed they were getting the anesthetic.

The ability of sham medicines with no active ingredient to produce real clinical benefits has long perplexed doctors and frustrated drugmakers.

Patients are typically given either an experimental drug or a dummy in clinical trials and the fact that those on placebo often get better, too, makes it hard to determine whether a new drug is working.

The placebo effect is particularly strong when treating central nervous system conditions, like depression and pain.

Read more: Reuters

[edit on 3/20/10 by FortAnthem]

Verry cool find

But it doesn't change anything, does it ? They only found how and not why it is possible IMO.


The best part in the artical was this.

The word placebo comes from the Latin for "I shall please."

reply to post by FortAnthem


G'day FortAnthem

Thanks for posting that interesting report

There are some extremely clever Professors, Dr's, etc... in that department who are renowned for strong, intuitive lateral thinking.

That is good work that is worth following.

Kind regards
Maybe...maybe not

It's certainly an interesting finding, however I don't see how they can be so sure of their results when they only used 15 participants. Especially since this was a between-subjects experiment they would need over 100 participants to get a proper effect size.

But it is just in the mind, isn't it ?

It's the mind which believes the placebo will remedy the pain

It's not the placebo itself which speaks directly to the 'very old' region of the spine

It's not the 'very old' region of the spine itself which believes the placebo

Between the placebo and the spine ... is the mind

Remove the mind from the equation and the spine knows nothing and the placebo is ineffective

So the professors created a false claim there in that title thread

Which puts us back at square-one, don't you think ?

Isn't it about time we try to use this to cure some diseases, or are we already?

reply to post by Dock9


G'day Dock9

I think you'll find that when they say..... "it's not just in the mind".....

.....they mean the mind is producing a physical effect they can image.

Therefore the physical effect is "not just in the mind"

I think it's just slightly awkward wording & the Dr's are actually in agreement with you.

Kind regards
Maybe...maybe not

[edit on 20-3-2010 by Maybe...maybe not]

Well that explains away the mental blocking of pain, but doesn't explain anything to the studies that been conducted on people with real illnesses. Would like to have them explain why people with real degenerative diseases have been able to lessen symptoms through the use of the placebo effect.

I cant remember where , but I read somewhere the other day that patients were imagining their limbs to be tiny during pain and the pain almost disappeared.

Eg - some guy severely injured his hand and was in huge pain. As soon as he imagined his hand to be tiny, he felt next to nothing!

Cool Post S&F.

g

reply to post by Maybe...maybe not


G,day Maybe...maybe not.

I thought the following quote ( from you ) very funny. As in I had to get up from the floor.

Therefore the physical effect is "not just in the mind"

Does the physical part by definition, is the part we can observe and will never be of the mind. Only because of the mind it's possible for the physical to be observed.

I do agree with you.

Originally posted by Sinter Klaas
reply to post by Maybe...maybe not

 

G,day Maybe...maybe not.

I thought the following quote ( from you ) very funny. As in I had to get up from the floor.

Therefore the physical effect is "not just in the mind"

Does the physical part by definition, is the part we can observe and will never be of the mind. Only because of the mind it's possible for the physical to be observed.

I do agree with you.

G'day Sinter Klaas

Yup.....it's pretty funny now that I've read it again

I was struggling with how to say it....I must have tried 3-4 times to get it right!

Hey.....here's another recent classic from a member, that I found very funny.....

"I saw a UFO today it was invisible"

Cheers
Maybe...maybe not