What is the placebo effect?

Let’s learn something new and interesting. Some of you might have heard of the placebo effect and some of you might not. But that’s okay ‘cause I am going to explain that in this blog. So let’s first learn what a placebo is. A placebo is any medical treatment given to patients by the doctor which does not actually have any medicinal value, these might be inert substances like tablets and injections or even fake surgeries! You might wonder if it does not have any value why it is used, well that’s where I am going. But first why the word placebo? This is because it comes from a Latin word that means ‘to please’.

Now back to the main topic, doctors use a placebo to trick the patients into thinking that the drug is working but in reality what it is doing is nothing. Have you ever heard of obecalp or has this medicine ever been prescribed to you by your doctor, well for starters the name of the medicine is just placebo spelt backwards! So what happens is that the patient thinks that the medicine will work against whatever ailment they are suffering from but what actually happens is the body’s defence system is the one fighting against the ailment. Now, this is called the placebo effect, isn’t it fascinating! Usually, the placebos are sugar pills or injections with no active drugs/medicinal supplement.

However, if the patients are not told that the medicine is a placebo it is considered to be unethical (not illegal). So if the patients know that the medicine is ‘fake’ would it still work? According to a recent study by a Harvard professor where open labelled placebos were used on half of the sample size of people with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and the rest were given nothing, even though the patients knew it was a placebo then also it showed a positive result on people who took the placebo than the rest who did not take anything. I was just as surprised as you are to see these results too but it is true. Now, you can proudly say I know what a placebo is and its effect on the body. I hope you learned something new today!