The Placebo Effect.

 A placebo is a simulated or otherwise ineffective treatment for a disease or other medical condition intended to deceive the recipient. Sometimes patients given a placebo treatment will have a perceived or actual improvement in a medical condition, a phenomenon commonly called the placebo effect

An article titled Placebo Effect: How it works explained an experiment done to test the strength of placebos. They gathered 300 subjects with headaches, and divided them into three groups of 100.  The first group was given no treatment, or explanation. The second group was told that they are testing a super drug, notably better then and faster as a pain reliever, while they were actually given aspirin with codeine, a proven old school pain reliever. The third group was told the same thing, but instead they received placebo sugar pills. After an hour, 20 people of the first group said that their headaches were gone. In the second group, 90 said that they are cured - they have never had a better medicine. In the last, "placebo" group, 55 people did not have headaches anymore. Taking into consideration that in the treatment free group - group one- , headache pain ceased in 20 percent of subjects after one hour regardless, the results show that 35 percent of the subjects in the experiment stated that the sugar pill was just as much a miracle drug as the painkiller the members of the second group received. A sugar pill has no physiological action that will cure a headache, but the headache-free subjects in the third group provide evidence to the contrary.  This "cure" in the absence of any truly therapeutic agent is the placebo effect, and it's more than a curiosity. It's a direct result of brain action.. The placebo effect is not a deception or self-delusion. The people whose headaches disappear after ingestion of the sugar pill are not lying, cheating, simple-minded, or insane. Their pain disappears--and not because they consciously wish it to. "The human brain anticipates outcomes, and anticipation produces those outcomes. The placebo effect is self-fulfilling prophecy, and it follows the patterns you'd predict if the brain were, indeed, producing its own desired outcomes".  The physical changes are real. The placebo effect is self-fulfilling prophecy.

The article reveals many interesting research findings, such as the fact that placebos follow the same dose-response curve as real medicines. Two pills give more relief than one, and a larger capsule is better than a smaller one. Or the fact that the greater the pain, the greater the placebo effect. It's as if the more relief we desire, the more we attain.The article also raised an interesting relation of the placebo effect to the topic of overall perception. "The placebo effect is not a single phenomenon, but the result of the complex interplay of anatomical, biochemical, and psychological factors. The same can be said for all our perceptions, I suspect. We see, hear, taste, touch, and smell pretty much what we expect to."It is agreeable that this effect, just like our perception, is a trickery, and creates the world of our reality. What you truly believe in, is the truth for you.