How to work a placebo.

Through the use of placebos, it is becoming clear that our mind has an even greater influence on our daily lives then we thought, influencing not only our perceptions, but also our well- being. The placebo, which is Latin for "to please", is usually thought of as a sugar-pill, that is given under the impression of being a medication thought to treat an ailment. The use of placebos has shown us that the mind has tremendous potential to induce physiological changes in our body based solely on our perceptions. For example, if we swallow a sugar pill thinking that it is Advil, we may actually physically feel fewer symptoms of headache or other pain, as a result of our mind's perception. A placebo is a substance or a procedure that activity has no effect on the condition being treated. When we use a placebo, to cure for an example, it is not the placebo that causes the effect. The consequence of  using it are very real physical responses created by our mind, and generating very real benefit or result. The placebo effect is today seen as an important part of the healing process. Although some ethical questions are asked on this subject, in my opinion it is a natural way for you to heal. Would you rather be filled with chemicals and and drugs, or heal with the power of your mind? A placebo offers, in most cases, the therapeutic effect, without the risk of negative side effects. I think it is more ethical then most things out there, and that healing the patient in any way, is healing. And many cases have been found where medicine did not help, but a placebo did. It has power. The ethics issue was probably created by drug companies, who would be more than happy to get rid of the idea of the placebo effect. However, the word is out and more and more incredible stories are being shared about the power to heal ourselves.  It’s all in what we believe.

Here is a summary of a placebo:

Our brain anticipates outcomes, and anticipation produces those outcomes. The placebo effect is basically a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it follows the patterns predicted, as if the brain was indeed, producing its own desired outcomes. Researchers have found the factors that we should play up on.
• 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.
• Placebo injections do more than placebo pills.
• Substances that actually treat one condition but are used as a placebo for another have a greater placebo effect that sugar pills.
• The greater the pain, the greater the placebo effect. It's as if the more relief we desire, the more we attain.
• You don't have to be sick for a placebo to work. Placebo stimulants, placebo tranquilizers, even placebo alcohol produce predictable effects in healthy subjects.

 Nowadays, a placebo is mostly used in medical research, placebos are given as control treatments along with legitimate substances to measure it's the drugs actual effectiveness.  Placebos are mostly used to replace painkiller or in depression treatments.

A placebo is very effective - if you truly believe.             

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. 

PTSD Treatments

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can be helped. Today, a good amount of treatments are available for PTSD. This anxiety disorder may cause a lot of people to keep closed up, but therapy and counseling may actually be one of the best ways to improve their condition.Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, is one type of such counseling. In cognitive therapy, a therapist helps patients understand and change how they think about the trauma and its aftermath. The goal is to understand how certain thoughts about their trauma cause stress and make the symptoms worse. According to the National Institute of Mental Health  "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a form of psychotherapy designed to help a person develop a more adaptive response to a fear" (NIMH-CBT). The NIMH states that "CBT is a blend of two therapies: cognitive therapy (CT) and behavioral therapy (BT)" (NIMHs-CBT). As a combination of the two, CBT emphasizes the important role of thinking in how we feel and what we do.Trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy, involves carefully and gradually “exposing” yourself to thoughts, feelings, and situations that remind you of the trauma. Therapy also involves identifying upsetting thoughts about the traumatic event–particularly thoughts that are distorted and irrational—and replacing them with more balanced picture.

Another way to help deal with severe anxiety and PTSD are medical drugs. Another possibly effective treatment are medications. For example, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which are a type of antidepressant medicine, may be used. These help people be less sad and worried. They appear to be helpful, and for some people they are very effective. SSRIs include citalopram (Celexa), fluoxetine (such as Prozac), paroxetine (Paxil), and sertraline (Zoloft). They often work, because chemicals in your brain affect the way you feel. For example, when you have depression you may not have enough of a chemical called serotonin. SSRIs raise the level of serotonin in your brain.

Medications are often used to help speed up another treatment that the patient is receiving,  and increase the efficiency in the overall response to a treatment. Often, medications are used as a way to help a patient calm down, so that they are able to go through therapy which will help them on a greater level.Medications, therefore, are often paired with psychological treatments for PTSD, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy. On their own, medications and psychotherapy may be effective; but by pairing them together, their effectiveness is maximized.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Selective nature of memory has often helped us thrive; our very survival may depend upon learning the lessons from life-threatening episodes, just like it did hundredths of years ago. However, our ability to selectively remember traumatic episodes can also harm us. Seven percent of the general population suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a form of an anxiety disorder. It usually occurs after you have been through a traumatic event, or events that are life threatening or devastating, bear strong negative emotions or cause intense fear.An interesting fact is that women are twice as likely as men to develop PTSD.
Virtually any trauma, defined as an event that is life-threatening or that severely effects the physical or emotional well-being of a person and causes intense fear, may cause PTSD. Such events often include either experiencing or witnessing a severe accident or physical injury. It can be divided into three main categories: 
Direct experience - such as military combat, kidnapping or a violent personal assault (sexual assault, physical attack, robbery, mugging etc.)
Witnessed situations - including the observing the serious injury or unnatural death of another person due to violent assault, or unexpectedly witnessing a dead body or body parts.
Learned events - meaning events that do not happen to you, and you do not witness, but are tragic to those around you. When you learn of a serious accident, or a serious injury experienced by a family member or close friend, even learning about the sudden death of a loved one.

Experienced any of the mentioned events? You might have PTSD if you develop the specific symptoms.
There are different levels of symptoms for traumatic disorders such as PTSD. Some basic symptoms include re-experiencing of the event, such as flashbacks or nightmares. A more serious step from this is avoidance and fear of anything that may resemble or remind them of the trauma. This also brings on lack of interest for life circumstances. Most striking  symptoms include hyperarousal, inability to sleep, and irritability all the time.



Although you might fall into some of the mentioned categories, do not be in distress as there are different levels for traumatic experiences. They include the following:

• Acute – when the duration of symptoms is shorter than 3 months.
• Chronic – when the symptoms last three months or longer.
• With Delayed Onset - between the traumatic event and the onset of the symptoms there is at least 6 month period.

Both memory and emotion relate to PTSD, as it is a highly negative and emotional experience that can cause you this disorder. It is important to face your memories, and overcome the emotions that stop you from living a normal life. This disorder also effects your memories and emotions of the future. Not only can it cause you to heavily distress your emotional state, it can also affect the formation of future memories. Research reveals the fact that people who have been exposed to extreme stress, and traumatic experiences sometimes have a smaller hippocampus, compared to people who have not been exposed to trauma. The hippocampus is a region of the brain that plays a very important role in memory. This is significant in understanding the effects of trauma in general and the impact of PTSD, specifically since the hippocampus is the part of the brain that is thought to have an important role in developing new memories about life events.

Flashbulb Memory

What is flashbulb memory?
Flashbulb memory is related to the circumstances surrounding your reception of the news1 with confidence and in vivid detail. You can think of it as a "snapshot" of the moment that was surprising, as well as significant to you.
Evidence has shown that although people are highly confident in their flashbulb memories, the details of the memories can be forgotten, and they do not significantly vary from normal memories. The proposal of the Flashbulb Memory theory by Brown and Kulik set a lot of research and studies into motion.

In three following posts, three mayor studies will be explained related to this topic.
They include:

• Brown & Kulik (1977)
• Neisser & Harsch (1992)
• Talarico & Rubin (2003)

Attack on a memory: Talarico and Rubin.

The study of Talarico and Rubin of 2003. The aim of it was to determine, whether flashbulb memory had any more detail compared to normal memories, after certain periods of time.  In this study, the participants were asked to recall the events of the Word Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001. They were asked various questions on four different occasions; 1, 7, 42 and 224 days after the attack. However, this study also tested the memory of an ordinary event that happened at around the same time of the attack. They found out that the flashbulb memory remained very vivid throughout the study, as well, participants were very confident about their accuracy. However participants reported the ordinary memories becoming less and less vivid and reliable, even though objectively they could remember no more details about September 11. From this we can conclude that although we might feel that flashbulb memory is more clear, and remembered, it turns out that flashbulb memories are no different from other memories. Limitations of this study were not so many of as of the previous ones, as ordinary memory was tested, however, it is still a memory related to a powerful event. In order for this to be even more accurate, memory should be checked of an ordinary day, with no exceptional disaster or powerful attack that might remind you of it.

Race to Space: Neisser and Harsch

Neisser and Harsch also conducted an experiment when questioning the effectiveness of flashbulb memory. In 1992, they asked 106 participants to answer questions about the circumstances of their learning of the Challenger space shuttle disaster. Among the questions, five asked about how they heard the news: where they were, what they were doing, who told them, what time it occurred, and so on. Thirty-two months later the participants were asked to answer the same questions again, and their results compared to the original.On the day after the disaster, 21% of the participants stated that they heard about the event on T.V. However, after thirty-two months, the percentage rose to 45%. The findings showed that memories had in fact dimmed, yet the participants were not aware, and still very confident about the accuracy of their questions. This suggests that flashbulb memory is not reliable. From this study we can see that what is different between normal memories and flashbulb memories, is most likely the confidence that people have in their memories associated with significant events.One weakness of this study is the fact that there was no control group in the experiment. This is a significant downside, as you cannot make a comparison between normal memories and flashbulb memories.