Placebos are treatments designed to be intentionally ineffective towards curing an illness or condition. One example of a placebo would be a sugar pill designed to take the appearance of a pharmaceutical but had none of the acting ingredients. A phenomenon occurs during this treatment called the placebo effect where the condition of people who take placebos is expected to improve based upon a positive response in belief that the drug or other treatment is beneficial to him or herself. Placebos can be used in a control group to observe the effects of the real drug being tested in another group. If a comparison shows that individuals experiencing the placebo effect exhibit a similar change in condition to individuals that took the real drug, then it reveals that the drug has no real impact on the condition of those individuals and provides little to no use. A disadvantage in using placebos in treatment research is the fact that the placebo effect is solely based on whether an individual believes in the benefits of the treatment.
…show more content…
My mother would cook me dishes that were to help with stomach cramps and diarrhea that I would get from time to time. I thought it was something along the lines of Irritable bowel syndrome but the doctor said there were not traces of IBS. It was concluded I was a nervous wreck as a young child and the comfort of my mother’s cooking and belief that it would help with my stomach was enough to resolve the issue. Emotional responses controlled my younger life and once those emotions were under control my condition improved. I believe treatment follows the same principle in that its effects partially depend on the patient’s emotional response towards it and its effectiveness to improving the patient’s condition, like a little boy unable to control his nervous tendencies only to improve after receiving the comfort of another in the
My mother would cook me dishes that were to help with stomach cramps and diarrhea that I would get from time to time. I thought it was something along the lines of Irritable bowel syndrome but the doctor said there were not traces of IBS. It was concluded I was a nervous wreck as a young child and the comfort of my mother’s cooking and belief that it would help with my stomach was enough to resolve the issue. Emotional responses controlled my younger life and once those emotions were under control my condition improved. I believe treatment follows the same principle in that its effects partially depend on the patient’s emotional response towards it and its effectiveness to improving the patient’s condition, like a little boy unable to control his nervous tendencies only to improve after receiving the comfort of another in the