Bad Placebo Research Paper

As a child, whenever you got hurt, did your mom kiss your boo-boos? You probably felt better afterward, knowing that “Mommy” took the pain away. What you experienced is known as the placebo effect. A placebo, your mom’s kisses, is fake medicine or anything that has no therapeutic value. The effect itself is any reaction that is the consequence of administering the placebo. So when your mom kissed your sore bruises, she tricked you into thinking that your injuries were being healed. Resulting of your brain into tricking your body, to subliminally reduce the soaring pain. I hate to say, but your mom didn't have superpowers that made things magically better. It was you, yourself that created the medicine by believing in it.
There are many examples of the placebo effect that are taken place in history. One of the first, and most popular documented uses of intentionally administered placebos was during World War 2. Henry K. Beecher, a …show more content…
However, there are such things as bad placebos. These bad placebos are called nocebo’s. These nocebo’s are just like placebos but give you negative side effects instead of positive ones. A good case study covering the effects of nocebo’s took place in Italy. Two groups of people were gathered. One group with lactose intolerance was assembled and the other without lactose intolerance also were assembled. Both were given a "lactose" pill to consume. What they didn't know was that it was really a sugar pill. After the groups consumed there pills ,the case study showed that forty-four percent of those with lactose intolerance and twenty-six percent without lactose intolerance developed symptoms of gastrointestinal discomfort. So from looking at this study, the second group of people who believed that they were given a bad pill, still developed negative side effects because of what they thought they were taking, was