Heal Yourself With Placebo Effect

Scientific thinking has been our way of checking the validity of information for a long time. Unbelievable as it might seem scientific experiments prove the Placebo Effect to be a powerful force within all healing. Perhaps more importantly the Placebo Effect shows how you can use your mind to heal yourself.

What is Placebo Effect?

It all started in a war. A soldier was wounded and the doctor run out of morphine to operate on him. The nurse injected the soldier salty water pretending it was morphine. The patient was able to withstand the operation as if he really had been injected with morphine.

In 1962 a study was carried with Japanese children with a skin allergy to a special kind of plant. Scientists told them that they were rubbing a different plant to test the reaction even though they were rubbing the allergic one. Skins did not show any reaction. They also rubbed a non- allergic plant while they said to kids it was the allergic plant. Their skin reacted this time.

This study showed that by changing a person’s thought we can change their physiology. Marketers know this only too well. In blind trials non-branded products are frequently preferred to branded goods. When people know the brands, however, they more frequently choose the familiar brand. The conclusion is that changing a person’s thoughts can also change how they perceive the world through their senses of sight, hearing, feeling, taste and smell.

Many studies are regularly carried out showing similar results in medical settings. Changing perceptions and reactions to various illnesses is called the Placebo Effect. It is regularly factored in when testing the efficacy of drugs.

Remarkably, studies show that the Placebo Effect is becoming more effective across the populations of Western countries, particularly the USA.

It seems that Placebo Effect is associated with the expectation that is created by the context .

How Can You Benefit From Placebo Effect?

By changing our thoughts we can change our physiology. We can deduce that positive as well as negative thinking will have corresponding effects on our bodies.

It is common sense really.

When you are in pain or troubled you can experiment with your thinking:

1) First think how this pain is debilitating and it has been with you for so long. May be you have a more serious problem than just pain…. I expect as a result of entertaining these thoughts you are feeling very low and agitated.

2) Now think about an experience such as your graduation day, or the day you started going out with your partner…. Don’t you automatically feel happy and elated? It means your blood chemistry changed and there is more happiness hormones secreted in your body. Now you should be in a more resourceful state, you might have either no experience of pain or considerably lowered levels of pain.

Many people feel victims of the past or present circumstances and they limit their future by their conditioning. The Placebo Effect, however, teaches us that in order to heal we need to take responsibility for our own healing.

You can use the same processes that created illness, to heal it. Of course not everyone is trained like doctors and psychologists; and even they sometimes consult other professionals. But they can only help your healing. As science proves unless we allow, nobody else but we, are in charge of our thoughts.

Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)image:Patrik Nygren