How the placebo effect can work

Expert Meeting on Placebo Effects: Sensitive Doctors Healer Than Drugs

22/01/2013

Friendly treatment in the medical field can have a positive effect on the patient's recovery and even be more effective than medication - this is the opinion of a number of experts who will meet in Tübingen tomorrow for a three-day international conference to discuss the efficacy of sham surgery. Discussing medications and empathetic doctors.

Placebo effects as strong as drugs
According to conference president Paul Enck, professor of medical psychology and research director of the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy at the University of Tübingen, it is extremely important in medicine to increase positive psychological effects and to help patients to overcome their fears. „Such placebo effects can often be as strong as newly developed drugs“, discusses Professor Enck - the list of possible side effects of drugs would actually make many patients sick: „Studies show that if a side effect disappears from the leaflet, then it does not appear“, Enck continues.

It should also be noted that a detailed risk education before an operation often leads to one of the mentioned complications actually occurring later. Therefore, find these so-called „Nocebo effects“, So the negative version of the „Placebo effects“, in medical research more and more attention. Expert Enck clearly sees the doctors in duty and calls for greater self-reflection: „Doctors need to think a lot more about how they affect their patients.“

Studies also show positive placebo effects
So is the placebo effect really provable? According to Professor Enck, the placebo effect is not an illusion, but would actually simulate the effect of medication in the body of the patient - which could benefit physicians in the treatment. „If I take placebo instead of painkillers, then processes are triggered in the head, which lead to a neurobiological response - and that means in this case just pain inhibition“, so Enck.

US researchers at Harvard Medical School came to this conclusion in 2010: A study of 80 women and men suffering from irritable bowel syndrome had shown that an ineffective drug could alleviate the symptoms - even if the patient was aware of it was that they took a sham drug. Thus, the researchers had shown that the positive effects are not - as many believe - only by positive thinking or the expectation of the supposed „real“ Drug were triggered. Instead, the placebo was made very clear: „Not only did we make it absolutely clear that these tablets did not contain any effective ingredients, we even printed placebo on the packaging“, Study author Ted Kaptchuk explained, and further: „We told the patients that they did not necessarily believe in the placebo effect. You should just take the tablets.“

Nice doctors equal faster recovery?
At the same time, according to Enck, the doctor himself is becoming more and more important: Studies have shown that on average, patients with a cold would have felt fit again one day faster if they had been treated in a friendly and sensitive manner by their doctor. The same would have happened in cardiac surgery - so it is clear to the researcher:„Placebo effects have much more to do with the doctors than with the patients.“ (Sb)

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Picture: Jörg Sabel