Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Speaker 1: you know, Julie, I used to, uh or I still
Speaker 1: take some of these, you know, sort of health help
Speaker 1: food store supplements for different things. You know, you know
Speaker 1: you've noticed my, my, my large tray of Monday through
Speaker 1: through Friday. And yet yes, your medicine chest sitting on
Speaker 1: your on your desk. I've I've scaled down in recent years,
Speaker 1: but but I still take a few things here and there,
Speaker 1: and and I tend to stick to the things I
Speaker 1: take because I feel like they're helping in some way
Speaker 1: shape or form, like either it you know, relaxes me
Speaker 1: when you know, when I'm needing a relaxation, or gives
Speaker 1: me a little a bit of increased concentration or or
Speaker 1: or energy or what have you. Whatever the the the
Speaker 1: desired result happens to be. But in the back of
Speaker 1: my mind there's always the idea of the Polcebo effect,
Speaker 1: and I'm always find myself thinking, now is this working
Speaker 1: or is this or am I just paying you know
Speaker 1: whatever for for you know, a fake little pill and
Speaker 1: it's and it's all in my mind. And then if
Speaker 1: it is all in my mind, should I stop or
Speaker 1: should I keep going to get that pulacebo effect, because
Speaker 1: at what point can you can you still get I mean,
Speaker 1: if you explain away the placebo, then you can't fool
Speaker 1: your brain, can't fool you into getting that effect, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I know, And sometimes I may have had
Speaker 1: the same thoughts before because I use essential oil sometimes
Speaker 1: mainly because they smell nice, but of course they're supposed
Speaker 1: to be mood lifting or what is essential about essential oils? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean they're the distilled um oil of whatever that
Speaker 1: thing is, so um, you know, sort of like gelfling
Speaker 1: um oil or whatever from the dark crystal when they would, yes,
Speaker 1: sort of, except for it's more like lavender, okay, So
Speaker 1: it's like a lavender parent condensed oil. And in great
Speaker 1: Fruit that's a nice one too, and it it does
Speaker 1: have like a sort of nice uplifting center. But I
Speaker 1: have thought before, you know, am I just is this
Speaker 1: sort of quackery. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I don't really care because it smells good, right, and
Speaker 1: like if that's if it's just all bs. But it
Speaker 1: just but you know, the the underlying thing here is
Speaker 1: that my house is going to smell nice? What harm
Speaker 1: is it doing? Right? Yeah? So I mean that's the
Speaker 1: whole thing about placebo, right, is we know a little
Speaker 1: bit about it. Right. It makes us feel better in
Speaker 1: a medical sense. You know you were talking about in
Speaker 1: aert pill that someone might take. Um, it's actually measurable,
Speaker 1: observable felt improvement in your health and in your behavior
Speaker 1: and um. And it has pretty wide reaching ramifications, as
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss in this in this podcast episode.
Speaker 1: Like it goes beyond just you know, me shopping for vitamins.
Speaker 1: Are you you know, getting the oil of a tree?
Speaker 1: So yeah, it turns out the placebo effect is driving
Speaker 1: big pharmaceutical companies crazy and like never before and that
Speaker 1: and the reason for that is because the placebo effects
Speaker 1: seems to be increasing in their clinical trials with new drugs.
Speaker 1: So they're sitting there saying what was going on here?
Speaker 1: Like we used to be able to pass you know,
Speaker 1: nineteen out of fifty drugs through clinical trials, but now
Speaker 1: and this is this is super crazy. Half half of
Speaker 1: the medicines that are coming out of clinical trials are
Speaker 1: being discounted because of the placebo effect. Basically, when you
Speaker 1: go to these clinical trials, the medication has to go
Speaker 1: up against the placebo and tests exactly. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: it sounds really straightforward that, Hey, for this medication to
Speaker 1: to work, it needs to work better than fake medication
Speaker 1: because you have control groups in these you'll have white
Speaker 1: Group A. Well, let's say you have a new a
Speaker 1: new drug that contains I don't know, um, I don't
Speaker 1: pecans in it or something I don't know that was
Speaker 1: just I don't imagine some imaginary drug that comes from
Speaker 1: some plant in South America or something that it's yeah,
Speaker 1: something that is expensive to obtain, something that's costly, something
Speaker 1: that they may A lot of research has gone into
Speaker 1: a lot of scientists have been hunched over labs, and
Speaker 1: lots of money has gone into developing this pill. So
Speaker 1: you've got that, and you give that to Group A
Speaker 1: to treat their I don't know, their hypertension, and then
Speaker 1: a group B gets this placebo, which is nothing. It's
Speaker 1: it's made, it's a it's just a pill. It's like
Speaker 1: basically like a sugar pill, and and it has no
Speaker 1: actual there's nothing inside that pill. That can actually help them,
Speaker 1: but they're giving it, and both groups think they're they're
Speaker 1: getting the price research possible new super drug to treat
Speaker 1: their hypertension. So you and again it sounds just overly simple,
Speaker 1: but you want group A who's taking the real drug
Speaker 1: to have better results than the group taking the sugar pill.
Speaker 1: But it's not always the case, and unless you discuss
Speaker 1: it's often a surprising amount of time it is not
Speaker 1: the case. And in fact, within a depressants in particular,
Speaker 1: they're finding astounding results, which is that seventy of the
Speaker 1: drugs that are using anidepressants are found to be effective,
Speaker 1: but also seventy five of the placebos are also giving
Speaker 1: people relief. So that all of a sudden that that
Speaker 1: puts the whole question about medication into a new light
Speaker 1: and the approach to actually even testing them or even
Speaker 1: assessing depression and other disorders. Um, it's actually really blown
Speaker 1: open the whole placebo effect in general and made Big
Speaker 1: Farm look at placebo in a new way because before
Speaker 1: it was sort of like we just have to get
Speaker 1: over the placebo effect. It's a problem. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: there's this great Wired article it's called placebos are getting
Speaker 1: more effective. Drug makers are desperate to know why, and
Speaker 1: they actually call out the fact that that this may
Speaker 1: be an opportunity to actually look at the amazing ability
Speaker 1: of the body to heal its health. Yeah. This is
Speaker 1: the article by Wired Steve Silberman, Yeah, be Silberman, Yeah, yeah, So,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's pretty fascinating to look at the issue.
Speaker 1: And um, I wanted just to give a little quick
Speaker 1: history of placebo though. Oh yeah, now we're only going
Speaker 1: we're going by Sieber's paper and going back to World
Speaker 1: War two, right, Yeah, World War two basically you have
Speaker 1: you know, in Italy, there's um, there's an enthusiologist I believe, Yeah,
Speaker 1: by the name of Henry Beecher, yea Henry Beecher. He's
Speaker 1: attending to U. S. Troops under heavy German bombardment. And uh,
Speaker 1: when you're treating catastrophic injuries, you need to have morphine
Speaker 1: on hand, right, So they're pumping full Yeah, they're pumping
Speaker 1: morphine into these guys to to deaden the pain while
Speaker 1: they work on him. And uh, they run out of morphine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And a nurse, very savvy nurse that was working with
Speaker 1: Henry Beecher basically pretended that she with a wounded soldier
Speaker 1: was giving him an injection of morphine and said, I'm
Speaker 1: giving you a really potent pain killer. Don't worry, You'll
Speaker 1: be fine. It was in fact only saltwater. Um. But
Speaker 1: what Beacher observed is that the wounded soldier did not
Speaker 1: go into shock when he had his procedure done, and
Speaker 1: that the wounded soldiers seemed to feel relief. So he
Speaker 1: saw firsthand the effects of the placebo effect, and later
Speaker 1: on when he went back to Harvard after the war,
Speaker 1: he began to look at it more seriously, um, and
Speaker 1: was now investigating the placebo effect against current day medications
Speaker 1: of that time to see if they were really effective.
Speaker 1: It was an incredible new idea. Actually. Yeah, in the
Speaker 1: you put out a paper called the Powerful Placebo, publishing
Speaker 1: the Journal of American Medical Association, and uh, it undermined
Speaker 1: the results of more than a dozen trials by causing
Speaker 1: improvement that was mistakenly uh, you know, attributed to whatever
Speaker 1: the medicinal properties were. Yeah, yeah, so it was This
Speaker 1: was a a huge moment in modern drugs because because suddenly,
Speaker 1: here's the placebo messing up everything that you're you're trying
Speaker 1: to do, becoming this hurdle. And like you said, that's
Speaker 1: kind of the history of it. It It becomes this hurdle
Speaker 1: when uh, when perhaps they you know that you could
Speaker 1: argue they should be looking at it and saying, well,
Speaker 1: why why is the placebo working as opposed to why
Speaker 1: why are drugs not working better than the pacebo? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and with Beecher, I mean, he was just trying to
Speaker 1: keep quackery at bay, right, and he was basically just
Speaker 1: trying to apply this um. He wasn't necessarily thinking that
Speaker 1: this was going to be taken up by big farmer,
Speaker 1: nor could he have ever predicted how big this industry
Speaker 1: would become. And as you say, it would become this
Speaker 1: obstacle for them to to, you know, get over um.
Speaker 1: So there you go. That's the history of it, and
Speaker 1: that's why we have it and we know that it's effective.
Speaker 1: But that being said, it's been a long time since
Speaker 1: we've revisited the placebo effect, and particularly in the light
Speaker 1: of antidepressants and stuff and what's talk about a little
Speaker 1: bit about that later, and it still remains a fairly
Speaker 1: unknown quantity. I mean, it's scientists continue to try and
Speaker 1: understand it. But the will seebo effect is is in
Speaker 1: many ways still a mystery. Yeah, and we do know
Speaker 1: a little bit more. But I mean the question is,
Speaker 1: what in the world is really going on in your
Speaker 1: body when it starts to actually heal itself and give
Speaker 1: you albeit temporary really right, placebo effect has its limits.
Speaker 1: It's not going to cure tumor. But um, if you've say,
Speaker 1: like you have Parkinson's or um sexual dysfunction or um
Speaker 1: sorry for you, and you have maybe depression or something
Speaker 1: along those lines, we know that those sort of disorders
Speaker 1: really respond well to placebo effect. So um. And actually
Speaker 1: it was once thought that placebo effect was a result
Speaker 1: of our own level of gullibility or even like a
Speaker 1: psychological trait that was related to neurosis, weakness of character,
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Give him anything, they'll they'll give him
Speaker 1: a sugar pill. They'll think they're they're healed. But but
Speaker 1: it seems more than that now obviously, I mean, we
Speaker 1: can't go so far as to, you know, scientifically say
Speaker 1: what it's mind over matter, it's it's anything you believe
Speaker 1: becomes real, because I don't either that's not the case,
Speaker 1: or no belief is really strong enough to to to
Speaker 1: alter physical reality. But but but something's happening, but we
Speaker 1: see the belief system working in tandem with the body.
Speaker 1: So uh entered Dr Fabrizio Benedetti, UM, and he actually
Speaker 1: calls a placebo effect the placebo response because of its
Speaker 1: self healing, and he calls it endogenous health care system.
Speaker 1: After fifteen years of research, Benedetti has mapped a biochemical
Speaker 1: reactions of the placebo effect and he's found that Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is again from the Wired article quote, placebo
Speaker 1: activated opioids not only relieve pain, they also modulate heart
Speaker 1: rate and respiration. The neurotransmitter dopamine, when released by the
Speaker 1: placebo treatment, helps improve motor function in Parkinson's patients. Uh.
Speaker 1: So it's mechanisms like this that can elevate mood, sharpen
Speaker 1: cognitive ability, alleviate jutive disorders IBS is another one. But
Speaker 1: responsibile to this, by the way, relieve insomnia and limit
Speaker 1: the secretion of stress related hormones like insulin in the cortisol.
Speaker 1: So he's seeing this in action. UM. And again we're
Speaker 1: talking about the placebo effect working in tandem with the mind,
Speaker 1: and what this is bearing out is that the mind
Speaker 1: is trying to anticipate the future, right it's just it's saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take this pill. I've got this condition,
Speaker 1: and you know I already know that. Um, I already
Speaker 1: knew what to expect in terms of relief and even
Speaker 1: side effects, right, And so the mind is actually queuing
Speaker 1: itself up for this and releasing those opioids, which is
Speaker 1: amazing um. And actually one of the biggest self healing
Speaker 1: triggers is to witness someone else experiencing the benefits of
Speaker 1: a drug. So again, you you have this sort of
Speaker 1: conditioning response. Well, you're you're engaging in this kind of
Speaker 1: so the social activity of of the the doctor administering
Speaker 1: something that that heals you. Yeah. Absolutely. In fact, there
Speaker 1: was a researcher ted Capouch, and he recruited volunteer suffering
Speaker 1: from IBS irritable Boll syndrome, and they were put into
Speaker 1: three groups. One group just made uh an appointment for
Speaker 1: treatment and they found some relief just by the act
Speaker 1: of signing up for for treatment. The other group were
Speaker 1: given a placebo from a medical professional who did not
Speaker 1: engage with them at all. And then the third group
Speaker 1: were given the placebo, but the clinician actually engaged with
Speaker 1: that group quite a bit, talked to them about their suffering,
Speaker 1: talked about them, um, you know how they felt about it,
Speaker 1: and gave them some positive feedback. So again here we go.
Speaker 1: Like you mentioned, there's there's the social aspect to it.
Speaker 1: That group responded the best out of all three. So
Speaker 1: the bed the beds I manner of the physician is
Speaker 1: really important. Yeah, absolutely. Um. Steve Silverman also points out
Speaker 1: that the color of the pill even makes it different.
Speaker 1: This is this is like yellow pills make make the
Speaker 1: bet the most effective antidepressants. Red pills give you a kick,
Speaker 1: you know because it's red, like the blood of a
Speaker 1: bull or something. Right. Adrenaline. Yeah, green reduces anxiety, you know.
Speaker 1: Green is kind of calming. Um and uh and and
Speaker 1: and they say that even like branding, you know, becomes
Speaker 1: involved in it, like it's all in the packaging and
Speaker 1: the delivery. And I mean the color thing just makes
Speaker 1: me think, you know, it's just some like a sufficiently
Speaker 1: sufficiently believable physician could just walk into a sick ward
Speaker 1: with like a bag of starbursts and just start healing
Speaker 1: people left and right. Yeah, if you have the association
Speaker 1: that starbursts, we're going to make everything about like you know,
Speaker 1: if maybe Star Wars had spent one hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: on the campaign trying to link some sort of benefit
Speaker 1: between the consumption of the chewy stuff stuck in your
Speaker 1: teeth and your health. Um. One of the other things
Speaker 1: too that was interesting is that it's cultural. These perceptions
Speaker 1: are cultural. Oh yeah, like they're the Germans, right, well,
Speaker 1: not only the Germans, but the Italians because you're talking
Speaker 1: about the blue pills and the red pills and so
Speaker 1: of course the blue pills was to be soothing, right
Speaker 1: and the red pill again it's more of an aggressive thing.
Speaker 1: But in Italy the color of the national soccer team
Speaker 1: is blue, so that's perceived as aggressive. And yeah, so
Speaker 1: it comes down, you know, to that level. It's really interesting.
Speaker 1: That is fascinating, Like I wonder how that affects like
Speaker 1: even like international branding, you know, oh yeah, you know
Speaker 1: if you have you have branding for for something that's
Speaker 1: that you want the consumer to to think of it
Speaker 1: and relax terms or soothing terms, and then in Italy
Speaker 1: you have the angry blue and the you know, the
Speaker 1: victorious soccer team and get them all riled up. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and you have to wonder how that extends like throughout
Speaker 1: their society, like you know, if they've if their apartments
Speaker 1: are all in blue, if that's not like, wow, that's
Speaker 1: like a really aggressive bachelor. But the Germans in particular.
Speaker 1: Anthro anthropologist Daniel Mormon um to the study and he
Speaker 1: found that Germans are high placebo reactors and trials of
Speaker 1: ulcer drugs, but low in trials of drugs for hypertension.
Speaker 1: Um because hypertension is an undertreated condition in Germany. So um.
Speaker 1: So again, it's about engaging in this in this uh,
Speaker 1: this social maze that comes with the treatment of an
Speaker 1: of an illness, being being aware of its treatment, seeing
Speaker 1: um success stories either in your life or in the media,
Speaker 1: like a lot of it. Like you know, when you
Speaker 1: think of like anxiety or depression medications, instantly we think
Speaker 1: of those commercials where or I guess it's also even
Speaker 1: for things like her pies and stuff. But it's like
Speaker 1: you know, some smiling person walking through a field and
Speaker 1: they're happy and they're they're running and birds are singing
Speaker 1: and it is just driving home. Take this and be
Speaker 1: happy and you will be able to go outdoors and frolic.
Speaker 1: That's usually the message. Oh and you'll you know, you'll
Speaker 1: be surrounded by a bunch of people who love you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of the same as a Mentos commercial, except
Speaker 1: they have to add a lot of legal text at
Speaker 1: the end, like Mentos doesn't have to have that that
Speaker 1: half a strain of fight. Yeah, there's there's no talk
Speaker 1: of diarrhea and the Mentos commercial thanksfully. Um. But the
Speaker 1: German example that is really interesting that that makes me think,
Speaker 1: is it um again, is it sort of like this
Speaker 1: uh anticipation like they because it is underreported, Um, what
Speaker 1: was the hypertension is under reported? It's not as big
Speaker 1: of a deal maybe, and they're not as conditioned to
Speaker 1: to think as much of it as that perhaps, I
Speaker 1: think so, Yeah, like it's undertreated, like it's just not
Speaker 1: on people's minds as much, where whereas you know, something
Speaker 1: like like depression is very much on everybody's minds. Everybody,
Speaker 1: Like we just have this this uh almost like this
Speaker 1: cult of the quest for happiness that has been pressed
Speaker 1: upon us through uh mass media and through you know,
Speaker 1: everybody knows somebody who takes the takes something to improve
Speaker 1: their their daily life, whether it's uh, you know, prescote
Speaker 1: medication or just some sort of weird you know, herbal
Speaker 1: thing that they buy from the health food store. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. And just just to put that in perspective
Speaker 1: with the statistic, let me see, in nine six there
Speaker 1: were thirteen million antidepressants doled out and that has since
Speaker 1: doubled to twenty six million by two thousand and seven. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: I mean, and you know, we all know that that's
Speaker 1: something that everyone is apt to grapple with at some point.
Speaker 1: We have plenty of statistics that tell us that, you know,
Speaker 1: each of us is going to at some point feel
Speaker 1: maybe a cute depression. So it's not surprising that it's
Speaker 1: on our minds. Um. But again, you know, good getting
Speaker 1: back to the placebo effect and why it may be
Speaker 1: getting stronger, and going back to the commercials that you
Speaker 1: were talking about. That actually seems to be one of
Speaker 1: the culprits of why the placebo effect, why people in
Speaker 1: clinical trials are feeling this conditioning to to get better
Speaker 1: or actually self healing. Um. They think that the marketing
Speaker 1: has just been so great and so rampant that it's
Speaker 1: really conditioning people to already get in that mindset. We
Speaker 1: already have studies that say that when people make an
Speaker 1: appointment to even do this, they feel better. So that's
Speaker 1: that's one area of it. Uh. And then another aspect
Speaker 1: is that the way that they're classifying an illness or
Speaker 1: disorder this is sort of interesting. And talking about depression
Speaker 1: in particular, there's something called the Hamilton's Depression Rating Scale,
Speaker 1: and that was created fifty years ago and it's based
Speaker 1: on a study of major depressive disorder and patients in
Speaker 1: an asylum. Okay, so you can already tell that there
Speaker 1: are problems with this scale anyway, because fifty years ago,
Speaker 1: when we had a different idea of what depression was
Speaker 1: in an asylum a small sample group. Um, So there
Speaker 1: are people today they are saying, maybe we shouldn't take
Speaker 1: this scale and use it particularly for disorders that have
Speaker 1: to do with depression, and revisit this and and maybe
Speaker 1: we'll get a better idea of what the placebo effect
Speaker 1: is doing if we can redefine what depression is an
Speaker 1: interesting way of looking at it. Um. Now, there are
Speaker 1: a couple of other related This presentation is brought to
Speaker 1: you by Intel Sponsors of tomorrow topic sample Sebo that
Speaker 1: that are pretty fascinating. One that I ran across and
Speaker 1: imagine you did as well, it's the honest placebo, and
Speaker 1: I just that, well, this is kind of like what
Speaker 1: I was talking earlier. If I, you know, if I
Speaker 1: I have to say, you know, I have some sort
Speaker 1: of herbal thing back from the health, you know, and
Speaker 1: I don't know for certain that it's working, but I
Speaker 1: don't know that it's not working. But if I knew
Speaker 1: for a fact that it was just a sugar pill,
Speaker 1: would it still work on me? Well, this is called
Speaker 1: an honest placebo? Uh, this is a doctor's uh involved
Speaker 1: in this think that the placebos work because patients think
Speaker 1: they might be getting an active drug. But there's a
Speaker 1: no element of deception or I mean that's the the
Speaker 1: old version, you know. It's like there's the deception at
Speaker 1: work that I think this is gonna work. So it does,
Speaker 1: even it's a sugar pill. Right. But in two thousands,
Speaker 1: ten Harvard researchers found that even when volunteers with severe
Speaker 1: bowel disease know they're getting a placebo, had relief in
Speaker 1: the symptoms um which which is is is pretty amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I know. Again, it's that whole idea of like, why
Speaker 1: aren't we studying what's going on with the body when
Speaker 1: it's trying to self heal. And then it brings up
Speaker 1: the question of do we must must we always have deception? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know, is there is there any way too to
Speaker 1: have the placebo response without some sort of you know curtain,
Speaker 1: you know, behind our understanding of what's going on? Well,
Speaker 1: it seems like one way that it might. It's like,
Speaker 1: even in listening to this podcast, or even in researching
Speaker 1: this podcast, we get this idea that, oh, there's I mean,
Speaker 1: I hate to mystify it at all, but you kind
Speaker 1: of get this mystic idea of what is a placebo doing?
Speaker 1: Maybe you know, what is my mind doing when I
Speaker 1: take up placebo? And then it becomes this possible that
Speaker 1: you get this possible expectation in your mind that even
Speaker 1: if you take something that doesn't work, that it might work,
Speaker 1: you know, like like that becomes the new placebo, the
Speaker 1: new fiction for the placebo to work. Then. But see,
Speaker 1: that's why I think it's so fascinating, because I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, in an evolutionary sense, have we always had
Speaker 1: to construct some sort of fiction in order to pull through?
Speaker 1: Do you know what I'm saying is this is it
Speaker 1: something that's comes out of evolution. Well, interestingly you should
Speaker 1: ask that because there is a guy in the name
Speaker 1: of Matt Rossano who's professor of psychology at Southeastern Louisiana University,
Speaker 1: and he wrote a book called Supernatural Selection, How Religion Evolved,
Speaker 1: And this is basically his argument. All right, Um, First,
Speaker 1: he says that our ancestors developed complex social structures to
Speaker 1: cope with a harsh, unforgiving world. You know, it's there,
Speaker 1: giant mammals everywhere eating everything I have worked really hard discrete, buy,
Speaker 1: and then I'm going to die when I'm really young,
Speaker 1: probably eaten by a large mammal. Uh. It's it's a
Speaker 1: rough world. So you know, you end up with this,
Speaker 1: This social structure emerges, um and uh. And you end
Speaker 1: up with the hierarchy in the group and uh. And
Speaker 1: there's some probably some sense of peace or some structure
Speaker 1: that makes you feel better about the world. Right, But
Speaker 1: you end up with this social structure. And so you're
Speaker 1: gonna need uh. People with with more memory are gonna
Speaker 1: be able to better navigate it. You're gonna need a
Speaker 1: knack for symbolic thought to to move through it. So
Speaker 1: nature begins selecting for imaginative children. The imaginative children are
Speaker 1: by natural selection of the ones that end up surviving,
Speaker 1: because they have better they're better suited to navigate these
Speaker 1: complex social relationships as adults. And since the more imaginative
Speaker 1: children are the ones that survive, they end up bringing
Speaker 1: this imagination into their adulthood and this birth's gods and spirits.
Speaker 1: So Rossano states that early religion was was shamanistic. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like you know, guys saying, oh, you got a
Speaker 1: headache here, stuck on this frog, your bellies of you know,
Speaker 1: bothering you. Well, draw this on your stomach and set
Speaker 1: on the stone, you know, things of that nature thrown
Speaker 1: in with some you know, not to say that all
Speaker 1: ancient or traditional medicines are phony there, so there's some
Speaker 1: indicial plants that we know that are used, but still humans,
Speaker 1: uh that. He argues that that basically they had a
Speaker 1: health care system of ritual healing practices. You know, some
Speaker 1: which may have worked and some that didn't, but there
Speaker 1: was no real way to tell in those days, right,
Speaker 1: But humans who participated in healing rituals were healthier thanks
Speaker 1: to the placebo effect, and more likely to procreate. Keeping
Speaker 1: the religions evolutionary march in motion. See that's interesting because
Speaker 1: I read too that the placebo Again, it's highly effective
Speaker 1: for disorders that engage the higher cortical centers, that generate
Speaker 1: beliefs and expectations. They interpret social cues and anticipate awards.
Speaker 1: And again this is chronic pain, sexual dysfunction, Parkinson's and
Speaker 1: depression for example, that really responds well to this. But okay,
Speaker 1: but what if I'm kind of a hoypochondriac. What if
Speaker 1: I what if I am kind of a worrior? What happens? Then?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess you kind of get, maybe
Speaker 1: you just get what if I read the placebo effect right?
Speaker 1: But but what if what if I just can't help
Speaker 1: it focus on those list of side effects? Then you're
Speaker 1: going to fall Praise is something called the new cebo effect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's the which we're not making up. That's not
Speaker 1: even that's like that's actual Latin. Yes, yeah, what was
Speaker 1: Latin for? Again? Um? If I remember correctly, it's like
Speaker 1: um to harm? Yeah, yeah, and placebo is Latin for
Speaker 1: to please, I believe, Yeah, but no cebo effect is
Speaker 1: basically like the dark side of cebo effects. So think
Speaker 1: of it. If you are anticipating getting better and getting relief,
Speaker 1: but you're told that the drug that you are given
Speaker 1: is going to have side effects and you're going to
Speaker 1: vomit and you may have a rectile dysfunction. Guess what
Speaker 1: you're going to be doing vomiting and having erected out
Speaker 1: as such? Yes, exactly. Um, So that that's difficult, right,
Speaker 1: And that's particularly difficult in terms of I guess you
Speaker 1: could even say ethics if you're dealing with someone who
Speaker 1: is seriously sick. Um. And I don't know if they
Speaker 1: do this with cancer treatments. I imagine that they probably do,
Speaker 1: because I need to test it. Right, To test it,
Speaker 1: you need a control group. Yeah, you need a control group.
Speaker 1: And if you're in that control group and you're getting
Speaker 1: the placebo and you're awfully sick already and then on
Speaker 1: top of that you're getting other side effects, that that's
Speaker 1: where some doctors are saying, Okay, that's that's not very cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, we do need to have the control group,
Speaker 1: and we do need to study this, but you know,
Speaker 1: it is obviously the dark side of the sebo effect.
Speaker 1: There were some doctors that, like early on, they thought
Speaker 1: that that the uh that this was caused because people
Speaker 1: were worrying as they're taking the medicine and so their
Speaker 1: stomach releasing enough acids to cause pain. But but but
Speaker 1: they but they They found that the range of possible
Speaker 1: um no cebo responses stretched far beyond near stomach gigs.
Speaker 1: And what's more, they found that the these no cebo
Speaker 1: effects weren't random. They tend to be specific to the
Speaker 1: type of drug that patients believe they're taking. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's lining up with a group. I mean with a
Speaker 1: list of possible side effects. Yeah. I mean imagine watching
Speaker 1: that commercial. I mean we all know them, right, and
Speaker 1: it seems like that endless list that goes on forever,
Speaker 1: never blurred vision. Yeah, wacky thoughts. Um, you know you
Speaker 1: are going to take all of that information. Your brain
Speaker 1: is gonna absorb it and just like your body can
Speaker 1: heal on it, and with cebo effect, it's going to say, Okay, guys,
Speaker 1: buckle ups can be a rough ride. Wacky thoughts ahead. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean it's it's kind of nuts to
Speaker 1: think of it that way. Um. But I also wanted
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit too. I mean, we've we've
Speaker 1: talked about the cebo effect and how cool this is
Speaker 1: and and obviously it bears so much more studying. But this,
Speaker 1: you know, I just need to caution that this is
Speaker 1: not a reason to actually quit your meds. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: this is not anything that we're advocating. It's just an
Speaker 1: interesting paradigm shift on medication and on the placebo effect
Speaker 1: and looking at that a little bit closer. Um. So
Speaker 1: I just wanted to add that because obviously if you
Speaker 1: were to, especially with antipressence, if you were to get
Speaker 1: off of them, you'd have horrible withdrawal symptoms. Also, each
Speaker 1: person is unique to their medication and to their conditions.
Speaker 1: So h there you go again. Yeah, don't stop your
Speaker 1: your medications, don't don't don't make any medical decisions based
Speaker 1: on what you hear in this podcast. Yeah. Absolutely, Um,
Speaker 1: you should always consult with your doctor, speaking of whom. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, perhaps this isn't the best place to throw
Speaker 1: this information out, but I did want to mention that
Speaker 1: how widespread placebo effect is. And this is from one study,
Speaker 1: and albeit's one study. It's in Chicago from two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven. They were doctors that were surveyed there and
Speaker 1: they were asked about whether or not they had ever
Speaker 1: prescribed the placebo effect, or rather, I should say, had
Speaker 1: they ever prescribed something that they knew wasn't necessarily going
Speaker 1: to work for their patients or it was at such
Speaker 1: a low level dosage that it wouldn't do anything in
Speaker 1: order to induce the placebo effect. Half of those doctors
Speaker 1: had done that. Now they didn't actually write pallacebo on
Speaker 1: the Yeah, fake pills, I think is what they wrote.
Speaker 1: My mother in law frequently uses the placebo effect on uh,
Speaker 1: my brother in law's kids. They'll complain there because you know,
Speaker 1: they're kids, they're always complaining of something. And she'll get
Speaker 1: like like gummy vitamins and so it's like, oh you oh,
Speaker 1: you've got a stomach ach, oh your your head. Here,
Speaker 1: take one of these and it works like a charm.
Speaker 1: They just gummy vitamins. That's uh. We'll have to put
Speaker 1: them in back pocket for my two year old. They'll
Speaker 1: be very warm if you keep them in your back
Speaker 1: pocket though. Yeah, but yeah, that's nice. Yeah, the kids
Speaker 1: like a good warm com Okay, maybe not um, but
Speaker 1: you know, here we go. I mean, that's that's This
Speaker 1: is just an interesting time to to look at this information.
Speaker 1: Oh and I wanted to also man into that drug
Speaker 1: companies are paying, as I said, huge attention to this
Speaker 1: right now. And typically they have been really um covert
Speaker 1: about their operations and they haven't let a lot of
Speaker 1: their data out of the bag, so to speak. But
Speaker 1: they actually are pulling together and trying to get a
Speaker 1: study of the placebo effect and pulling their research all
Speaker 1: the drug companies, which is pretty interesting. And I believe
Speaker 1: the ni H is also heading this up. So it'd
Speaker 1: be interesting to see in the next couple of years
Speaker 1: what sort of data they get out of this. And
Speaker 1: also that I mean, we're talking about a lot of money,
Speaker 1: all the money. And they also know that that some
Speaker 1: of their their big marquee sellers like Prozac may not
Speaker 1: actually cut the muster these days if they were too,
Speaker 1: because they actually, uh retrial some of these just for
Speaker 1: for fun, and noticed that the protact is actually not
Speaker 1: as effective as it was once deemed. And again this
Speaker 1: could be because the placebo effect is becoming more rampant trials.
Speaker 1: But there you go. Don't get off the protect though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: stay on it. If here on it again, check with
Speaker 1: your doctor. Absolutely. Well, Hey, we have some interesting feedback
Speaker 1: here from some from some listeners. Our first bit of
Speaker 1: mail comes from Ola delhi Um one of our listeners,
Speaker 1: Oladelli rides Hi, listen to your podcast where you talk
Speaker 1: about the robot singularity and how this creepy one and
Speaker 1: this creepy one about cyber immortality. So it gets one
Speaker 1: thinking what if my memories representing past actions and experiences
Speaker 1: and and Myers Briggs Briggs profiles used to generate new
Speaker 1: actions and experiences were mapped to a robots century inactions system.
Speaker 1: Sure surely very deep and all that information and blueprint
Speaker 1: for future actions. The robot could act independently. I reckon
Speaker 1: it could sort of understand and hints, work towards my
Speaker 1: goals and play out a version of me which would
Speaker 1: be based on me, but different from me, independently of me.
Speaker 1: Could it then comp compete with me for my friends
Speaker 1: attention or be jealous of me if I got to know,
Speaker 1: if it got to know me, or would I be
Speaker 1: jealous of it? Would that be considered the singularity of
Speaker 1: some sort? I don't know, it's interesting. I mean you
Speaker 1: know that there there's been an intranet created for robots, right,
Speaker 1: and if you splice the singularity. With that, then you
Speaker 1: could very well have your robot self hacking your Facebook
Speaker 1: account and taking you over. You're right well in your
Speaker 1: cyber presence, suddenly liking things you don't like, like going
Speaker 1: up in its own Yeah, yeah, kind of trolling you. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, I kind of just but I mean just
Speaker 1: to extend out that logic, kind of interesting about what
Speaker 1: how all those parts might work together. Yeah, some good
Speaker 1: good brain fadder there. And uh, speaking of the cyber
Speaker 1: Immortality podcast, we received a lot of cool comments from
Speaker 1: folks who really dug that and uh uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we can't read them all, but I have a bit
Speaker 1: here from a listener by the name of Crystal, and
Speaker 1: Crystal relates that she had lost a friend and uh
Speaker 1: and then goes on to add uh. Since that point,
Speaker 1: I have not been able to check my voicemails because
Speaker 1: my inbox is literally full of messages from this individual,
Speaker 1: built up about a week while my phone was out
Speaker 1: of minutes. This has really been bothering me lately. And
Speaker 1: then I listened to the cyber Immortality podcast. It gave
Speaker 1: me a whole new perspective on the digital bit of
Speaker 1: information I have of this individual. I am happy to
Speaker 1: report my inbox is now empty. Well, I saved a
Speaker 1: few of them and I have you guys to thank
Speaker 1: for it. Thanks a lot. But by the way, don't
Speaker 1: oh wait than she had something else. But if anyway,
Speaker 1: that's the key bit that I thought was was really interesting,
Speaker 1: that stuff that you know, obviously a lot of people
Speaker 1: are are having to take the digital realm into account
Speaker 1: and dealing with with the deaths of friends and loved
Speaker 1: one these days, and uh, um, it was it was
Speaker 1: it really interesting to hear some tidbits from a few
Speaker 1: different listeners about this. Yeah, we did. We had some
Speaker 1: some really nice email about that, and people who had
Speaker 1: UM like Crystal talked about ways that they were revisiting
Speaker 1: actually people they had lost online. So it's very interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: And uh, if you have any cool feedback to at
Speaker 1: this um, if you have some interesting stories about your
Speaker 1: own experiences with placebos, for instance, we would love to
Speaker 1: hear about them or your own thoughts on placebos. Or
Speaker 1: if you're a doctor of any kind or engaged in
Speaker 1: the medical industry or the pharmaceutical drug industry, Uh, let
Speaker 1: us know, shoot us, shoot us an email, or uh
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook or Twitter, or blow the mind
Speaker 1: on both of those get in and again. If you're
Speaker 1: a big farmer, you can. You can always rant to
Speaker 1: us blow the mind at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
Speaker 1: click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
Speaker 1: of our homepage. The how stuff Works iPhone app has
Speaker 1: a RYE. Download it today on iTunes.