Placebo Effect Caught In the Act In Spinal Nerves 167
SerpensV passes along the news that German scientists have found direct evidence that the spinal cord is involved in the placebo effect (whose diminishing over time we discussed a bit earlier). "The researchers who made the discovery scanned the spinal cords of volunteers while applying painful heat to one arm. Then they rubbed a cream onto the arm and told the volunteers that it contained a painkiller, but in fact it had no active ingredient. Even so, the cream made spinal-cord neural activity linked to pain vanish. 'This type of mechanism has been envisioned for over 40 years for placebo analgesia,' says Donald Price, a neuroscientist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, who was not involved in the new study. 'This study provides the most direct test of this mechanism to date.'"
Re:Acupuncture to be reanalysed (Score:5, Interesting)
well, according to my understanding of the placebo effect its entirely mind over matter, so i could wave a TV remote at your face and say that this is more effective for pain relief than Morphine. if you believe it, it just may be. i'm personally a fan of placebos, though many arent. truthfully, if it works, it doesnt matter if i'm being tricked, and as i put my flamesuit on because i can feel whats coming, having worked in the medical field, including emergency medicine i can honestly say that any instances where an emergency is occurring i've _never_ seen a placebo used. efficacy is more important in a situation where life and death is concerned. if you have a 'tension hedache' and you're seeking prescription medication, dont bitch and moan when your headache disappears from a sugar pill.
Re:Acupuncture to be reanalysed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Acupuncture to be reanalysed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Acupuncture to be reanalysed (Score:3, Interesting)
Would conditioning apply in things like reducing pain, or does it only apply to voluntary actions?
If you give a painkiller while poking an animal in a certain location repeatedly, if you remove the painkiller without it being able to tell; will the poking elicit the same response as with the painkiller?
From someone that has constant pain.. (Score:5, Interesting)
From experience, I've been prescribed medicine where the doctor's told me "this is much better than what you are on, it will manage your pain much more effectively". I got all excited, and started taking it. On the first day I was miserable. The second and third days were even worse. After a week I switched back.
I really think that the placebo effect only works for small amounts of pain, or for certain kinds of pain (there are a lot of different types). In my case, I ended up with a spinal implant (kind of like an internal tens unit) and take a small amount of medicine to manage the pain. It still hurts every day, but I get by much better and work a 40 to 50 hour week and raise kids.
Placebo and pain modulation... (Score:4, Interesting)
... it make's sense that placebo effect exists because the ability to shut on and shut off pain perception is critical to human development.
There is a condition where people feel no pain at all, see this article here of a girl who feels no pain.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/conditions/02/03/btsc.oppenheim/ [cnn.com]
Re:Acupuncture to be reanalysed (Score:5, Interesting)
Cows doesn't have inner pain receptors like humans do. They only feel the pain from breaking the skin, but no pain from a doctor operating inside. For this reason operations and experiments on cows often happens using nothing but a local anesthesia to numb the skin.
Re:Acupuncture to be reanalysed (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry to go off on a tangent, but this is something I've done a lot of research on lately, and it's something that seems to get ignored by the mainstream. I'm guessing it's mostly because curing the source of a problem means the drug companies can't make money off someone as long, perpetually suppressing the outward symptoms while the real issue continues to fester. It's like continuing to spray air-fresheners and light scented candles around the garbage can instead of just taking the stinking bag out.
Spinal nerves effect brain? (Score:1, Interesting)
Was it the cream or the brain? (Score:3, Interesting)
The researchers who made the discovery scanned the spinal cords of volunteers while applying painful heat to one arm. Then they rubbed a cream onto the arm and told the volunteers that it contained a painkiller, but in fact it had no active ingredient. Even so, the cream made spinal-cord neural activity linked to pain vanish.
According to this, there's no way to tell whether it was the cream or the brain. The doctors didn't rub cream on anyone without telling them anything and/or rub cream on anyone saying that it contained suspended HCL? Tell people they were rubbing a pain killer powder on their skin? There was no control group? This wasn't a well planned experiment. Just having a soothing balm on the skin might be enough to lower heat pain. Speaking of which: did they try any other types of pain? Heat pain feels quite a bit different from impact pain.
Re:Three cheers for kdawson (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, way to go, mixing up two time scales, just to bash kdawson again.
While I agree that he may not be the greatest story poster, this time, you was way over your head.
Because what he meant, is that when you apply the placebo, then because one expects the effect of a medicine to diminish after a certain time, the body simulates that for placebos too.
And what you meant, is that placebos nowadays work better than they worked e.g. decades ago.
These are two totally different time scales. /|
Imagine it as taking a big structure that looks like this:
And putting lots of these tiny structures that look like this on its slope: |\
The first one is yours. The second one is his.
No conflict at all. Just a knee-jerk reaction.
Re:Acupuncture to be reanalysed (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that the people who practice placebo treatment never just sell themselves as providing pain relief; they sell magical cures for real medical problems which need real medicine.
I would be happy if the FDA allowed "alternative pain management" to be sold and regulated, so long as they threw everyone claiming their hocus-pocus cured diseases into prison. Can you imagine how wonderful it would be to see chiropractors, homeopaths, and faith healers behind bars?
Re:Acupuncture to be reanalysed (Score:3, Interesting)
Whoa, careful there on the "bad" fats label.
We NEED saturated fats. Men use it to produce testosterone. It's also used to repair tissue. In fact, new research shows its the carbs doing the damage, as men which replaced bad carbs with "bad" fat LOWERED their bad cholesterol. Sounds like more research is needed.
Re:this is not surprising (Score:3, Interesting)
if you don't believe it exists, you're less likely to experience it
well, in that same sense, is it possible that the headache is only there because you believe it to be there? with all due respect, i don't know your medical background. just throwing out food for thought.
Re:Acupuncture to be reanalysed (Score:3, Interesting)
Hardly mind over matter, simply a bio-chemical organ that can be induced to produce a range of neurotransmitters and hormones based upon psychological states
How are the two different exactly? The "bio-chemical" organ you refer to is, I suppose, is the brain? If that's the case, most experts - such as yourself - say the brain is where most people keep their mind (though new research suggests many male subjects keep their mind in a different organ closer to the waist). And the "range of neurotransmitters and hormones" produced based on "psychological states" would appear to be the mind interacting with that oh so squishy matter we call our central nervous system. So why do you strain so much to "debunk" the mind over matter truism.
The placebo effect relies in no small part on the "faith" effect, which we use every day to overcome our physiologically limited ability to comprehend the world. Faith does not (necessarily) allow people to walk through walls or levitate, but it does allow us to do all kinds of important things, including and not limited to the discovery of new knowledge.
For example, your well founded faith in the scientific method allows you to maintain focus while facing mysteries often seem to defy not only experimental observation, but the very intuitions upon which those observations are based.
Do you have faith that we will figure out what's inside a black hole? Will we'll figure out where and what all that missing mass and energy is? Will we ever know why the photon goes through both holes at the same time? The scientific method has attained considerable momentum because of it's ability to shed light on mysteries we have long thought unknowable. That does NOT mean it will always succeed. The uncertainty principle, for example, claims that it has already failed in at least one important case (i.e., Schrodinger's cat). Knowing something about the state of an atom means affecting that atom, which also means we cannot always make "objective" observations. We can only make extremely well-educated guesses and hope that we're not wrong that often. This realization put a HUGE hole in the scientific method, but our faith allowed us to continue working and make ever more important discoveries.
So when you tell someone that the pill they took was just sugar, why is it a surprise that their faith is undermined and the unconscious processes that resulted in pain relief (or whatever) are also undermined?
Re:Acupuncture to be reanalysed (Score:3, Interesting)
I doubt you'll find a doctor who would prescribe these drugs without first suggesting you get off your arse and do some exercise. Nobody does this, of course, so prescriptions for these drugs get handed out as the next best thing when a patient won't do what is needed for themselves. It's not some huge profit conspiracy, although there is certainly profit involved-- but if you end up on statins without having given a serious effort at altering diet and exercise, it's your own fault.
My Anecdote (Score:2, Interesting)