A placebo is a healing pill for some and a hoax for others
Ancient medicine used placebo quite often – from the perspective of today’s medical experts and specialists in the fields of medicine and pharmacology. Placebo are preparations that do no harm to humans but do not bring any benefits. Many sick people in ancient times believed that they were healed using, for example, moss from the skull of a deceased person, shark fins, mummy crushed into powder, cobwebs and the like. It’s about psychology and brain function.
In 1955, the American anesthesiologist Henry K. Beecher described the placebo effect from a scientific point of view. A placebo is in fact any positive result associated solely with a person’s belief in a cure. As many as 40% of patients who received useless medication experienced improvement. If both the doctor and the patient believe in the success of deception treatment, then the efficiency can reach 70% and even 100%. The spectrum of action of placebo is moreover-unlimited (from postoperative conditions to headaches and coughs). The American drug “Letril” (obtained from a basket of apricots) has recently treated cancer. This drug has helped hundreds of patients who were hopeless. Many of these patients are still alive today. And then it suddenly turned out that the drug “Letril” has no effect on malignant neoplasms.

Today, placebo therapy is given only to hypochondriacs or people with Munchausen’s syndrome (a person who is constantly looking for his own diseases or examining his own organism in the detection of diseases). It can also help treat stuttering, insomnia, angina, alcoholism and various other diseases. It has been proven that tablets of certain colors cause different effects. Thus, a drug that strengthens muscle tone, refreshes the body and strengthens the mood should be red or orange. Sedatives should be blue or pale purple in color. All this is taken into account today when making a “trick”. In some cases, the use of placebo is practically excluded or almost prohibited. Such is the case, for example, with patients with more severe infections or more severe inflammatory conditions.
The placebo effect reduces the severity of subjective and objective signs of the disease. For example, patients who participated in this scientific study underwent dental surgery and had some ultrasound therapy. Pain and inflammation decreased in persons exposed to ultrasound therapy and in persons exposed to imitation ultrasound therapy with the device turned off. This was the result of this scientific study / experiment. Medical ethics experts have long debated the conscious use of the placebo effect in medical practice. It is always difficult to determine where the placebo effect (deception) or panacea (general remedy, cure for every disease) is. It should be noted that a favorable medical result is often due to the doctor, i.e. the doctor to the patient, the environment and the relationship of the environment / family to the patient.
The term “placebo” comes from the Latin word “placebo” (to like, to be satisfied). These harmless tablets are usually made from milk sugar, chalk, starch, talc. They look and pack like the original tablets. Placebo solution is a normal saline solution. Placebo preparations objectively have no effect on the cause of the disease because it is the so-called “empty prescription”, which in some way helps the patient to regain health. The human system of beliefs and perceptions assumes that only with the help of drugs (therapy with drugs, surgeries and other medical therapies) can every person fight diseases. The human belief that many life difficulties, diseases, etc. are overcome is a useful healing power. Although some diseases do not respond to placebo, it can be an initial success to make the patient feel better, but over time the disease does not stop because A person needs to have a genetic predisposition and a specific brain apparatus (brain structure) for the sugar pill to work. The patient stimulates the brain to produce endorphins (taking placebo-fake pills and believing in a cure) – a natural ingredient for relieving physical pain. The illusion of a positive effect of the drug activates some chemical mechanism (which can be measured in the laboratory) and the pain really decreases.