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Why does the placebo effect work?

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The Royal Institution

The placebo effect is a long-recognised phenomenon that has played an important part in the history of medicine — from the healing powers of Stonehenge to administering placebo drugs to modern day patients. But it’s not until recently that science has begun to truly understand how the placebo effect really works.

Professor Nicholas Humphrey asks why placebos work and reveals their central paradox: If we can effectively cure ourselves by taking placebo medicine, why don’t we just heal ourselves straight away?

Exploring this paradox from the perspective of evolution, Professor Humphry looks at the associated costs and benefits of pain or illness. How can placebo medications readdress this balance and is a “dose of contrived optimism” just what the doctor ordered?

Find out more about Prof Nicholas Humphrey:
http://www.humphrey.org.uk

10 Unanswered Science Questions

This video is part of a series brought together by the All Times 10s YouTube Channel exploring ten unanswered science questions.

To view the greatest minds on YouTube respond, follow the link at the end of the video or click below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFydagCS9fg

Explore the All Times 10s YouTube Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/alltime10s

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42 thoughts on “Why does the placebo effect work?”

  3. This explanation is sufficient to reduce pain by placebo effect. However how to explain someone who really heal from something like cancer through placebo?

  4. Science has come to understand that refined sugar is deleterious to health.  I wonder if they still make placebo pills from this drug which is more addictive than crack (assuming that's repeatably true)?  I'd think anti-oxidant vitamins like C would be a better choice..

  7. I believe our body and mind has limitation. Our thoughts and genuiune optimism can be like medicine we can buy at the local store. Such medicine can help us but as we know there isnt such medicine at the local store that can cure cancer 😀 So such medicine and placebo effect are almost the same but at the same time they arent. People who are negative about curing themselves or believing that they can be cured might be sending out signals to their body that they dont need the medicine and curing themselves is worthless because they cant or dont want to be cured. Basically you can control and alter your body but to certain "healthy" limitations. Could rant on and on but any logical person can figure this out in this time and day so im just being here "mrs. Obvious ". :DD

  13. Modernity made us maladptative. Will we ever come back in tune, in balance? There may be periods of calm and crisis, but in the end, a specie is always adapting to something new.

  14. Subbed at 3:59, then thought about it and wondered why I didn't subscribe before. Then I remembered I was paying attention to the very well-made, very high quality, interesting video. Nice job!

  17. So does the placebo effect also work directly on the causes of a disease? Like bacteria, like toxins, like broken bones? Or does it only work on the physiological responses to these causes?

  22. If he is right, why does the effect get stronger from year to year. Is our world scarier than it was back than? And why can we measure real effects like a tumor that shrinks, if this has just an effect on our perception. And If this is such an amazing effect, why do we invest all our money into chemicals that cure the same illnesses?

  27. I hate thhe placebo effect sometimes I even wonder if my medication actually works or if it's just the placebo because the placebo makes me act like its working

  28. What is called the placebo effect is a competing reality.  Our realities don't make huge shifts to other realities but instead make gradual changes.  Placeboes sometimes work and sometimes don't and the frequency of placeboes working is exactly related to the belief in their efficacy by the average of all the witnesses to the event.Thus, a disbelieving doctor is more likely to cause placeboes to not work but a very open-minded person is more likely to promote a cure.Not only that, but if the disbelieving doctor is a famous one who later will tell other famous publishing doctors that the cure failed, his negative effect is magnified in each telling, etc., etc,,Therefore, our best chances are achieved by controlling who believes most in "magical" cures and who THEY tell.None of this has anything to do with the body, or chemistry.In addition, this implies our realities are already determined.  How else could a future event such as who tells who effect a present situation?It works because we only have the future realities we do because each future event occurs as the nearest approximation of what we earlier believed.   In other words, we only experience outcomes that make sense to what we already believe in addition to what others cause us to believe along the way.All witnesses are involved.  Get rid of the naysayers and invite in the believers.  It helps that they all know the outcome will be positive.Belief is like gravity.  It attracts like masses, or minds.I am currently trying to give a placebo to my son.  My ex-wife id a complete c%$t however, and she doesn't let me see my boy.  She is more likely to believe due to desire acting on her beliefs but her husband is the most cynical man alive.  I asked her, as a condition of using the placebo, to refrain from telling her husband about the cure.  Her ignorance of the effect of non-believers on cures caused her to demand that she tell him everything-–"I don't run my marriage that way."So I doubt the cure will work.  The placebo won't get enough support.This is the only true answer.. Everyone's just guessing and they're all wrong including this chap.  EVERYTHING is a placebo to an alternate reality.  We enjoy "mainstream science" but it is only ONE reality.  It accepts no sharing of "truth".  It demands a single group of beliefs to rule, and never change much.  Leeches DID work to cure people as long as who knew this were mostly believers.  But you will only see the proof that leeches didn't work because our culture cannot be exposed to realities that have many fewer believers.  The consensus always wins if the information is available to them, especially if published or passed along to the great majority.  Science mocks competitors cruelly, and yet, it has to be that way.  We can't deny what we believe very easily!This information can change you life.  You have no idea how much.  Yet, you will find no trace of it anywhere else on Earth.  Read it again and again until you get it.  Then it will literally blow your mind!

  31. Great video, but the only thing it really explains is why we our sense of pain decreases in certain circumstances. Self-healing induced by placebo was mentioned, but how is it that the immune system can be enhanced by placebo, and not only the production of endogenous oppiates?

  32. I have actually tried this thing called self healing. I just didnt know that we even had a name for it. Just saw this now & agree with it. It works 😉

  35. pain, fever and feeling of sickness are made by our brains so clearly our brains can and them. but is there real self cure (destroying the underlying illness not only the symptoms ) via Placebo?

  38. dumb explanation! Typical of the disinformed dumbed down society. BTW science has actually showed Darwinian evolution to be a pipe dream. Lamarck was closer to the truth thab Darwin so your whole "evolutionary benefit" theory is simply false .

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