Placebo

[skip]

>19 March 2005
>NewScientist.com news service
>Michael Brooks
>
>13 things that do not make sense
>
>
>
>1 The placebo effect
>DON'T try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you
>induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the
>final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline
>solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.
>This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing
>can be very powerful. Except it's not quite nothing. When Fabrizio
>Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the above
>experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that
>blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. The shocking result? The
>pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared.
>So what is going on? Doctors have known about the placebo effect for
>decades, and the naloxone result seems to show that the placebo effect
>is somehow biochemical. But apart from that, we simply don't know.
>Benedetti has since shown that a saline placebo can also reduce tremors
>and muscle stiffness in people with Parkinson's disease (Nature
>Neuroscience, vol 7, p 587). He and his team measured the activity of
>neurons in the patients' brains as they administered the saline. They
>found that individual neurons in the subthalamic nucleus (a common
>target for surgical attempts to relieve Parkinson's symptoms) began to
>fire less often when the saline was given, and with fewer "bursts" of
>firing - another feature associated with Parkinson's. The neuron
>activity decreased at the same time as the symptoms improved: the saline
>was definitely doing something.
>We have a lot to learn about what is happening here, Benedetti says, but
>one thing is clear: the mind can affect the body's biochemistry. "The
>relationship between expectation and therapeutic outcome is a wonderful
>model to understand mind-body interaction," he says. Researchers now
>need to identify when and where placebo works. There may be diseases in
>which it has no effect. There may be a common mechanism in different
>illnesses. As yet, we just don't know.

[EC]

What the mind needs and expects to happen......

The more intense the need for a solution, the more effective the saline.

EC

[Simple Guy]

Skip,

In addition to placebo, by the final day of the experiment, the administering of
medication (whether real or not) for pain control has already been anchored to pain
reduction. So whether saline or naloxone, the experimenters were
also firing off the anchor.

[parsa]

The naloxone thing is really interesting.

See I used to think that the placebo effect is something like tricking the mind into doing something. For instance the mind doesn't really, how shoule I say this, look at what the substance is. It just expects one certain outcome and it happens. You tell the person this is going to make you feel better and they do.

But the naloxone reaction seems to indicate that the mind totally understands the chemical and knows everything about it, beyond the expectations of the person and even beyond their knowledge.

Now that is really strange.

parsa

[Unregistered.]

Skip,

The mind clearly begins to expect uncritically what it has found from the same circumstances previously, which has interesting implications.

Maybe the flipside is that, when someone has doubts about hypnotherapy (for whatever reason), they gain little benefit or even actively reject the changes for which they are paying good money. Which, I suppose, indicates that a lack of rapport or trust precludes a successful outcome in inverse proportion.

Have no doubts and it will work, I suppose. All is belief, after all, not that I'm explaing hypnosis as placebo or in such simple terms, though!

Perhaps this is why stage hypnosis requires not only willing sinners but an operator in which they believe...

Perhaps the conditioning underlying the Placebo Effect even explains the Pavlov Effect and even how people can become more tallented at going into trance with time.

Have you read the other 12 pieces, by the way? They are equally as thought-provoking in different areas.

I think we got off on the wrong foot earlier, by the way. Sorry about that. :( I just like to explore ideas.

[skip]

Wrong foot, nah, we are just learning about each other.

I would request that you register tho, it is nice to know if I am speaking to the same person, or a dozen unregistered guests. Now I am forced to check your providers url to know it is you to whom I am speaking.

I go with your belief belief. In fact I get a lot of disbelief when I talk about the power of belief.

cheers,

skip

[Simple Guy]

As a P.S., the nalaxone apparently overrode whatever placebo/anchoring
was in place. I'm considering this report with mixed feelings. -- Anyone
else share this?

[Terry (existing)]

OK hows this....Morphine has an effect on the brains production of endorphines, and this becomes habitual after several doses. The saline allows the brain to observe and react to an injection just as if it were morphine until such time as you introduce an inhibitor to that reaction. Then the reaction ceases due to the chemical reaction of the newly introduced inhibitor, indicating that the brain can react to the saline, but must also react to an inhibitor to the morphine as well, thus negating the production of endorphines. This also occurs it seems when a tiny amount of a chemical is introduced to the body and gets a large reaction from the bodies own defences....

[skip]

If we assume that morphine goes to the site of pain and does something that blocks the pain signals, as does say novicane, or lidocane, and when the naloxone is introduced, the morphene effect is negated, the naloxone must be acting on the morphene itsself. It would seem then that if this is the case the introduction of naloxone, when the placebo is in use, should have no effect, because there is no morphene to act on, unless the brain is itsself producing the morphine during the placebo effect, or the naloxone is producing hyperasthesia. And naloxone isnt known to produce hyperasthesia.

If the morphene acts on the brain such that pain reducing 'substances' are produced, then the saline acts as an anchor (NLP term for pavlovian stimulus response) causing the same reaction as the morphene. The naloxone could be acting in the same way as the morphene, in that it is stoping the brain from producing the pain relieving substances, not just blocking the morphene as in the first postulate, and thus it would act the same whether morphene or the placebo effect were occurring.

If this is the case, and it certainly seems so from this bit of evidence, then naloxone would most likely negate a hypnotic 'duplication of morphene', because it would be assumed that the same pain relieving substances would be being produced by the brain, and the naloxone would halt it.

However, if a less specific hypnotic pain relief were produced, say glove anesthesia, would the naloxone inhibit it? Doesnt seem likely to me, but that presumes that a non specific pain reduction effect, is the result of different mechanisms than the substances produced by the brain as the result of morphene.

Logic and reasoning should crumble in the face of contradictory results.

cheers,

skip

[Merlin]

Hi Guest,

> when someone has doubts about hypnotherapy <snip>, they gain little benefit.

Nah, that's what hypnosis is, bypassing that part that would reject the ideas. :)