11-11-2009, 12:02 AM
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Administrator
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Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Posts: 108
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Placebo effect is behind many natural/alternative cures, experts say
People looking for natural cures will be happy to know there is one. Two words explain how it works: "I believe."
It's the placebo effect — the ability of a dummy pill or a faked treatment to make people feel better, just because they expect that it will. It's the mind's ability to alter physical symptoms, such as pain, anxiety and fatigue.
In just the past few weeks, the placebo effect has demonstrated its healing powers. In tests of a new drug to relieve lupus symptoms, about a third of patients felt better when they got dummy pills instead of the drug.
The placebo effect looms large in alternative medicine, which has many therapies and herbal remedies based on beliefs versus science. Often the problems they seek to relieve, such as pain, are subjective.
"It has a pejorative implication — that it's not real, that it has no medicinal value," said Dr. Robert Ader, a psychologist at the University of Rochester in New York who has researched the phenomenon.
But placebos can have real and beneficial effects, he said.
"Much of the results of certain alternative procedures are largely placebo effects, unless you believe there are people who exert magical powers so they can hold their hands over your body and cure you of disease," Ader said. "Make you feel better? That's entirely possible, especially if you believe it."
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Read more at Experts: Placebo power behind many natural cures - Yahoo! News
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