Placebo Yourself

The post starts off a little scientific and technical, but the purpose of that is to develop an understanding of placebos and how they work so that we can explore the practical implications of manipulating the mind into reaping the benefits of normal activities ten-fold. Read till the end I am sure you will come away with something of value. 

The mind is a powerful thing and the placebo effect is a prime example of that fact. I used to think the purpose of a placebo was to make people think they were being treated and healed, just so that there would be a standard to compare the actual effects of a legitimate treatment to, but it turns out that is far from the case. Myself,  and others used to laugh at those who reported feeling changes when they had taken a sugar pill unknowingly. I mean it just seems like those people are fulfilling the role of feeling better, because that is what they are being told they should feel. I even saw a joke in which someone suggested that it would be funny to throw a party with regular mushrooms, tell people they were magic mushrooms, and see how they act after they had taken them. As funny as that would be (and it would be hilarious), that’s not necessarily how a placebo works at all.  Placebos have been shown to have a neural basis, meaning the genuine belief that something is beneficial for you, whether it is or it isn’t, tricks the brain into producing the desired effects of whatever we were initially expecting to happen. In simple terms, placebos don’t just make you think you feel better, they actually make you feel better.

For example, a study was done where people were put under an fMRI machine and administered shocks. The researchers focused on the brain regions that were sensitive to pain when looking at the fMRI and saw that those regions were active when the patients were experiencing the shocks. Wanting to test whether the placebo effect had a neural basis, the experimenters applied “analgesic cream” (control cream) to the areas where the subjects were to be shocked. While the subjects believed the cream would decrease their pain, it was actually just lotion which had no effect on pain at all. The results of the study were remarkable- the brain regions sensitive to pain were less active when subjects believed they were being treated with the analgesic cream. This supports the theory that the placebo effect has a neurological basis, and actually affected the subject’s physiological response to the pain, and not just the way they reported their sensation of the pain.

I have probably managed to bore everyone reading to death by now, but if you were patient enough to keep reading, then you understand that the implications of a discovery like this are immense. I mean yeah it’s cool that placebos are affective when people don’t know they’re taking a placebo, but could they work even if people know they’re taking a placebo? Amazingly, the answer is yes.

“A 2014 study led by Kaptchuk and published in Science Translational Medicine explored this by testing how people reacted to migraine pain medication. One group took a migraine drug labeled with the drug’s name, another took a placebo labeled “placebo,” and a third group took nothing. The researchers discovered that the placebo was 50% as effective as the real drug to reduce pain after a migraine attack.” (Harvard Health Publishing)

In this particular study, the power of the brain was strong enough to be 50% as effective as a pharmaceutical drug, without any of its side effects. On top of that, the patient knew they were taking a placebo. The simple act of taking a pill, has conditioned your body to feel better after taking it, whether the pill is real or not. The body is going to produce the desired effects of the pill. “Even if they know it’s not medicine, the action itself can stimulate the brain into thinking the body is being healed” (Harvard Health Publishing).

I’m here to argue that we can use expectation and conditioning to placebo ourselves, so that we trick our brains into producing the effects we expect and are used to experiencing after a certain action. What I’m talking about is nothing like a science experiment; rather it’s more like genuine belief that something will provide you with positive benefits, because it has in the past, or because you have reason to believe it will. For example, it has been shown that something as simple as a smile has enough physiological benefits to impact your affect.

“For starters, smiling activates the release of neuropeptides that work toward fighting off stress). The feel-good neurotransmitters — dopamine, endorphins and serotonin — are all released when a smile flashes across your face as well. This not only relaxes your body, but it can also lower your heart rate and blood pressure.

The endorphins also act as a natural pain reliever — 100-percent organic and without the potential negative side effects of synthetic concoctions.

Finally, the serotonin release brought on by your smile serves as an anti-depressant/mood lifter. Many of today’s pharmaceutical anti-depressants also influence the levels of serotonin in your brain, but with a smile, you again don’t have to worry about negative side effects — and you don’t need a prescription from your doctor.” (Psychology Today)

Yes..all of that from a simple smile. The smile doesn’t even have to be genuine; it can be forced. The effects won’t be as salient, but they’re better than nothing. As soon as I learned this, I would force myself to let out a smile whenever I found myself in a negative feedback loop and it really would change my mood. I think we can apply the benefits of placebo even by engaging in something like meditation. Whether it really works or not, if we believe it will, then it will. Every time I have meditated, I came out of my meditation with the desired outcome I set at the beginning of my meditation. This is usually done in yoga classes, where the instructor tells the class to set a goal for the class at the beginning of the class. I have never left a yoga class thinking “Wow, I don’t think I accomplished the goal I set today because just planting the seed in my head was enough to allow my mind and body to reap the benefits.

On an even lighter, more general note, I think the main ingredients in deriving the most healing from any activity, are confidence and belief in what you are doing. As simple as it may sound, the “attention and emotional support you give yourself” is enough to produce the physiological effects that can aid you in getting your desired outcome.

I understand that all of this might seem like a stretch, maybe even pseudoscience, but I offer you a personal anecdote that may provide a better example of how this works. During my Sophomore year and football season at BC, I had gotten very aggravated with the situation I was in. I hated just about everything about the school and the football program. One thing after another would piss me off and I would enter these negative feedback loops that would only make everything worse. It got so bad that I would find something negative to say about everything. I was fed up with the way the coaches were treating me, my relationships with some of my teammates, and had to deal with the dissatisfaction of sitting out 4 games due to an injury. I approached a coach on the staff I was close to and talked to him about my issues. I went to him expecting him to reciprocate my dissatisfaction with the program, but what he told was something I DID NOT want to hear at the time. He looked at me and said “Korab, you can only be hurt, if you allow yourself to feel hurt.” At the time he told me that, I vaguely understood what he meant, but not the way I do now.

He told me to focus only on the variables I could control, because straining on the variables I had no control over would only waste my time and energy. At the time, I didn’t understand just how much I had control over. It turns out I have the power to change my physiology, the way my body and brain reacted to a situation, all along. He told me, “you can only be hurt if you allow yourself to be hurt”, well I now realize that the inverse of that is just as true: you can only feel good if you allow yourself to feel good. You can only heal if you allow yourself to heal. You can only learn if you allow yourself to learn. Your perception will not only influence your reality, it will literally become your reality. The best part about this is that it isn’t some motivational strategy, or some pseudoscientific self-help bullshit, it’s empirically backed science.

I wanted to quit football and drop out of school altogether because I genuinely thought the adversity that was being inflicted upon me was bad for my health, and because I thought so, it was. It wasn’t until my coach told me to look at this challenge as an opportunity to grow, an opportunity to conjure the best version of myself in a time of adversity, an opportunity to prove to myself and to the world that the mind, when set on the right course and belief system, is a force too powerful to be reckoned with, when everything changed for me.

I’ve learned to not only believe that the good will be good for me, but I’ve learned to see the good in the bad. I truly believe that with every bad action or event that unfolds, some good will come from it. The first step is being able to take the metaphorical sugar pill (the neutral stimuli-the daily struggles of life), and derive good from it because you’ve convinced yourself it will be good for you. The next step is learning to take the metaphorical drug that is supposed to hurt you, and tell yourself that overcoming it will make you even stronger, because it will. The positive mindset and perception of your adversity will allow you to focus your attention on the positive consequences of your voyage into chaos, and apply order to it.

You are a product of your environment, but the best part is, you get to choose what your environment is.

“I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.” – William Ernest Henley