Placebo - what is it?

The first mention of placebo falls on the 18th century. For two hundred years he was actively used by healers to fight this or that disease. Placebo was considered an indispensable element of medicine of the time. Nowadays, the attitude towards it is ambiguous: someone believes in its miraculous power, and someone thinks nothing more than a pacifier. So, placebo - what is it and how effective and reasonable is its use in medicine? This is what we will discuss in this article.

Placebo. What it is?

By this concept means a substance that does not have any effect on the human body, but it is given to the patient under the guise of a medicinal product. That is, a placebo is just a deception, a fiction. The treatment is based on suggestion: the person is fully convinced that the pills or injections that the doctor has prescribed help in the fight against the disease, and his body begins to destroy the disease on its own without additional help. This is the placebo effect. Drugs only work if the patient believes that they will help him. The higher the level of suggestibility of a person, the more effective the impact will be. To create such "drugs" usually use starch, glucose, calcium, distilled water.

Does it help or not?

Some medical institutions practice a placebo. That this unique remedy is able to make the sick person's body fight infection and other ailments has been proven repeatedly. Scientists from the UK conducted a series of experiments. The patients who transferred the operation were divided into two groups. The first was given morphine for removal Pain, and the other - a placebo pill. The result was simply stunning: the pain was gone in all patients. Also a good proof that the placebo really works is the American drug "Latril", which cured cancer patients. Some patients who managed to cope with this serious illness are still alive. After scientists decided to thoroughly study the composition of this drug and identify the component that is capable of killing the affected cells, preventing them from progressing, it was found that the drug is made on the basis of an extract of apricot kernels. After this sensational discovery, it was already impossible to treat cancer with this remedy, as people understood that the remedy does not actually have any effect on the body.

What is the placebo used for?

Pharmacology also uses a placebo when testing medications. This happens in the following way: the group of patients is divided into two parts. The first of these is given a drug developed, and the second is a placebo. If the effect of the invented drug slightly exceeds the effect of the second remedy, then the batch is rejected. The question of placebo (what it is, we considered earlier) remains open, and to believe in it or not is a personal matter for everyone. But it is scientifically proven that the power of autosuggestion is one of the strongest things that our body can restore and heal from the most seemingly serious diseases.