Placebo and Nocebo free essay sample

In Helen Pilcher’s article, â€Å"The New Witch Doctors: How Belief Can Kill,† she discusses the ethical dilemmas of the power of patients’ beliefs in the nocebo and placebo effects. The power of belief is so strong it can either make the patient feel better or become even sicker. This causes a problem for doctors because no matter how they state the truth it always ends up becoming a problem in the end. A placebo is a dummy pill that can produce a very real response in the patient. This effect convinces people that they will feel better when in reality they did not take any medication. The expectations of the patient play an important role in the placebo effect; the more a person expects the treatment to work, the more likely he or she is to feel better. For example, a patient participates in a study to determine the effectiveness of a new headache drug. We will write a custom essay sample on Placebo and Nocebo or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page After taking the drug, she finds that her headache quickly disappears and she feels much better. However, she later learns that she was in the placebo group and that the drug she was given was just a sugar pill. This patient was highly motivated by her belief that this treatment would actual work. Even though the placebo effect is just a dummy pill it can cause problems with the patient who is undergoing the treatment. Pilcher states, â€Å" Placebos cannot produce miracles, but they do produce measurable physical effects,† (page 2). Once a patient believes that the pill may or may not work they start experiencing the sides effects to this dummy pill. This can make the paitent become again knowing the treatment was not working. Therefore, the placebo effect depends on the person and how they react to medication. For instance, an optimistic patient is to more likely believe that these pills may work because that is what the physician told him. Pilcher states, â€Å"Women tend to operate more on past experiences† (page 4). Women tend to react as others react; if others around them are sick women tend to catch that cold. However, whereas the placebo effect causes patients to feel better with no medication, with the nocebo effect, patients believe medication can hurt them, so they feel worse after taking a pill. The nocebo effect is the  phenomenon in which inert substances actually bring about negative effects in a patient. For some, when a doctor informs a patient about a pill or procedure’s potential side effects, it can bring about real life symptoms. Moreover, if a doctor tells a patient that he only has five years to live, that patient is prone to have that negative thought in his mind. Pilcher quotes Guy Montgomery saying, â€Å"It can happen days before, or on the journey on the way in†(page 4). This negative mind set is making the patient become even more ill then he originally is. This suggests that because the power of belief, if the patient thinks he is truly going to die in five years, he will. Furthermore, doctors have much bigger power over their patients because their patients trust their medical expertise. Many people believe that if something can hurt you, it will. Helen Pilcher quotes Meador in her article saying, â€Å"Bad news promotes bad physiology† (page 5). This all depends on how much information doctor’s relay to their patients, as well as how they present that information. However, there are also solutions that are able to make the nocebo effect not as problematic. The first solution is hypnosis, which decreases patients’ anxiety and stress. When a patient is told how much longer they have to live, the patient now has to live with heightened anxiety and stress, causing them to lose the motivation to become better. Another solution that can solve the stress of the nocebo effect is doctors choosing their words carefully. In Pilcher’s article, Montgomery states, â€Å"Its all about how you say it† (Page 3). Doctors should know how to tell a patient what may happen or what side effects may occur more calmly then abruptly. When a doctor is going to approach the patient who only has five more years to live, that patient would want his doctor to be sympathetic about his situation. Because some patients may suffer side effects when doctors tell them they will, it is the doctor’s fault if they feel ill. However, doctors should still tell patients the truth in a way that keeps up the patients’ motivation, and minimizes their anxiety and stress levels. This allows people to be in the know about their health, without planting ideas in their head that will make them feel worse.