The power of the mind for healing (hypnosis and placebo effect)

For as long as there has been hypnotists and an established medical community the belief that hypnosis and alternative therapies were nothing more than placebo or imaginary therapies has persisted. This has been given as a way of discounting the effectiveness and power of these modalities. Placebo is the method that science uses to eliminate healing that is not immediately ascertainable to the medication being tested. In order to do this researchers use a trial in which you give one group of patients a medicine you want to test, and another group a dummy pill that has no active ingredients. The pills are distributed and packaged in such a way that neither the doctor nor patients know which is getting which. This is done in order to test the healing properties of the medicine and eliminate the healing properties of the patient’s belief in the medicine. To these researchers this effect is regarded as a nuisance variable that they take great pains to eliminate from their research. The interesting part is how much pains are taking to eliminate the results of this effect since there is a great deal of evidence that the placebo effect is effective routinely around 30% of the time. There is even a Doctor from Harvard medical center, Dr. Herbert Benson, who states that it may work up to 90%. There is even more mounting evidence placebos have produced some very incredible results within the studies that they are attempting to eliminate it from. One has to wonder would be the result if they stopped looking at it as a nuisance and started looking at it as a powerful tool for healing. Recently researchers have begun to do just this.
The remainder of this blog is a look at the results of this research and the many reasons why it is a good thing to know that hypnosis works by utilizing the placebo effect. In the interest of space I will not be posting all the footnotes for the research but these studies can be found with a little work on Google.
. In nine double-blind studies comparing placebos to aspirin, placebos proved to be just as effective for pain relief 54 percent of the time. These same researchers found that when comparing a placebo against a much stronger painkiller (morphine), placebo was 56% as effective as morphine in pain relief.
In a chemotherapy study 30% of the individuals in the control (the placebo group), had hair loss consistent with what would be experienced through chemo.
“During a study for headache, 120 of our 199 patients receiving the placebo obtained relief. In a test of Clofibrate versus placebo for cholesterol level and cardiovascular mortality, the placebo outperformed the drug.”
“In a back pain sham therapy of four years, 40% of the placebo group improved.”
“In a sham tooth-grinding surgical procedure, there was a 64% total symptom remission.”
“Doctors Seidel and Abrams found that a hypodermic of saline was as effective as vaccines for chronic rheumatoid arthritis .”
“In a study for Raynaud’s Syndrome, utilizing an apparatus with saline and the clicking of dials, every case using the placebo improved. Six had excellent improvement and one patient great improvement after one year.”
Researcher Falk Eippert at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany even caught the placebo effect by using a MRI. In this study the researchers rubbed “control” and “painkiller” creams onto two different spots on each volunteer’s left forearm and applied the same level of heat to each spot, 15 times. The fake “painkiller” cream worked: volunteers said they experienced 26 per cent less pain on the “painkiller”-treated patch of their arm, compared with the “control”-treated area. Meanwhile, the fMRI scanner witnessed the placebo effect. When skin treated with the “control” cream was heated, an area of the dorsal horn located on the left side of volunteers’ lower necks lit up, suggesting increased neural activity there in response to pain. However, this signal disappeared in the “painkiller” trials.
Robert Ader, Ph.D., M.D. found that utilization of placebo effect by mimicking color, size and pill shape to successfully treat psoriasis patients with one quarter to one half of their usual dose of a widely used steroid medication.
There are many more studies that document this effect. What is important is that the research shows that by manipulation or change of a person’s beliefs, one can experience powerful changes in their physical health. For these reasons I am proud to work in the most effective medium for triggering and employing the Placebo effect to bring change and vitality to a person’s life.