Medical research shows a spoonful of sugar not only helps the medicine go down, it may be all the medicine you need.
Placebos, medically useless pills, potions and tonics, have been part of doctoring forever and now hard science is backing up the idea that nothing may be good for you. Study after study proves that placebos can help depression, treat ulcers and relieve pain just as well as the authentic prescription.
Researchers found asthmatics dilated their own airways when told they were inhaling asthma medicine. In another study, half of the colitis patients’ intestines showed improvement after taking a placebo.
‘Placebo surgery’ has helped arthritis sufferers, Parkinson Disease victims, even cardiac patients. As long as the patient doesn’t know it’s a placebo, the placebo works as well as real medicine. If nothing does something, then why not use the fake for real?
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Dr. Walter Brown, professor of psychiatry at Brown University, and Ted Kaptchuk, professor of alternative medicine at Harvard Medical School.