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All of the Benefits, None of the Side Effects
In another clinical trial, patients were asked whether they considered acupuncture to be an effective therapy in general and what they personally expected from the treatment. Patients with higher expectations about acupuncture experienced larger clinical benefits than those with lower expectations, regardless of their allocation to real or sham groups (Linde et al., 2007). It …
Price et al. (1999) applied placebo creams and graded levels of heat stimulation on three adjacent cutaneous regions of the forearm, giving subjects expectations that cream A was a strong analgesic, cream B was a weak analgesic, and cream C was a control agent. Immediately after these conditioning trials, subjects rated their expected pain …
Previous experience can also influence the magnitude of placebo analgesia. In one study, the intensity of painful stimulation was reduced surreptitiously after placebo administration, so leading subjects to believe that an analgesic treatment was effective (Colloca and Benedetti, 2006) (Fig. 4.2C). Fig. 4.2 C. Variability in magnitude of placebo analgesia. Part (C) shows different degrees …
For over 20 years, Linda Buonanno lived in fear that her irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) would suddenly interrupt her daily routine with frequent trips to the bathroom and unbearable cramping. Buonanno, now a 71-year-old medical assistant and hairdresser from Methuen, Mass., tried everything from drugs to dairy-free diets. Nothing worked. She remembers a particularly tough period over 10 years ago, when she was working on the factory floor of a medical-device company for up to 10 hours a day, six days a week. When an IBS episode would strike, her co-workers would cover for her as she huddled in a corner, keeled over in pain. If she wanted to go dancing with friends at the local club on Sunday, Buonanno would stop eating on Friday so there wouldn’t be anything in her system to interrupt her plans. “It was a horrible way to live,” she says. One day in 2009, she saw a TV ad looking for people with IBS to enroll in a study. She signed up and was thrilled when she was among about 80 people selected to take part in a first-of-its-kind clinical trial.