A seemingly surprising piece of news: the placebo effect is effective, even when the patient knows that they are taking a placebo, in this case a medication without any active substance.
These are the conclusions of a new American study that researchers carried out by giving a placebo to the participants of their experiment, who had to view emotionally strong images.
Concretely, in the test group, the researchers told the participants that the product had no proven medical effectiveness, but that if the patients believed in it then it would reduce their negative emotions when faced with the images to be viewed.
In the other group, the researchers told the participants that they were taking a medication that allowed the researchers to better read the evolution of their physiological state while viewing the images.
The study results showed that the placebo reduced emotional distress. This confirms that our state of mind has a great influence on our body. In this experiment, the mechanism of confidence in the pseudo-treatment seems to be transferred to the belief in the information given by the practitioner.
A.Liarsou
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