Health Care Costs Can Be Decreased by Enhancing the Placebo Effect

Capturing the Elusive Placebo Effect by Biofeedback Techniques

Health Care Costs Can Be Decreased by Enhancing the Placebo Effect

The Placebo Effect is a part of every medicine or medical treatment. The Placebo Effect makes medicines and treatments work better. Perhaps the Placebo Effect could be described as a patient's hope, faith, or belief in a medicine or treatment. The patient expects to get better by taking the medicine or by undergoing the treatment. 

If the Placebo Effect could be increased, the use of medicines and medical treatments could decrease. This could decrease overall health care cost.

 

Some researchers are indeed trying to maximize the Placebo Effect or at least find out how this phenomenon works. What we do know is that when a patient expects a medicine or treatment to work, it will work better. When the patient doubts the efficacy of a medical intervention, the intervention will be less effective. Essentially, the Placebo Effect is most active when the patient expects or anticipates relief. 

An example of the Placebo Effect at work is when someone takes a pain reliever and says, "I feel better already" after only a few minutes. In actuality, this is impossible because the body has not even absorbed the medicine yet. The patient perceives to feel better already, because they expect relief. 

Expecting or anticipating a positive response is an emotional event. Think of the last time you were excited about a future positive event. You could hardly wait and were emotional.

Consider the Placebo Effect an emotional event. Science has the tools to study emotional events. 

One such "Emotion Measuring Tool" is the Biofeedback Device. Many of these devices use Skin Conductance to determine emotional arousal. When a person is excited, they perspire and Biofeedback Devices measure this. Some devices even have a computer output to track events. 

It is proposed in this article to use Biofeedback Devices to learn how to enhance the Placebo Effect. Below is the description of how this might work.

 

1. The patient would be connected or wear a Biofeedback Device or Monitor.

2. To enhance the Placebo Effect, doctors would say or do things that might elicit a positive expectation of relief or healing. The doctors would continuously monitor the Biofeedback Device to determine if their actions are successful. If the doctor can get the patient to believe that relief is possible, the monitor will show that, since the patient will become excited and slightly perspire.

3. Through time, the Placebo Effect can be captured, studied, and shared. From this, we can learn to enhance the Placebo Effect. 

Takeaways:

• The Placebo Effect is rooted in the Sympathetic Nervous System as an expectation of a positive outcome (hope).
• Biofeedback devices, such as Skin Conductance, measure the activity of the Sympathetic Nervous System.
• Therefore, biofeedback techniques can provide quantitative information about the Placebo Effect.

For more information:

• Placebo Effect
• Enhancing the Placebo
• The Placebo Effect: Mechanisms and Methodology (R01) - Research Grant RFA-DA-12-003 from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) - See "enhance the therapeutic benefits of placebo effects in clinical research and practice"
• Biofeedback and Skin Conductance
• Reward anticipation, cognition, and electrodermal activity in the conditioned monkey
• Caffeine-associated stimuli elicit conditioned responses: an experimental model of the placebo effect
• The placebo effect and the autonomic nervous system: evidence for an intimate relationship

Disclaimer - Article is for information only and is not medical advice.