Harnessing The Power Of The Placebo Effect 

The placebo effect is a mind-body phenomenon that starts in the brain. Research studies and trials suggest that the mind has an unlimited power to heal the body. The aim of this article is to explore how the mind contains a limitless supply of creativity, and a vast amount of untapped potential.

"A placebo is a substance or other kind of treatment that looks just like a regular treatment or medicine, but is not. It’s actually an inactive “look-alike” treatment or substance. This means it’s not a medicine." ~ cancer.org

" The placebo effect refers to the impact that a placebo has on an individual. In other words, even an inert and inactive treatment can produce a measurable, positive health response. This outcome may fly in the face of common sense but it has been repeatedly demonstrated." ~ medicalnewstoday.com

Placebo effect: "Also called the placebo response. A remarkable phenomenon in which a placebo -- a fake treatment, an inactive substance like sugar, distilled water, or saline solution -- can sometimes improve a patient's condition simply because the person has the expectation that it will be helpful. Expectation plays a potent role in the placebo effect. The more a person believes they are going to benefit from a treatment, the more likely it is that they will experience a benefit." ~ medicinenet.com

Placebo (a Latin word) “I will please” = Placebo refers to any medical treatment that is inert or inactive.

Placebo effect = Improvement in symptoms through the belief of receiving an “active” treatment.

The placebo effect taps into the body's natural pharmaceuticals.

Did you know - placebos can cause real biological changes in the body — release of hormones and chemicals.

THINK ABOUT IT?

Humans have been healing themselves for eons, long before modern medicine was integrated into society. Native shamans or witch doctors have been facilitating healing practices for thousands of years. Through certain rituals and “healing” methods, patients believe, “expect” they will be healed, which then initiates changes in the physiology for the body to heal.

#ESSENTIAL POINT by Dr. Joe Dispenza

“How we perceive and interpret the data we receive from our sense as factual information — whether that information is actually true or not — and the meaning we give it produce significant biological changes on a genetic level. Thus, our genes interact with our conscious awareness in complex relationships. We could say that meaning is continually affecting the neural structures that influence who we are on the microscopic level, which then influences who we are on the macroscopic level.” ~ You Are The Placebo

TRUE OR FALSE?

Your brain doesn't know the difference between what is real and what is not real. Your consciousness defines what is “real.”

ANSWER: Whether real or not real. The above quote is only true if you define it as “truth.”

You define reality through your perception. Truth is subjective and only what you believe it to be.

#IMPORTANT POINTS:

1. YOU ARE THE CREATOR OF YOUR REALITY.
2. YOU GIVE MEANING.
3. YOU GIVE TRUTH .
4. BELIEVE IN YOUR POWER.

SOURCE - mercola.com

SOURCE - psychologytoday.com

SOURCE - You Are The Placebo

“While treating wounded American soldiers during World War II, Henry Beecher ran out of pain-killing morphine. Desperate, he decided to continue telling the soldiers that he was giving them morphine, although he was actually infusing them with a saline solution. Amazingly, 40 percent of the soldiers reported that the saline treatment eased their pain.

Today, scientists better understand why those soldiers felt better. Beecher gave the soldiers a placebo — a substance that may look like a real medication, but isn’t. Placebos can take many forms. The most common is a “sugar pill,” but placebos can also be injections, devices, procedures — even just a doctor telling a patient that he or she will soon feel better. “

~ United States National Libary of Medicine

EXPECTATION

Could it be that the body accelerates its healing process on an inert level from the expectation of feeling better?

Example:

We have been conditioned from a young age to associate doctors with healing. So when a doctor prescribes you medicine, chances are you expect it to work. No doubt the medicine will have some substantial effect.

BUT...

How do we really know if the healing has come from the active treatment or placebo effect?

How can we be 100% sure or pin point exactly what is doing the healing? Our belief or the medicine?

Maybe it’s a combination of both?

Or, perhaps sometimes it’s the pill, and other times it’s the placebo effect?

THE POWER OF EXPECTATION TO BEND REALITY

Scenario - You are in a wine tasting event and a particular bottle of wine you’re about to taste has been said to be from a premium range — this is based on the price tag and critics reviews.

Question: When you take a sip from this glass of premium wine will your experience change to meet your expectation compared to tasting a cheap wine?

ANSWER: Yes. Based on your expectation of the wine being a quality wine the level of activity in the reward centres of the brain actually change.

Extracted from - Scientific American

#Please note

There is a certain degree of truth here. At some point, wine will taste so cheap that our taste buds will spit it out even if the price tag says $1 million dollars.

Expectations allow your body to shift into a new paradigm. Just assuming we are taking a more quality-based treatment compared to a cheap one will have a better effect on our body.

MORE EXAMPLES FROM - Scientific American

“ Highly trained weight lifters can outdo their personal best when they believe they’ve taken a performance booster.”

“People who wear taller, better-looking avatars in virtual reality games behave in ways that taller and better-looking people tend to act. For example, they approach better-looking potential dates, and they are more aggressive in negotiations, both in the virtual world and after the game's headgear is removed.”

“In lab and field experiments, people who stand in powerful poses (think Superman) for a minute or two have similar hormonal changes compared to people who are given actual power and authority over another person, and they exhibit the same sorts of behavioural changes.”

THE POWER OF BELIEF TO CREATE REALITY

Belief - personally choosing something to be valid or true in our own minds. The stronger we hold this truth beyond all reasonable doubt, the stronger our belief.

You can expect something to happen , but until you start to believe in your expectation, your body will not respond.

Belief supercharges expectation into a whole new level of creation.

“The more you believe in the cause, the better the effect.”

SOURCE - scientificamerican.com

SOURCE- harvard.edu

SOURCE - psychologytoday.com

SOURCE - You Are The Placebo

“Typically, for a placebo to work, you have to believe it’s a “real” drug. Why is that? Expectations, it turns out, play a crucial role in recovery from illness. There’s a link between your mind and your body, and when you expect a pill (or surgery) to do something, your body yields to your expectation by producing the requisite brain chemicals. Needless to say, the stronger your belief or expectation, the more likely you are to experience the desired result.”

~ Dr. Mercola

EXAMPLE

CONDITIONING RESPONSES

Day 1) Headache - Aspirin

Day 2) Headache - Aspirin

Day 3) Headache - Aspirin

Day 4) Headache - Sugar pill (in aspirin packaging)

RESULT:

Some studies have used a protocol to reduce medication by inserting placebo treatments interspersed with actually taking the pill — as an example, you might insert the placebo every third day — and what they found was that the efficacy of the drug stayed the same, even though the total drug amount decreased. They’ve done this immunosuppressants, corticosteroids, and ADHD medications.

PAVLOV’S DOG EXPERIMENT - comments by Dr. Joe Dispenza

“ When Pavlov rang the bell, and the dog heard that sound, it created the image from the past experience of what was to take place in the present moment. The dog’s body autonomically, automatically, physiologically, chemically, subconsciously began to change in preparation for the event.

The dog’s body was beginning to believe it was in the experience, ahead of the actual experience.”

“ Many placebo studies are primarily around pain, depressions or asthma. You can give someone some type of substance that they think is the real substance because it looks like it their body starts to produce the same chemicals by conditioning just like Pavlov’s dog.”

“You can substitute a pill that someone has been taking with another pill that looks just like the pill they have been taking. And by the law of association, the moment they see that pill, their body starts to biologically and chemically change in preparation for that event.”

“Placebo effects can arise not only from a conscious belief in a drug but also from subconscious associations between recovery and the experience of being treated — from the pinch of a shot to a doctor's white coat. Such subliminal conditioning can control bodily processes of which we are unaware, such as immune responses and the release of hormones. ” ~ Scientific American

# Key points

•Our beliefs influence our body chemistry.

•Self-belief plays a significant role in healing.

•Emotionally charged thoughts have the power to induce physical and psychological responses.

•Many studies show us that through the placebo effect, we have the power to heal the body.

•Expecting to feel better has a positive effect on the body’s response to a broad spectrum of disease.

FAMOUS PLACEBO STUDY - Mr. Wright

“His physician, Dr. Philip West, finally agreed and gave Mr. Wright an injection on a Friday afternoon. The following Monday, the astonished doctor found his patient out of his death bed, joking with the nurses. The tumours , the doctor wrote later, had melted like snowballs on a hot stove .”

PLACEBO - MORE EFFECTIVE THAN ANTI-DEPRESSANTS?

Extracted from - You Are The Placebo

“Kirsch and his colleagues did a second meta-analysis, this time on the 35 clinical trials conducted for four of the six most widely prescribed antidepressants approved between 1987 and 1999. Now, looking at data from more than 5,000 patients, the researchers found again that placebos worked just as well as the popular antidepressants drugs — Prozac, Effexor, Serzone, and Paxil — a whopping 81 percent of the time. ”

SOURCE - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

SOURCE - You Are The Placebo

SOURCE - medscape.com

Okay, so my thoughts can make me feel better, even heal my body…

BUT...

Does that mean my thoughts can make me sick as well?

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF NOCEBO

Our thoughts are equally powerful in both directions. In contrast to the Placebo effect, it has a polar opposite known as the Nocebo Effect . We may personally experience the nocebo when we expect a negative result to happen and as a result, we experience a deterioration of our health, or a pre-existing condition becomes worse.

Similar to the placebo effect, in which a fake medication can give patients the benefits of having taken the real drug, the nocebo effect is the little-studied fact that patients taking a fake drug can also experience real negative side effects.

"In one remarkable case, a participant in an antidepressant drug trial was given placebo tablets — and then swallowed 26 of them in a suicide attempt. Even though the tablets were harmless, the participant's blood pressure dropped perilously low." CLICK HERE TO READ FULL ARTICLE

“In many of the experiments they analyzed, the suggestion or expectation of pain brought about significant increases in the amount of negative side effects experienced by participants. For example, in one study , 50 people who suffered from chronic back pain were given a flexibility test. Half were told beforehand that the test might cause some pain, while the others were not. Afterward, the first group reported a significantly higher amount of pain, despite enduring the exact same procedure.” ~ Joseph Stromberg

CLICK HERE TO READ FULL ARTICLE

SOURCE - You Are The Placebo

SOURCE - bodyinmind.org

"Science has recognised that at least one-third of all healing, including drugs, surgery, and other allopathic interventions, has nothing to do with the process but has to do with the Placebo Effect." ~ brucelipton.com

What are you mentally rehearsing all day?

What are you feeding your body emotionally?

How are you managing your stress levels?

Be aware of your thoughts . . . Realise that thoughts have the power to elicit subconscious mechanisms in your body.

Once you back your thoughts up with belief and expectation, then it becomes supercharged. Giving it the power to influence your body’s physiology.

Your are only harming yourself. . . remember this next time you get angry or upset — before you start emotionally charging thoughts and fuelling your body full of stress — know that your cells pay the ultimate price.

FEED YOUR BODY LOVE . . .

LOVE is such a powerful energy that we all possess, so why not use it to feed your cells?

Life is energy — once we look down a quantum microscope to the micro level of reality we find life is made out of atoms which accurately described are moving energy.

The expression of atoms come from energy; your mind is an incubator of energy —thoughts are an intangible force of energy.

Understanding the science of the placebo effect means that you recognise the power of your thoughts and emotions.

What you feed your body emotionally matters! You don’t necessarily need to heal to be using the placebo to your advantage.

Negative thoughts can stress the body potentially leading to illness — positive thoughts can not only heal the body but keep the bodies immune system resilient to illness.

Bathing your body in love and feeding your mind positive thoughts not only is catalyst for a placebo effect but also a trigger for epigenetic changes.

Having an optimistic attitude towards life can shape your experience on all levels:

•Mental

•Emotional

•Physical

•Spiritual

•Environmental

The most important message from this article is that

Self belief combined with a positive attitude can really help change your life for the better. Some benefits are:

- Enhanced stress management

- Better health

- Self-confidence

- Better decision-making

- Increased focus

- More success

- Attract positive experiences

- Less fear

*It's important to note that the following steps should be considered to help support a positive attitude:

6 STEPS FOR EMPOWERMENT EMPOWERMENT:

1. Let go of emotional blockages by liberating your past.

2. Practice regular mindfulness and meditation.

3. Practice positive affirmations.

4. Don’t pay attention to self-sabotaging thoughts.

5. Realise you are not your thoughts.

6. Practice self love.

Believe in your power. . .

We all make mistakes, and when we hold onto negative emotions from the past we only poison our own bodies.

Forgive yourself and discharge the thoughts the may be creating a nocebo effect in your body.

“It’s often possible to feel better just because your mind subconsciously believes it's time, or your subconscious alters body processes in response to the placebo treatment without you even being aware of it. As often as possible, always try to use the placebo option first . This is a new way of thinking about healing for most people, but can be extremely powerful, especially when combined with a healthy outlook and disease-preventive lifestyle.” ~ Dr. Mercola

Take control of your self beliefs by defining your self from this present moment and liberate all negativity from the past. You are the placebo, and your belief can create your own reality.

“The placebo effect should be the subject of major, funded research efforts. If medical researchers could figure out how to leverage the placebo effect, they would hand doctors an efficient, energy-based, side effect-free tool to treat disease. Energy healers say they already have such tools, but I am a scientist, and I believe the more we know about the science of the placebo, the better we’ll be able to use it in clinical settings.” ~ brucelipton.com

#N ote

There's no denying that the placebo effect is real. It reveals you hold a great deal of the power of healing within yourself — unlimited power that you can tap into. Recognising this inherent self-healing power of the mind can improve your natural ability to heal from various diseases and illnesses.

Our thoughts and beliefs are more effective in response to the placebo effect than what we typically believe, and it is in our best interest to harness this power that comes from within .

There is unquestionably a phenomena associated with the placebo — the body's ability to change its physiology through the power of the mind. Our meditations are designed to tap into the power of your thoughts, creating a fresh and healthy perspective in life. Try one of our meditations today and experience the effect of a placebo mind - FREE GUIDED MEDITATIONS