The Placebo Effect: A Key Component In Self Healing.
The mind-body connection is so powerful that it can bring about physiological changes in our bodies. It stands to reason that if it can cause us to become ill, we must also already possess the power we need to help us heal ourselves.
Hypnotherapy, is just one of many self help fields and can be used in many situations from insomnia to breast enlargement. Eyesight is known to be improved by the use of Hypnotherapy. A person can exhibit normal eyesight function when in a hypnotic state, when they otherwise cannot see to read a newspaper. While I am not progressing towards giving advice that you fire your Physician because you can cure yourself altogether, the subject of the Mind-Body connection and the placebo effect truly has merit that we all should be more educated in.
The Placebo Effect:
The dictionary defines the word ‘placebo’ as;
a. a substance having no pharmacological effect but given merely to satisfy a patient who supposes it to be a medicine.
b. a substance having no pharmacological effect but administered as a control in testing experimentally or clinically the efficacy of a biologically active preparation.
A placebo effect happens when a substance with no medicinal value whatsoever still offers a solution which would otherwise only have been attained by using a prescribed medicine.Hence, a placebo can go a long way to allowing a person to ‘heal’ themselves. The placebo itself is symbolic. The act of taking a medicine allows us to feel the healing effects, and healing can occur. In other studies, the act of physically taking a medicine has not been necessary. This is because the power of suggestibility is at work in both situations. Suggestibility is very powerful. Looking at a study by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer we see that the mere suggestion that one can achieve weight loss is entirely possible.
Dividing 84 Hotel Housemaids into two groups, then telling one group how their physical activity was sufficient as recommended by the Surgeon General to lose weight , they actually lost weight over the following month. They were informed that the tasks they were required to perform, and the number of calories they would use by doing said activities really was going to do the job. The second group of Housemaids were told nothing at all.
Upon returning and examining these two groups of people, the educated group did indeed lose size and weight, and also showed a significant 10% lower blood pressure than before. The second group displayed no changes at all.
There are many skeptics when discussing this placebo effect, as with any subject which is not yet fully understood. Suggestibility is the key component in allowing one’s own mind and body to heal itself, but with an incomplete understanding of the brain and how it functions, we are only a short way down a long path to discovering how to harness this exciting option of maintaining or recovering our good health.