The phrase "The power of the mind..." has been used in most cases of when you want something or don't want something to happen. Such as when we are in a cold setting and we try to think of everything warm like hot cocoa and blankets by a fire in order to replicate what we want our body to feel instead of what it is actually feeling. I think it gets even more interesting when it is pain that we want to ignore especially physical pain. Did you know that placebos actually relieve some physical pain? A placebo is a drug or other procedure with no pharmacological effects. They will usually never help with actual medical conditions, but they are known to show a decreased response to pain. That is, the patients will not only say they feel better, but brain and spinal cord scans actually prove this decrease! This is the idea that the patients will emotionally feel better according to the decrease response in what is called the cingulate cortex. Another amazing fact about these placebos is that the effects are not just relaxation, but actually work by partly increasing the release of opiatesand the other part of releasing dopamine. There are still new findings of different effects even the placebo's opposite a antiplacebos, or nocebos, actually worsen some pain by the increase of anxiety.
I really like this video of different placebos and their effects because it explains pretty much everything I did and even more that I had not known or read about yet.
If you would like to learn more about placebos, I found this fun and interesting place to read on science things that has a great category on the topic.
It is so strange how our mind control's the amount of pain we feel. I feel placebo's have played an important role in science since scientists are now able to see which type of medications actually work, and which illnesses are can be cured mentally. I found most interesting from the video above that the effect of the placebo is bigger when the pill or dosage is bigger. A question I am trying to figure out about placebos, is why it has an affect in curing one illness in one place than in another, the example of Germany from the video above got me to think about this.
It is so strange how our mind control's the amount of pain we feel. I feel placebo's have played an important role in science since scientists are now able to see which type of medications actually work, and which illnesses are can be cured mentally. I found most interesting from the video above that the effect of the placebo is bigger when the pill or dosage is bigger. A question I am trying to figure out about placebos, is why it has an affect in curing one illness in one place than in another, the example of Germany from the video above got me to think about this.
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