IT SEEMS that placebos have a real, not imagined, effect – at least when it comes to pain. They activate production of chemicals in the brain that relieve pain.
Placebos are treatments that use substances which have no active ingredient. But if people are told that what they are being given contains an active painkiller, for example, they often feel less pain – an effect that has normally been considered psychological.
Recent studies, though, suggest otherwise. For instance, when a placebo was secretly mixed with a drug that blocks endorphins – the body’s natural painkillers – there was no placebo effect, showing…
