Placebo Effect-Pain Relief

Anusharada A^*
*Correspondence: Anusharada A, Department of Biotechnology, Osmania University, Hyderabad, Telangana, India, Tel: 8143389651, Email:

A placebo is something that looks like a "real" medical treatment -but it is not. It might be a pill, a shot, or any other type of "replica" treatment. Placebos do not contain an active substance which is meant to affect health. In most of the cases, the individual do not know that they are receiving is actually a placebo treatment.

The placebo effect is more than the positive thinking i.e., believing a treatment or procedure works well. It's all about creating a stronger connection between the body and brain and how these two work together?

The placebo effect is deal with in physiological mechanisms. Different processes are involved, depending on the psychological or physical state of the individual and on the context. Various theories have been proposed to understand, focusing on different variables like patient expectations, individual attributions, conditioning processes, and contextual factors.

The placebo effect varies across individuals and disorders. On the other side, differences across the disorders received less attention, and especially in neurorehabilitation field.

The mind is a powerful healing tool when it is given the chance. The idea that brain can convince your body is a fake treatment is the real thing.

Placebos will never lower the patient cholesterol levels or contract a tumor. As a replacement, placebos work on symptoms which are modulated by the brain, like the perception of pain. Placebos can make you feel much better, but that cannot cure the patient. Placebos have been shown to be the most effective for the conditions like stress, pain management, stress-related insomnia, and cancer treatment. Side effects would be fatigue and nausea.

Since many years, a placebo effect is considered as a failure. In recent times, experts concluded that the work of placebo is still not yet understood the mechanism clearly, but it involves in complex neurobiological reaction includes increases in feel-good neurotransmitters, like endorphins and dopamine, to greater activity in certain brain regions linked to emotional reactions, mood swings, and self-awareness.

Recently, a placebo is used in the clinical trials to test the treatment effectiveness and most often used in the studies of drug. People in one group get the tested drug, while the other people receive a fake drug, or placebo (that they think is the real thing). In this way, the researchers measure the drug work by comparing the reaction in the both groups. If the both groups have the same reaction improvement or not then the drug is considered as not to work.