Something I never see discussed (though if you have resources on the subject, please share them with me) are the very real and important difference between believing and wanting to believe and feeling better about something without the something itself being better.
When I feel like my symptoms have improved, that is factually distinct from my symptoms having improved. Ok, so far so obvious. But it is also factually distinct from me really feeling like my symptoms have improved. It may very well be that I'm just not sure and that I subconsciously lean toward giving the benefit of the doubt as a tie-breaker for my own uncertainty. And then I can feel better about that without the underlying symptom improving, and that is definitely factually distinct from the symptom improving.
The impact would obviously be age-related, since age equals exposure to factors like social influence, introspective knowledge of the limits of self evaluation, and so on.
And it is not the same thing as a placebo effect improving the symptom itself. I can be experiencing the exact same amount of pain but wishy-washy on the evaluation, but people report on the placebo effect as though it means I experience less pain. But maybe I'm just less frustrated by the pain, or less inclined to admit the pain to myself or to others, or less inclined to trust myself. Maybe believing feels good, so I want to do it.
Also discounting that the mind and body themselves are self regulating technology. For instance I have the conscious ability to push pain off into the distance and be unaffected by it, for others they can “take their mind off it” in various ways. Reminds me of Lawrence of Arabia, “the trick is to not care.”
There is more, much more, regarding our humanity and the mind body link which science does not have qualitative ways of exploring.
I find this very true of minor burns (e.g. touching a hot or dish). I can tell myself it doesn’t hurt and mostly it doesn’t from that point forward. I can’t do that for any other type of pain, though.
> But maybe I'm just less frustrated by the pain, or less inclined to admit the pain to myself or to others, or less inclined to trust myself. Maybe believing feels good, so I want to do it.
That wouldn’t be the placebo effect then, it would be more of a psychological phenomenon in the realm of how your mental outlook can influence how you experience pain. That is also heavily studied.
You get that these studies aren't actually measuring pain, right? They're measuring things like "how the patient rates the pain on a scale of 1-10". The difference between a "genuine" placebo and a "psychological" placebo is not detectable in that data.
This is my point! I would argue that a lot, if not most or even all, of what gets called a placebo effect is clearly confounded by these obviously-not-placebo-effect-as-defined effects without any distinction, and to me that casts the field into myopic disrepute.
> I think what you’re describing is generally called “pain tolerance”.
The human body is extremely complex, drugs have always side-effects. Placebo effect is quite efficient for simple symptoms and has no side-effect, so it's in our interest to "want to believe"
I don't want to expose the actual placebo or condition but have been self-studying this for ~7 years now. It's not within societal knowledge as of today.
The placebo is mentally administered, has a 100% success rate at provably halting the condition for a indeterminate amount of time. It also works in reverse, and is quite dangerous when used this way.
It's one of my LLM tests to have the LLM come to the conclusion based on available data on the condition (as it was my only source). Today, no LLM has passed the test.
It doesn't help because without any details at all from which to form an empathic bond between us there's no path for us to navigate from "obviously fabricated anecdote" to "believable anecdote".
It's also obnoxious for you to play obfuscatory gatekeeper with grown ass adults, and it makes your word less valuable not more.
> It also works in reverse, and is quite dangerous when used this way.
We're adults. We get to make our own mistakes if we want to. Thank you for the warning, but please provide the information so we can decide what to do with it for ourselves instead of patronizing your audience. Otherwise it really does make you sound like a crank, unfortunate as that may be.
The intent was to indicate that part of your problem might lie in what you believe and how that impacts the effect of any placebo.
I have no desire or need to prove anything on the internet. I provided enough information for a motivated person to determine what was said and apply it themselves.
You're welcome to be upset at the lack of peer review or details. However, I will point out that the post includes that this is deliberate. I also pointed out that the knowledge can be dangerous, which is why it wasn't expounded on.
There's some questions in the person's post that I was providing some reflection on. The truth of my comment, or any peer reviewed study for that matter, is up to the reader.
It's funny because the idea of a mental placebo requires the user to place their trust in the very same.
I think my favorite point to this effect is that there's plenty of medical literature (in the Lancet, and others) suggesting hypnosis is as effective as certain drugs for killing pain in certain contexts. And hypnosis is nothing more than talking someone, in a very directed way. There's caveats of course, but that's true of all drugs... Not to mention all this stuff on gut microbiota, and even the truly 'woo-woo' stuff like acupuncture. Personally, I don't think it's crazy at all to imagine that sticking a needle near the right neuron can cause some kind of occasionally helpful physiological response... in fact, it would be almost more surprising to me if this wasn't possible. Modern medicine works wonders for infectious diseases & physical issues, but I'm not entirely convinced we have a handle on the more subtle stuff.
I've been a lot more attentive to this kind of stuff lately due to some chronic health stuff that came up in the family. I think there's probably some framework in modern medicine that makes it less prone to adopting these kinds of methods. Maybe it's just historical baggage, who knows...
The problem with acupuncture is that the relative effectiveness compared to placebos has gotten worse and worse as better placebos have been developed for trials.
I.e. you mentioned "sticking a needle next to the right nerve" - that's a valid research question...and it was studied. Turns out sticking needles where an acupuncture specialist thinks they should go, versus just randomly has the same reported effect in trials.
Oh huh. Just quickly glancing, it seems that indeed you may be right, at least for a lot of the standard things it's used to treat. The exception seems to be allergies?
I'm not sure that invalidates my broader point in any case, but good to know!
When I feel like my symptoms have improved, that is factually distinct from my symptoms having improved. Ok, so far so obvious. But it is also factually distinct from me really feeling like my symptoms have improved. It may very well be that I'm just not sure and that I subconsciously lean toward giving the benefit of the doubt as a tie-breaker for my own uncertainty. And then I can feel better about that without the underlying symptom improving, and that is definitely factually distinct from the symptom improving.
The impact would obviously be age-related, since age equals exposure to factors like social influence, introspective knowledge of the limits of self evaluation, and so on.
And it is not the same thing as a placebo effect improving the symptom itself. I can be experiencing the exact same amount of pain but wishy-washy on the evaluation, but people report on the placebo effect as though it means I experience less pain. But maybe I'm just less frustrated by the pain, or less inclined to admit the pain to myself or to others, or less inclined to trust myself. Maybe believing feels good, so I want to do it.