The Placebo Effect in Clinical Practice


Book Description

The Placebo Effect in Clinical Practice brings together what we know about the mechanisms behind the placebo response, as well as the procedures that promote these responses, in order to provide a focused and concise overview on how current knowledge can be applied in treatment settings.




Placebo Effects


Book Description

This is the first book to critically review the mechanisms of placebo effects across all medical conditions, diseases and therapies. It is the definitive text on the placebo effect, and will be essential for researchers and clinicians in all medical specialties.




The Placebo Effect


Book Description

Beginning with a review of the role of placebos in the history of medicine, this book investigates the current surge of interest in placebos, and probes the methodological difficulties of saying scientifically just what placebos can and cannot do.




The Placebo Effect


Book Description

In this first action-packed novel in The Junction Chronicles, professor and acting coach Decker Roberts has the dangerous gift of detecting the truth—that turns into deadly curse. For years Decker’s rare sensory ability to discern the truth proved to be a lucrative sideline to his acting teaching. Only his closest friends know, and he keeps his "synesthete" identity secret from the companies that pay him to tell them if the people they are planning to hire are truthful. But Decker’s carefully compartmentalized life starts to fall apart. His house burns down, his credit cards are cancelled, his bank loan is called and his studio is condemned. He realizes that he must have heard something in one of his truth-telling sessions that someone didn’t want him to know. Decker has to go on the run and figure out why he’s been targeted. There’s also a government agent hunting him who seems to know absolutely everything about Decker Roberts’ identities, real and false—and other people of “his kind.” How will Decker find out which truth was endangering his life? Who betrayed him and revealed all his secrets? Decker needs to find answers quickly, before knowing the truth turns from a gift into a deadly curse.







You Are the Placebo


Book Description

Is it possible to heal by thought alone—without drugs or surgery? The truth is that it happens more often than you might expect. In You Are the Placebo, best-selling author, international speaker, chiropractor, and renowned researcher of epigenetics, quantum physics, & neuroscience, Dr. Joe Dispenza shares numerous documented cases of those who reversed cancer, heart disease, depression, crippling arthritis, and even the tremors of Parkinson’s disease by believing in a placebo. Similarly, Dr. Joe tells of how others have gotten sick and even died the victims of a hex or voodoo curse—or after being misdiagnosed with a fatal illness. Belief can be so strong that pharmaceutical companies use double- and triple-blind randomized studies to try to exclude the power of the mind over the body when evaluating new drugs. “In his paradigm-altering book, You Are the Placebo, Dr. Joe Dispenza catapults us beyond thinking of the placebo effect as an anomaly. Through 12 concise chapters that read like a true-life scientific thriller, Dispenza gives us rock-solid reasons to accept the game-changer of our lives: that the placebo effect is actually us, proving to ourselves the greatest possibilities of healing, miracles, and longevity! I love this book and look forward to a world where the secret of the placebo is the foundation of everyday life.” — Gregg Braden, New York Times best-selling author of Deep Truth and The Divine Matrix Chapters Include: Foreward by Dawson Church, Ph.D. Part I. Is It Possible? A Brief History of the Placebo The Placebo Effect in the Brain The Placebo Effect in the Body How Thoughts Change the Brain and the Body Suggestibility Attitudes, Beliefs, and Perceptions The Quantum Mind Three Stories of Personal Transformation Information to Transformation: Proof That You Are the Placebo Part II: Transformation Meditation Preparation Changing Beliefs and Perceptions Meditation Becoming Supernatural Dr. Joe does more than simply explore the history and the physiology of the placebo effect. He asks the question: "Is it possible to teach the principles of the placebo, and without relying on any external substance, produce the same internal changes in a person’s health and ultimately in his or her life?" Then he shares scientific evidence (including color brain scans) of amazing healings from his workshops, in which participants learn his consciousness shifting model of personal transformation, based on practical applications of the so-called placebo effect. The book ends with a "how-to" calming meditation for changing limiting beliefs and mental perceptions that hold us back—the first step in healing. You Are the Placebo combines the latest research in neuroscience, biology, psychology, hypnosis, behavioral conditioning, and quantum physics to demystify the workings of the placebo effect . . . and show how the seemingly impossible can become possible. “I discovered that if I could teach people the scientific model of transformation (bringing in a little quantum physics to help them understand the science of possibility); combine it with the latest information in neuroscience, neuroendocrinology, epigenetics, and psychoneuroimmunology; give them the right kind of instruction; and provide the opportunity to apply that information, then they would experience a transformation... This book is about: empowering you to realize that you have all the biological and neurological machinery to do exactly that. My goal is to demystify these concepts with the new science of the way things really are so that it is within the reach of more people to change their internal states in order to create positive changes in their health and in their external world.” — Dr. Joe Dispenza




The Placebo


Book Description

A thorough collection of classic and contemporary resources about the placebo effect. The placebo effect is a fascinating but elusive phenomena. Although no standard definition of the placebo effect exists, it is generally understood as consisting of responses of individuals to the psychosocial context of medical treatments or clinical encounters, as distinct from specific physiological effects of medical interventions. The Placebo is the first book to compile a selection of classic and contemporary published articles on the topic. Systematic investigation of the placebo effect emerged in the 1950s in response to the development of randomized controlled clinical trials that used “inert” placebo interventions as a pivotal element of scientific evaluation of novel drugs. In recent years, scientific and scholarly investigation of the placebo effect has increased dramatically, reflecting a growing interest in the connection between mind and body with respect to health, the development of brain imaging techniques, dissatisfaction with the reductionist and technological orientation of biomedicine, and growing attention to the use of complementary and alternative medical treatments. The Placebo is organized into three sections: the nature and significance of the placebo effect, experimental studies of the placebo effect, and ethical issues of placebos in research and in clinical practice. This comprehensive sourcebook will be invaluable to investigators and scholars alike.




Placebos


Book Description

The biological power of the placebo effect. The power of placebos to ameliorate symptoms has been with us for centuries. Western medicine today is finding it increasingly difficult to ignore the efficacy of placebos. In some clinical trials with placebos as controls, inert or sham replicas of active pharmaceutical drugs and even sham surgeries have been found to be as beneficial as the intervention being tested. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Kathryn Hall examines the power of placebos, showing how their effects can influence our clinical trials, clinical encounters and, collectively, Hall argues, our public health. Hall, who has studied the placebo effect for years, reviews the history of the placebo in medicine, tracing its evolution from quackery and patent medicine to its use as a control in clinical trials. She considers the ways that expectations and learning affect our response to placebos; advances in neuroimaging that reveal the inner workings of the placebo effect; the “nocebo” effect; placebo controls in randomized clinical trials; and the use of psychological profiles and genetics to predict individual placebo response. The effects of placebos have been hiding in plain sight; with this book, Hall helps bring them into clearer view.




The Powerful Placebo


Book Description

Ranging from antiquity to modern times, this history of the placebo effect is especially timely in light of renewed interest in the mind-body relationship. Until this century, most medications prescribed by physicians were pharmacologically inert, if not harmful. That is, physicians were prescribing placebos or worse without knowing it. In a sense, then, the history of medical treatment until relatively recently is the history of the placebo effect. Based on the authors' lifelong study and clinical research, this is a comprehensive and scholarly examination of the placebo effect. The authors begin by surveying the use of placebos from antiquity to modern times. They also examine the development, use, and validity of the double-blind, controlled clinical trial. And they present their own study of the placebo effect in more than 1000 patients. Demonstrating both the magnitude and the limitations of the placebo effect, the book helps to clarify knotty issues ranging from the evaluation of therapies to the ethics of conducting controlled studies in which patients are deliberately given placebos. With the renewed interest in the mind-body relationship as well as in the role of placebos in new and alternative medical procedures and therapies, the findings of this book are especially timely.




Surgery, the Ultimate Placebo


Book Description

A senior surgeon suggests that many commonly performed operations are not necessary and that any benefits they offer are a placebo. For many complaints and conditions the benefits from surgery are lower, and the risks higher, than you or your surgeon think. In this book you will see how commonly performed operations can be found to be useless or even harmful when properly evaluated. Of course no surgeon is recommending invasive surgery in bad faith, but Ian Harris argues that the evidence for the success for many common operations, including knee arthroscopies, back fusion or cardiac stenting, become current accepted practice without full examination of the evidence. The placebo effect may be real, but is it worth the recovery time, expense and discomfort?