For some reason the fact that placebos work even when you know it's a placebo sends a chill up my spine.
I think it has to do with the idea that if it works to make you better it could also work in reverse. It made me think of a story I heard about bone pointing. In it a shaman would point a bone at someone and they would die.
I went to a dentist several years back and was told by the dentist that I had high blood pressure and that I needed to go on medication before I could be treated. I told him that the reason I had high blood pressure was because I was in pain. He said it was impossible and that there was no way I could be in enough pain to have my blood pressure go that high and that if I didn't get it treated I could die from it. I went to another dentist and he pulled my tooth. Didn't even check my blood pressure. I told him about the first dentist and he said he could tell that my blood pressure was high just by looking at me by how much pain I was in. When I got home I ordered a blood pressure cuff from Amazon. By the time it had arrived my blood pressure was completely normal, even on the low side on account of my age. I measured my blood pressure many dozens of times after that and the only time it was ever high was if I measured it immediately after working out but it always returned to normal shortly afterwards.
I can't help thinking that if I had listened to the first dentist and went on blood pressure medication that I would probably have been on high blood pressure medication for the rest of my life. I wonder how many people have been told they have something wrong with them by modern doctors that actually didn't, like cancer or heart disease and died as a result of it. It all seems the same to me. Tools like the stethoscope the cat scan and the MRI, and even blood pressure monitor have been replaced by the shaman's bone.
Is treating someone with a placebo and telling them it's a placebo really that much different? How many people in the back of their minds don't believe it and think they're being lied to and that they are getting the real thing? On the flip side I had a friend that was a nurse and said that it was common for a patient to overhear a doctor talking about someone else and mistakenly believe it was them and they would develop the exact same illness and often even die from it.
