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Placebo [plass-ee-bo] A drug containing no active ingredients given to a patient participating in a clinical trail in order to assess the performance of a new drug.

2. Something done or said simply to placate or reassure somebody that has no actual effect on whatever is causing his or her problems or anxiety.

Placebo effect:  a sense of benefit felt by a patient that arises solely from the knowledge that the treatment has been given.

The topic of Self Healing often arises when I attend meetings, seminars, give speeches or simply discuss why some PALS seem to fare better than others.

The first answer is that ALS/MND manifests in several different ways (despite what some textbooks say).

The next is best answered by reading My Theory and Mental Attitude pages.

Last but far from least is that most long term PALS seem to have an extremely positive mental attitude despite extreme and unpleasant circumstances. This attitude can be learned and some PALS actually attribute their longevity to making significant changes to their lifestyle and, even more importantly, to their thinking and attitude to life and their illness.

It is true that if you are directly in the path of a speeding freight train, positive thinking alone will not stop the train. That is the case with some PALS. The illness hits too hard and fast for any known remedies to be of much assistance. For those PALS with a less aggressive form of the illness there may be an opportunity to "step aside" and slow the neurodegenerative process.

I have not included many scientific references because the articles, scientific and otherwise, pertaining to this topic are numerous and varied. Placebo or Self Healing research is now an accepted and funded branch of medicine but has not fully entered most western medical practices. This may (and perhaps should) change in the near future.

PLEASE CONSIDER THIS

Matter is mostly nothing.The pictures of atoms we saw at school that looked like planetary systems were wrong. Quantum Mechanics and Particle Physics have proven that matter is mostly nothing other than electromagnetic vibrations. Atoms should actually look like fuzz balls of mainly nothing with a minuscule bit of a-little-bit-of-nearly-something in the middle.

The scale of it is staggering. If you could hold the nucleus of a hydrogen atom the size of a pea in your hand, its electron would be orbiting, in all directions at once, about a quarter of a mile away!

To put it another way, if all the space were taken away from within all the atoms and molecules of every single person on earth, all 7+ billion of them, they would all squash down to the size of a tennis or basket ball. That ball of pure matter would be made of actual solid-stuff and its mass would be so dense that it would probably crash straight to the centre of the earth. That is almost incomprehensible.

There are now actual photographs of atoms and enough known about them to upset the whole of natural science as we know it. The only thing we need to know is that we are primarily made of absolutely nothing at all. So what makes us look as we do and experience the things that we do?

Quantum physicists have caught up with this too. The closest they can get to describing what controls our, well everything really, is electromagnetic force. The organ that produces personal electromagnetism is the brain and our thought. A measurable outcome of changing our thoughts is that what we experience of the world and ourselves changes according to how we think about them. This is well documented fact that has been proven and replicated repeatedly.

We can actually see and measure the electric and chemical changes our thoughts have on our bodies. You don’t have to believe this any more than you have to believe in air or wind or the sky. Just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that the shape our bodies and lives are in now is a direct reflection of the way we think because we think it that way. Knowing this you can perhaps allow that your thoughts can and do shape your life – and can even heal you.

Cellular healing is a much subtler and non-systemic response, involving only individual cells. More is now understood about the apoptotic process but little is known about precisely what triggers its opposite - healing within individual cells.  There seems to be every indication that, given the right conditions, our bodies are preprogrammed to effect repairs at the cellular level.

Although different, in some respects this process can be illustrated by what can happen to undifferentiated stem cells.  When provided with the appropriate cellular environment and genetic signals, stem cells can grow to fulfil the function of any other cell. Given the appropriate signals and stimulation, all but the most damaged cells should theoretically be able to repair themselves and continue to function normally by referring to their embedded genetic blueprint. Human liver cells can do this to some extent, actually regrowing excised sections of liver.

Simple organisms like starfish best demonstrate this regenerative process. They can completely regrow severed limbs. Even more remarkably, under the right circumstances, a completely new starfish can regrow from the severed limb. It has been suggested that starfish can do this because they are naively unaware that such regeneration is “impossible”. Starfish, after all, do not have what would normally be regarded as a brain, yet this "lower" life form has a superior ability to heal.

The Placebo Effect
In Western medicine the term “Placebo Effect” now seems to be commonly used in a pejorative manner. The implication is that patients given a placebo instead of bona fide medication are "fooled" into getting well. This is sometimes considered the result of weak mindedness. Perhaps the illness was psychosomatic, all in the mind, and the patient was never really ill? Is it possible that precisely the opposite is true and the role of ones mind in the healing process is far greater than medical science will freely acknowledge?

If weak mindedness or gullibility alone were an explanation for the healing qualities of the placebo effect it would indicate that up to one third of the population are weak minded and delusional enough to both induce and maintain an illness - or to cure it. 

By inference, around a third of healthy, intelligent medical volunteers who experience a placebo effect must be similarly deluded. The numerous papers written on this subject would suggest that delusion has less to do with the self healing process than one would expect.  I am among those that feel it is time to re-evaluated the placebo effect and start assessing and even harnessing the remarkable ability of ones mind to influence the healing process.

Placebo trials became an integral and now mandatory part of pharmaceutical testing before a new medication could be released onto the market.  It is now virtually a foregone conclusion that 22% – 27% of people (depending on the data you read) involved in new drug trials will have a positive response regardless of whether they receive active medication or a placebo.

If the pharmaceutical industry has invested billions proving that their products work in spite of a known placebo effect they have ipso facto proved that the placebo effect not only exits but needs to be acknowledged as a very real healing mechanism.  If this much money had been spent on a saleable product it would be acclaimed a scientific wonder of the highest order. 

So why has placebo healing been dismissed as the result of weak mindedness, superstition and non-science? The opposite is true. Hundreds of thousands of clinical trials and thousands of millions of dollars have indirectly confirmed that placebo or self healing is a scientific fact of significant consequence.

The placebo healing ratio is so consistent that it hardly seems fair that “terminally ill” patients should be given placebos when the drug being tested could possibly save their lives and those not experiencing a healing placebo effect will almost certainly die.  With a known percentage of placebo responses well established in thousands of trials of everything from moisturising lipsticks to cancer medications it is unconscionable and inexplicable that placebo testing for terminally ill patients should even be considered. Allow that 22% – 27% will improve and draw data from the remaining 73% - which will happen anyway, placebo or not.

Two Examples
There are so many records of placebo healing that it is hard to choose examples.  Here are two at random to demonstrate both negative and positive placebo responses.

* In 1972 Sam Londy died of cancer a few months after he was diagnosed, just as Dr Clifton Maedor, had told him he would. An autopsy revealed that Sam did indeed have cancer, two small tumours in his liver and another small tumour in a lung.  These tumours and any effects they may have had on Sam were incapable of killing him. As there is no scientific explanation for his death it is believed that Sam died because he expected to.  He believed the diagnosis from an authority on the subject and, for reasons that cannot be adequately explained by western medical thinking.

Sam complied with the diagnosis and died. [Strictly speaking, this is known as a Nascebo reponse]. Dr Maedor now makes a point of sharing this story with other doctors and students in the hope that they will not make a similar “mistake”. 

* Dr Albert Mason, studying in the UK but now working as a psychotherapist in California, believed that hypnotherapy could cure warts. He hypnotised a young man with large areas of warts on his body and the young man was completely cured after a few sessions of hypnosis.

Dr Mason’s teacher, Dr Moore, was astonished and informed him the condition had not been “warts” but the incurable skin disease, congenital Icthyoform Erythroderma. Patients normally deteriorate, suffer numerous infections and die.  Dr Mason believed he was treating a patient with warts.

Over forty years later, the man with a “terminal” skin condition who believed his doctor could cure him has not relapsed. He remains the only person with the illness to be cured. Dr Mason never managed to cure another Icthyotic patient after he accepted it was "impossible" to treat the illness with hypnotherapy. (British Medical Journal 1952)

Placebo Surgery
Unlikely as it seems there is such a thing as placebo surgery. Orthopaedic surgeon Dr Moseley of Baylor College of Medicine, was concerned that a surgical treatment to flush and resurface the joints of patients with osteoarthritis was not as helpful as expected. Some patients improved, others did not.

He made the radical decision to test if the mere experience of a surgical procedure, with no remedial surgery taking place, accounted for the occasional improvements observed and explained why not all patients benefited. At the suggestion of Dr Nelda Wray and to the bemusement of his colleagues he enacted the entire surgical procedure minus the actual flushing and smoothing of the surface of the joint and recorded precisely the same success ratio as when he performed the normal operation.

Even more remarkable is that the patients that improved report years later, that the joints remain mobile and pain free. The only explanation is that the belief that they were experiencing a surgical procedure triggered a self healing response that was sometimes more effective than the actual corrective surgery had been.

Before Western Medicine
For thousands of years, healers worldwide have knowingly, or otherwise, employed the placebo effect to heal. (For the purpose of this article we will exclude divine intervention, voodoo, witchcraft, etc. as playing any role in self healing). Australian aboriginal elders have “pointed the bone” (judged and cursed) tribal law breakers and, even in recent years, the tribal lawbreaker has died within a short time. 

Very often the precise cause of death cannot be clearly determined.  The same is true when a similar process is used to heal by so called witch doctors and faith healers.  If there is belief in a healer’s assumed, learned, inherited or otherwise accepted "power", healing by suggestion alone is possible. So what is actually taking place in western medical terms?

The concept that “it’s all in the mind” has been exploited positively and used to good effect by psychotherapists employing clinical hypnosis to induce and maintain the self healing process to treat a variety of diseases. It could be argued that “faith healing” – essentially a strong belief in a positive outcome (whatever ones religious convictions) – works on a similar principal.  The important thing seems to be that one believes in and is able to fully embrace the idea that one can be healed, despite any evidence or assertions to the contrary.  This belief is frequently dismissed as “false hope”. 

False hope is an oxymoron.  All hope and faith fails conventional scientific definition and is therefore "false".  Faith and hope are employed when an outcome is unknown, unpredictable or scientifically unprovable. Yet faith and hope have been primary tools for people that have survived extreme and prolonged trauma including imprisonment and torture, being adrift at sea or buried under collapsed buildings for lengthy periods. Verifiable tales of survival in extreme conditions must number in the millions and, almost without exception, hope and/or faith were primary survival mechanisms.

Real or Imagined?
The brain does not distinguish between real and imagined events. This has repeatedly been confirmed with PET and MRI brain scans. Prof of Psychology at UCLA, Andrew Leuchter, confirms that such scans show a physiologically, measurable change in brain activity and brain chemistry.

Our brains control 300,000 enzyme functions per minute and contain 100 billion active neurons. The brain governs every aspect of body function both autonomously and as a result how we use our minds. A simple, low-tech experiment can also demonstrate this to be true. Read the following paragraph, then relax and use your senses, imagination and visualisation:

Relax for several minutes with eyes closed then imagine a large, juicy lemon. See yourself picking up that lemon. Feel its weight and texture. Imagine its smell. Tap it and imagine the sound. Now take an imaginary knife and slowly cut the lemon in two. Watch and smell the misty spray and droplets of lemon juice. Feel the fine droplets on your skin. Now tilt your head back, open your mouth and prepare to squeeze lemon juice onto your tongue. Use all your senses to feel, watch, listen, smell and finally taste the sharp lemon juice as it slowly drips onto your tongue.

Are you salivating? If you have used your imagination and all your senses to visualise squeezing the lemon juice into your mouth your body has very probably reacted in exactly the same way it would have done if the lemon were real. Your brain and body does not discriminate between real and imagined lemons - or anything else for that matter.

If you follow a similar procedure, relax and use all your senses to visualise yourself completely well, your brain and body will attempt to comply with this imagined scenario. Chemical reactions will start to take place throughout your body, even at the cellular level. If this Imagined scenario is repeated regularly and the image and feeling of wellness (employing all your senses and with attention to the smallest detail) there is a distinct possibility that the imagined will ultimately influence the real.

Mental Anaesthesia
The placebo response can be employed to block pain. In strictly controlled conditions, volunteers given a fake local anaesthetic may report that the pain of a mild electric shock is reduced because they "expect" it to be and are surprised to discover that they had received no anaesthetic. Rather controversially, major surgery is now routinely carried out using hypnotherapy rather than anaesthesia. This is also the case with acupuncture anaesthesia. Acupuncture has not been "Scientifically Explained" either but works in spite of that.

Belief or Biology?
The placebo effect appears to work with little or no conscious or emotional commitment from a patient or volunteer. Minimal "faith" or belief in a cure is required, although detractors and sceptics would claim the opposite. Why there should be such vehement scepticism is confounding.

There is so much data to demonstrate that the placebo effect not only happens but does so consistently and quite predictably. Simply accepting that a remedy may have a positive effect seems to be all that is required for the placebo effect to take place. In the majority of cases, no great faith or strong belief in the "cure" or the practitioner administering it is required for self healing to occur. Positive physiological, chemical and other changes have repeatedly been recorded in volunteers and patients that have reason to believe they have taken or done something to improve their health.

Similar criticism occurs regarding homeopathic preparations. Sceptics argue that the dilution process employed in preparing homeopathic medicines removes all active ingredients and all homeopathic cures therefore result from the placebo effect.

Critics seem to miss the most important fact. People do get well using homeopathic medications, so in that respect it can be an effective treatment.

The inability of conventional western medicine to explain precisely how it works does not seem to influence its efficacy. [Incidentally, homeopathic preparations have also been used to successfully treat animals so I have no idea how sceptics manage to dismiss these cases].

It could be argued that placebo or self healing heals without medication, has no harmful ingredients and requires no unrealistic belief to work. Detractors seem to contend that healing "would have happened anyway" because there are no active ingredients involved and the subject must be duped or have an unrealistic belief for healing to occur. The bottom line is that healing does occur. Anaesthesia does occur. Dramatic, measurable physiological changes do occur.

Not having an acceptable answer as to why these things occur does not seem to stop them happening. Not having an acceptable answer for how and why it occurs is not a good reason to dismiss it as insignificant, ineffective, unimportant, unscientific and of no value as a healing tool.

The next question would be, "can this ability to promote healing without drug intervention be harnessed?". Quite clearly, the answer to that would also be "yes".

As discussed, psychotherapists and even "unsophisticated" healers have been employing an individual's capacity for self healing for millennia. In combination with conventional and supplementary medications and techniques, self healing could play (and perhaps should play) a significant role in the healing process.

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