Placebo Effect Not Entirely Psychological

By Alison Motluk
New Scientist

It seems that placebos have a real physical, not imagined, effect – activating the production of chemicals in the brain that relieve pain.

Placebos are treatments that use substances which have no active ingredient. But if people are told that what they are being given contains an active painkiller, for example, they often feel less pain – an effect that has normally been considered psychological.

Recent studies, though, suggest otherwise. For example, when a placebo was secretly mixed with a drug that blocks endorphins – the body’s natural painkillers – there was no placebo effect, showing that endorphins are involved in the placebo painkiller process.

Now Jon-Kar Zubieta’s team at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, US, has confirmed that placebos relieve pain by boosting the release of endorphins.

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