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medpundit |
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Wednesday, July 24, 2002Perhaps the most convincing evidence for its existence was revealed in February, when Science magazine announced that Swedish and Finnish researchers had shown that placebos activate the same brain circuits as painkilling drugs. It may be that the placebo response is actually part of all painkilling treatments. These studies show that we dismiss the power of the placebo at our peril. I’ve always felt that responses to pain are very much influenced by the mind. I suspect that the placebo effect applies when real pain drugs are used, too; that it enhances the action of pain medication, and that the failure to muster such a response accounts for the failure of pain medications in some people. Fear and anxiety, for example, seem to enhance pain. Sometimes, the best thing I can do for a patient is to reassure them that the pain isn’t caused by a fatal illness or that it won’t last forever. Anger also seems to enhance the pain response. Auto accident victims seem to suffer more recalcitrant pain when they weren’t the ones at fault and even moreso when the responsible driver was uninsured or drunk. It would be interesting to do an experiment to see if anger, anxiety, or fear inhibited the activation of those brain circuits. posted by Sydney on 7/24/2002 06:05:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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