Your mind is very powerful. It can affect your body in negative and positive ways. The placebo effect is when you trick your mind into thinking something, and it improves your health. Placebos are something doctors use as a “fake” medical treatment. It was discovered in 1799, by John Haygarth. Recently scientists have found that under the right circumstances the placebo can be just as effective as traditional medicine.

The placebo effect can be tested. One way it can be is when there are two groups of people all getting treated for a disease. Half of them get the real treatment, and the other half get a fake treatment. None of the people know they might be getting a fake treatment. They get the treatment, and the doctors monitor the effects and see if there’s a difference. Most of the time there is no obvious difference. The National Institute of Health did a clinical trial with 3,000 participants with high risk of getting dementia. They were comparing ginkgo biloba and the placebo. Earlier researchers had found that ginkgo biloba, an herbal supplement, helped delay dementia. At the end of the test scientists found that there was no significant difference with the placebo and ginkgo biloba. They both equally helped delay dementia. A parent of one of the mendocino highschool students comments on this and says “The placebo effect seems really interesting. I wonder how the brain can trick us into getting better with whatever our body is going through.” 

Some studies have even shown that the placebo can create physical changes. For example some studies have shown an increase in the body’s production of endorphins. Endorphins are a hormone that blocks the perception of pain. A mendocino high school student named Ivy Buckner was told this and said “That doesn’t sound real… I don’t see how someone’s mindset could change their physical health. I would need to see it to believe it.”  However, this is a real thing. There is something called a Nocebo effect, for example. This effect can cause negative outcomes. It can cause pain or nausea just because someone was expecting to experience them. This effect might be triggered when someone is told of the opposite effects before starting a treatment. The nocebo effect is definitely possible but only if your mindset is negative. If you go into a treatment with positive thinking it will help you. A negative mindset can make you experience sickness or sadness.

One common theory on how the placebo works is that it plays on a person’s expectations of what is going to happen. For instance, in one test people were given a placebo and told it was a stimulant. They experienced faster pulse and quicker reaction times. They weren’t given a stimulant; they were given a sugar pill. So why did they experience stimulant effects? There is no easy answer. Some experts say it depends on how much the person believes it will work, meaning someone who 100% thinks that they will get better from a placebo treatment most likely will. But someone who is unsure about a treatment will likely not receive the effect.

In conclusion the placebo is a real and positive technique in medicine. It is a very powerful tool, if you know how to use it. Our brains are very powerful. They can affect us physically, in negative or positive ways. If people can fix their bodies just based on their mindset, think of how far we can go. Everyone should work more on being positive, especially about our bodies health. Positivity can help your life in many ways, your body’s health included.