About one in three persons can obtain pain relief with sugar pills. This so-called “placebo effect” (pla-see’bo, which in Latin means, “I shall please”) works only if the patients believe that they are getting real medication.
Even so, this is no laughing matter, particularly now that we understand how placebos work. University of California researchers report in Lancet that placebo pain relief can be wiped out by injecting naloxone, a drug that is normally used as an antidote for narcotic overdosage.
This strongly suggests that the brain of a placebo-re-sponder makes its own narcotic-like substance, and it is this that relieves pain when a placebo is given. Testing this theory further, the researchers took people whose pain normally responded to placebo and pretreated them with naloxone. No pain relief could then be obtained with placebo.
After repeated use over long periods, placebos become less effective and patients with persisting pain need ever larger numbers of sugar pills each succeeding day. This growing “tolerance” is seen also with narcotics.
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