New Study Indicates New Understanding of Placebo Efficacy
Can a sugar pill help you feel better, even when you know it’s just a placebo? Groundbreaking new studies indicate just that.
A placebo is defined as an “inert preparation prescribed more for the mental relief of the patient than for its actual effect on a disorder.” It has been used in most modern clinical studies, to measure the effects of a drug against what has been deemed “no treatment.” However, starting in the 1950s, researchers started to see the power of the placebo in healing the body, and today cutting-edge science is showing just how.
Former organic chemist David Hamilton has been researching the placebo effect for years. He wrote about it in his book “How Your Mind Can Heal Your Body.”
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This Ancient Healing Practice Drastically Reduces Inflammation
Recent scientific discoveries suggest a new approach to managing inflammation. Will it be effective at dealing with an issue believed to be at the root of all diseases?
Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autoimmune disease — are just a few of the conditions in which inflammation is known to play a major role. Though it is the body’s natural process to rid itself of waste products, excessive inflammation can wreak havoc on multiple systems.
In a new approach, scientists suggest they may have found a way to go beyond current treatments that seek to stop inflammation, often without lasting effects. The new research focuses on targeting immune cells called macrophages to help with the cellular clean-up necessary to fully resolve inflammation.
Dr. John Douillard is a leading practitioner of Ayurveda, the ancient Indian system of natural medicine often called “the mother of all healing.”
“Science shows — which is great — ‘we need to get in there, help manipulate the macrophages and clean up the lymph outside the cells…’ Great idea! But Ayurveda would say ‘let’s do that by going upstream,’ and treat the upstream cause of that inflammation versus trying to put out the fire with fire trucks in which the fire is sometimes too big for the fire trucks,” Douillard said.
Ayurveda has traced the upstream issues causing inflammation to several key factors.
